The Importance of Giving Feedback

I’m not sure I have met anyone who has told me they love giving feedback. Which when you consider that it is one of the most important things a leader can do for us personally, creates a conundrum that I talked about on my 3-minute Tea Break Coach video last week.

Most of us have a story of one or two pieces of feedback we have been given that may have been simple and direct but had profound and lasting impact on how we behave – and even how we live.

Three moments stand out for me; “Dulcie, you are stealing the opportunity for people to learn by telling people what to do…” and “It’s never too late to intervene, but it can be too early…” and “I have some feedback for you…you are really hard to give feedback to…”

The three sentences have five things in common.

·      They weren’t given to me in a formal appraisal or annual review 📋❌

·      They were all based on personal opinion and given freely in the moment 💭🗣️

·      They all hurt a little to hear (in one case a lot!) 💔😢

·      They all profoundly changed the course of my behaviour, life and career 🌟💼

And the big one…

·      They were all given by strong characters who I trusted because I knew they had my back

I often wonder if I would have achieved half of what I have without those words or the support of the leaders who delivered them.

And I conscious that in those moments, just before they put words to thoughts, those leaders had a choice. And I will be forever grateful that in my case those three leaders didn’t take the easy option and think, “It’s that behaviour again, I need to think about how to feed that back…”

…and then not quite find the time, or the right moment.

And here’s the thing. There is lots of evidence that in the moment is the right time for feedback. It’s just that our brains get in the way.

Our brains are biased towards putting off something uncomfortable until tomorrow. It’s called Current Moment Bias.

This is a real brain-wiring thing! In moments of discomfort, such as those seconds before you give someone feedback, you are expending lots of brain fuel. Your brain is a ‘cognitive miser’, so it is primed to try to remove that discomfort as quickly as possible. In this case with really good, grown-up leadership-like sounding excuses not to give feedback in the moment that might hurt or upset someone. Maybe you tell yourself “I’ll wait for their review and talk about it properly” or “I’ll see if it happens again, maybe it’s a one-off”.

You might even turn it on yourself, “I’ll see if it is just me…” or “I won’t give that feedback now, I’m not in the right frame of mind and I’ll get cross.”

You could even do this with positive feedback – you think – “That was great, I must feed it back” but then something else in the current moment takes your attention and the moment is lost.

All our biases are there for good reason – and that is no exception. Who doesn’t want to save time? Not wanting to hurt people is a good thing to have wired in as a human being! So is not wanting to feel awful about getting something wrong. Moving away because you are so cross about something that you might shout is also a sensible move.

Not getting mad is something you can control, phrasing the feedback in a way that minimises hurt are entirely possible of course. But they require even more brain fuel and your brain is attracted to a quick fix. For your brain, putting it off is much more fuel efficient…

When you know that not giving in-the-moment feedback can be down to your innate wiring, you can learn to adapt and behave a little differently – because you are wise to your own excuses!

Here are six bits of evidence from psychology, education and organisational behaviour to help you persist with giving feedback in the moment, even when it feels hard, or you are pushed for time:

1. Prevents Bad Habit Formation: When feedback helps people to correct their mistakes quickly, the correct behaviour or knowledge is reinforced while the experience is still fresh in their minds. Left unsaid, there is a chance that the wrong behaviour becomes embedded as a habit. And the more embedded the behaviour is, the harder it is to correct.

2. Regular becomes ‘Normal’ The more you are known for giving feedback the less of a shock it is for people. The fastest way to extinct a good behaviour is not to call it out. So actively noticing and curating a habit of calling out things you want people to repeat because they are good means you build the behaviours you want to see. ‘Even Better If’s woven into that daily habit certainly isn’t the shock to the system that “I have some feedback for you” from someone who barely speaks to you would be.

3. Aids Learning: Studies have demonstrated that immediate feedback reinforces learning and retention. It is stimulating for the brain to get feedback and think things over. Those buzzing neural connections make you remember the things you have learnt.

4. Improves Performance: Practically speaking, immediate feedback can lead to quicker improvements in job performance. It helps people understand and modify their behaviour in real-time – and time is money

5. Positive Emotional Impact: Spending just a second saying ‘well done’ boosts motivation and morale. It also feels surprisingly good to get constructive feedback because if a quick behavioral adjustment is possible the “wow, I did it” shot of endorphins and dopamine that follows will gives brainpower a boost and can be build upon. And the big one!

6. Cognitive Load Theory: In-the-moment feedback can reduce cognitive overload – this includes over-thinking, thinking about things several times when once would do, something feeling like a big deal, or spreading the need to think about it across other people. Giving feedback once, when you see it and transferring it into the brain of a person who needs to hear to improve their performance makes sense.

Resolving misunderstandings or errors promptly prevents an accumulation of errors and misconceptions which are hard to unravel – emotionally and practically. Imagine knowing you had been doing something wrong for ages and that people had been talking about it. That is much harder to get over than it would be if it had been nipped in the bud sooner. As a leader mulling over and over a difficult conversation you need to have more than once wastes brain fuel and is tiring. Other people thinking the same thing or talking together about a repeated issue is a waste of time and energy. In the moment feedback reduces all this cognitive load.

I’m a fan of shared language when it comes to talking about difficult things at work – and finding ways to broach awkward topics so your brain (and someone else’s) doesn’t go into avoidance mode. Is why I often ask for feedback by saying “I’d love to talk about anything that you really liked and hear if you have any ‘Even Better If’s’ for me?

My favourite phrase for feedback in the moment? Easy:

Instant Insight

I’ll leave that with you – and for more on feedback, shared language and how to create the psychological safety to give feedback well, subscribe as it will be in the next edition.