Truth 43
Focus on the Behavior, Not the Person

One of my favorite movies is Back to the Future. Marty McFly is a teenager who travels from 1985 back to 1955 in a quirky professor's time machine built out of a stainless-steel DeLorean automobile. Marty's high school teacher, Mr. Strickland, loves to say to Marty, "You're a slacker, McFly, just like your old man." Mr. Strickland never cites what Marty's "slacker" behaviors are or how to turn things around. He calls him a slacker because he thinks Marty's father, George McFly, was a slacker. Mr. Strickland is king of providing feedback that focuses on the person, not the behavior.

True, this example is Hollywood giving outrageous character attributes to an outrageous movie character in order to embellish a story line. However, most of us have, at some point in our lives, encountered someone who attacked us as a person rather than focusing on our behaviors. Maybe it was a parent who referred to you as an idiot, school kids who called you fat, or an employer who labeled you as lazy. The feedback was not provided as constructive and meant to help you; it was destructive, expressed out of anger or disappointment, and meant to hurt you. Maybe it worked in some cases, like causing the guy who was called fat enough times to hit the gym and lose four belt notches. On the other hand, it just might have caused him to further climb into a shell and get consolation from more food. My general view here is this: Focusing feedback on the person tends to be destructive and is meant to hurt; focusing feedback on the behavior tends to be constructive and is meant to help.

Focus on the behavior and not the person by employing some of these techniques:

• Jot down the behaviors you want to give feedback on ahead of time. Know the specific situation and behaviors that raised your eyebrows, and write them down ahead of time. Ensure that the behaviors are factual and easily understandable. If you feel you may not be able to judge the emotional content of the feedback, ask a colleague to review whether your feedback is factually driven and not emotionally charged.
• If something was done well, say so. If your recipient did something well, start your feedback session with the things that were done well. Don't worry that you may be dampening the effect of the constructive feedback because you also gave positive feedback. Mixing positive and constructive feedback tells the recipient you are being objective and balanced and makes your feedback more effective.
• Avoid emotional attacks. Statements like "You idiot!" or "Your ideas are stupid!" are very general, have no constructive value, and don't belong in a feedback session (or anywhere else, for that matter). Your feedback should focus on fact and some unemotional assessment, such as "The joke you told in the meeting today could have been offensive to some of the attendees."
• Let them know how the behavior affected you or others. Suppose you are giving feedback to your recipient on his inability to meet deadlines. The feedback could be "You have not met the last three deadlines assigned to you. Your colleagues need to take on additional work that was to be assigned to you because you are not meeting assigned deadlines." Helping the recipient understand the impact of his behavior helps him understand the need to change.
• Establish an understanding on desired behavior. Clearly outline for the recipient what behavior is desired. Using the preceding deadline example, the desired behavior would be as follows: "The team needs you to meet each deadline given to you to keep the project on schedule." Even though this may seem unnecessary at times, you're better off ensuring that the desired behavior is clear to the recipient and that he agrees to it.

Feedback doesn't give you license to attack a person's character, ethics, or intelligence. Feedback should focus on specific behaviors and ensure that you and the recipient have a clear understanding of what the behavior was, how it impacted you and others, and what the desired behavior is moving forward. Success here is where the recipient changes his or her behavior as a result of the feedback and improves as a person. Help the recipient and make the feedback clear, constructive, and actionable.

Feedback doesn't give you license to attack a person's character, ethics, or intelligence. It should focus on specific behaviors.