Truth 34
Feedback Is The Best Kind Of Criticism

Great sports coaches know that you can push athletes hard if you do it to take them to the next level. People can do amazing things when you really need them to stretch to get work done quickly or to cover for others. Setting "stretch goals" can be exciting and inspirational. Ask people who worked in Silicon Valley start-ups in the early days. They loved every minute of not sleeping, along with the ecstasy of being part of something exciting and new.

But there's a dark side to "stretch goals." People can get burned out or worn out and can feel as if they're always being criticized for not doing the near-impossible. Criticism is part of working life. We all have to get it and give it, whether officially through appraisals or informally from bosses on a daily basis. However, we welcome it to varying degrees. If you think about your own experiences of receiving criticism, the times when you took it best were probably occasions when someone appeared to have your best interests at heart. You emerged from the discussion with a positive sense of what you needed to do next. This type of criticism is exemplified by the feedback that's part of good coaching.

You can help someone improve by encouraging him or her to see a situation objectively, rather than through the filter of a psychological assessment such as "You don't care about your colleagues' needs," which implies "good" and "bad." You achieve this by assuming a position of impartiality yourself, behaving not as a critic but as a neutral observer. Describing current behavior in words that are free of anger and judgment allows you to steer people toward other ways of thinking or working without causing offense or resentment.

It can be helpful to
think of your eyes
and ears as a
television camera,
objectively recording
words and actions.

The first stage in delivering feedback is careful observation. Before saying anything, devote some time to thinking about how to describe a subordinate's behavior in a neutral way. It can be helpful to think of your eyes and ears as a television camera, objectively recording words and actions. Next, describe what you see to the person, offering a second picture of what might work better so that the gap between the current and improved behavior is evident. It's often helpful to give an example of a time when the person displayed the desired behavior. It brings a positive aspect to the criticism and shows that the person can change if he or she knows the way forward.

The final stage is to discuss together how to close that gap by creating a new picture. When talking to someone who tends to do things in a last-minute way, you might give an example like this one: "When you e-mail your presentation slides after everyone else, the meeting participants are annoyed and may complain to me and to each other." Then you can suggest ways to make sure that things are not done in a last-minute way by saying: "I've noticed that when your travel schedule forces you to finish a draft a week in advance, you let people you trust review it, which means that your work is beautifully done and on time." As the supervisor, you can encourage your employee to create an ongoing way to replicate his success strategy even when he's not forced to do so by circumstances.

The key to moving feedback into action is to find a way to duplicate or create successes. Although knowing what's wrong is a start, if you just tell people in the workplace to stop doing something, their instinctive reaction is either to defend what they're doing and continue as before or to focus so hard on not doing it that their behavior may appear uncomfortable or contrived. It's essential to find ways to encourage and reinforce positive change.

So, judiciously negotiate those stretch goals for each team member individually. Regularly give them the feedback they need to self-correct and keep going. When they succeed, celebrate with them from time to time. When they celebrate, it should feel like winning in Las Vegas so that they want to come back for more stretch goal challenges.