Feedback Theater
Anyone who is interested in personal growth probably knows that part of that effort is receiving good feedback. You can ask for feedback from a friend, family member, coworker, mentor, or even hire a professional coach. If you are a manager, you have probably even implemented a channel or two by which you can receive feedback from the individuals on the teams who report to you.
My Recent Feedback Experiences
The one-on-one meeting is a somewhat industry standard that can be used to communicate information, but also directly give space for managers to develop a relationship with their reports and get feedback in a safe environment. The first place I've had one-on-one meetings was with the manager of my last team, and we built great rapport and trust over the years.
Another feedback channel from IT leadership at my last workplace was a weekly status email. We answered two simple questions: "How do you feel about your work?" and "How do you feel about your relationship with the company?". We had a team mood tracking application to daily report how we felt generally. Leadership even hosted a monthly department meeting to communicate what was happening at the high level in the business and offer a chance to ask questions and discuss concerns we had.
Shouting Into the Void
I used all these channels as honestly as I could, persuaded that their presence equated to assurance that it was safe for me to be open and candid about my feelings and experiences as a team member. My direct manager was always quick to respond, to help clarify and give perspective, but individuals in higher leadership roles were largely silent. I initially excused this, expecting that my feedback was taken seriously, but perhaps there just wasn't time to respond to everyone who were also reporting concerns.
Eventually, I began to feel ignored, and I also wrote honestly about that in my feedback. Through my manager, I began to learn my feedback was not so welcomed, but I personally value openness and honesty to the extent that I believed that clearer heads would prevail and a simple conversation between myself and leadership could get us back on the same page.
Feedback Theater
I learned the hard way by being terminated without explicit cause that all my faith in the culture of feedback was misplaced. I had accidentally stepped on an ego and in lieu of the conversation I so badly wanted, I found myself escorted to the door. With the help of others, I've reflected on various ways I could have improved my feedback. I'll outline some lessons learned at the end, but let's focus on the impact of what I've come to call Feedback Theater.
So what exactly went sour here? The channels were all in place to elicit feedback and criticism from many angles, and it appeared as if the department leaders wanted to know how we truly felt. On paper, this points to a courageous leadership that demonstrates its committment to transparency and honesty. However, the distance between asking for feedback and valuing that feedback can be immense.
Consider the kinds of responses people might generally give to feedback, solicited or unsolicited.
- Getting angry
- Dismissing the information
- Criticizing right back
- Ignore feedback altogether
If you receive feedback and react with one of the above responses, you teach the person giving you the feedback that it is not safe to be truly honest with you. In the future, you will get unhelpful feedback designed to protect your interlocutor from your negative response or, more than likely, no feedback at all in the form of "everything is fine". The above responses to feedback can originate from fear, ignorance, mistrust, and a general lack of self-awareness, natural human states that any person can find ourselves in.
A manager who, perhaps even unbeknownst to themselves, doesn't truly desire feedback but wants to appear as if they support a culture of feedback will set up a Feedback Theater, whether intentionally or not. Nothing useful will come of such a show, and what's worse is that feedback theater can actively drive away your best employees once they catch on to the mismatch of professed values and actual values.
Psychological Safety
A two-year study by Google clearly showed that the most important trait of a high-performing team is psychological safety. You can read a summary of the results in the article titled The five keys to a successful Google team by Julia Rozovsky, an analyst in Google People Operations. Rozovsky defines psychological safety to mean that "team members feel safe to take risks and be vulnerable in front of each other". It is certainly true that I felt this way about the other members of my software engineering team, but even against the advice of some colleagues, I assumed this meant I could extend this to members of the IT leadership as well.
In her book Radical Candor, author Kim Scott explains that, in order to build a culture where compassionate honesty is the norm, a manager needs to first solicit feedback for themselves:
“There’s several reasons why it make sense to begin building a culture of radical candor by asking people to criticize you. First, it’s the best way to show that you are aware you are often wrong and that you want to hear about it when you are. You want to be challenged. Second, you’ll learn a lot. Few people scrutinize you as closely as do those that report to you. [...] Third, the more first hand experience you have with how it feels to receive criticism, the better idea you’ll have of how your own guidance lands for others. Fourth, asking for criticism is a great way to build trust and strengthen your relationships.”
Conclusions
In the time since I walked out that door, I have reflected on the experience and have learned a few important lessons. I have first learned to pay closer attention to apparent mismatches in the actions and professed values of others. I know now that psychological safety can exist in a bubble, and you can't just invite anyone in. Trust must be given in small pieces, and earned in return. I am also now looking for opportunities to ask for criticism from trusted friends and colleagues and demonstrate that I can react maturely and take it seriously to encourage more good feedback from them.
Most importantly, I have learned that the messenger matters. Had I taken the time to build rapport with those in leadership, perhaps everything I wrote or said on feedback channels would have been taken in a different context and it would not have ultimately cost me membership of such a remarkable team.
Have you found yourself audience to such a Feedback Theater? Did you notice right away, or did it take some time to learn your feedback was not as welcome as it seemed? Have you set up a Feedback Theater yourself by mistake? How were you able to repair trust if you learned that your performance discouraged real honest feedback?