Flashcard: Ask for feedback

To get the feedback you need to get better, you have to ask for it.

Over the course of my career, I’ve done lots of pitches and presentations. Whenever I finish, I ask for feedback. If I’m the most senior person in the room, I’ll still ask for feedback; especially then, because it’s a teaching moment. What could I have done better? What worked and what didn’t work?

Who do we give permission to tell us the truth?

Eugene and I have been friends for over 30 years. Each of us has hired the other at various workplaces, and we’re working on a new project together. He’s been reading this Substack, and listened to the audio version.

“The way you talk in your audio tracks isn’t like how you actually talk when we’re having a conversation,” he told me on a video call today. “In regular conversation, you’re up here,” he said, waving his hands up above his eyebrow in a pinched fingers chefs kiss sort of gesture. “When you’re recording on Substack, you’re down here,” he said, his flat hand slicing just above his desk.

“If you talked like that in a conversation,” he said, “I’d ask you if you were ok, like, are you on medication?”

Eugene is one of those people who gets to tell me the truth. And I’m glad of it. Oh, and apologies to those of you who were listening to me talking in what was apparently a stultifying monotone, but hopefully my delivery going forward will sounds less, uh, medicated.

Lots of leaders focus on how to give effective feedback. Which is useful, and maybe I’ll do a flashcard on that someday. But we don’t often talk about leaders soliciting feedback. Sure, there are 360 reviews, and feedback forms and engagement surveys. But I’m talking about a leader asking directly to another person how they, the leader, are performing.

To get good feedback you need to ask for it, give people permission to be honest with you, and then actually do something with the information.

I’ve always been known as the person who could say the hard truths at work. People often would have strong ideas about what the boss needed to stop doing or start doing, but they didn’t want to tell the boss directly. “You go tell him, Stephanie,” they would say. Not because the boss would necessarily listen to me, but because I was bold enough to tell the truth.

Most workplaces and teams have a person who is willing and able to say the difficult things. You probably already have this person working for you. The key is to ask them what they think.

And then watch what you do with your face. No one is going to give you tough feedback if they’re afraid of a bad reaction. If you get defensive or tense when you get feedback, or you shimmer with suppressed irritation towards the person who gave it to you, no one is going to tell you the truth. In addition to asking, you must make sure to manage your body language when you’re getting the feedback.

Often, I’ve tried to prime the pump. After presentations, I would ask the next most senior person in the room “How did I do? Any suggestions or feedback for me?”

If they looked at me like a nocturnal animal caught in the beam of a bright light, I might get them started.

“I wasn’t sure if my first slide really landed, what did you think about the open? I felt like the section on investment dragged a little. What could I do to pick that up?”

If you start, they are more likely to follow.

It is also, of course, then easier to get the rest of your team to solicit and accept feedback from you or others. I always try to make feedback what we used to call a shit sandwich: here’s the good thing you did, here’s the shit thing, here’s another good thing.

Performance critiques are going to be familiar to anyone who has ever done a sport seriously, or done any kind of performing art. You could use that as an analogy. World class athletes have coaches. Serena Williams had a coach. Viola Davis has directors. 

When I did a one woman show, my director and collaborator Maggie Cino gave genius feedback to me about every aspect of the content as well as the performance. Some of it was hard to hear. Getting feedback on how we speak or stand or hold our body, especially when telling a difficult story, can be challenging. Maggie and I met when I told a story on the Moth about the death of my son. When Catherine Burns, the creative director at the Moth, gave me feedback she told me to talk more about my emotional reaction to my son’s death in my story. I broke down in tears.

“I can’t do that,” I said.

“I believe that you can,” Catherine said. She then gave me specific, practical instructions on how to tell the story better. And she was right. (You can watch that story here.)

In theater and elite sports, we have an understanding and expectation that certain people are going to give us suggestions about how to improve our performance. How often do we do that at work? Have we set up a culture in our teams that invites others to tell us the truth about how we can be better?

Another advantage to feedback is that it can point out skills we might take for granted.

In the executive coaching I do, a surprising amount of my feedback to clients it to highlight or emphasize something they do really well. They’re often surprised. A person with a genius for systems can look at a system and immediately understand where the choke point is and how to fix that, and that seems as normal to them as perfect pitch is to someone who can belt out a C sharp a capella.

So many clients have said “You mean, everyone can’t do that?” Insert their specific genius here.

“No, everyone cannot do that,” I tell them, “But you do it really well. So do more of that.”

I can’t remember where I read this, but there was a basketball coach who showed his team a highlight reel of all the things they did right. He encouraged them to focus on what they felt like when they succeeded, how they experienced it in their body. And their performance got better, they won more than teams who were showing highlight reels of mistakes and dwelling on not repeating errors.

That’s another useful thing to keep in mind. Highlighting and emphasizing the positive and building on that is the most effective way I’ve found to build skills in another person. So, ask for that as well.

“What did I do well? What was the most effective part of the presentation? How can I build on that strength more?”

That’s what Eugene did for me. He was telling me that the energy I have in normal conversation is chef’s kiss superior to how I sound on Substack and I should build on that strength and do more of that.

So here I am.

How did I do?