How to give feedback
I recently spoke at Wired 2012 and I felt it went well (video to follow, when they put it up).
Afterwards, people came up, shook my hand, patted me on the back and told me I did a great job. That felt nice, but it won’t help me to do a better job next time.
Elsewhere in the building, other people gathered in corners and grumbled about all the things I did or got wrong. (I don’t know if this happened. I assume it did. You can’t please everyone.) That didn’t help me to do a better job next time, either.
But someone did something helpful. Bruno Giussani of TED, seeing someone praise me for speaking without slides, immediately got to the point. “You talked about the Spitfire,” he said, “But this is an international audience. Many people won’t know what you’re talking about. You should have shown just one slide: a photograph of a Spitfire. Then everyone would have understood.”
Next time I give a similar speech, I’ll be showing one slide: a photograph of a Spitfire.
It isn’t easy to get straight to the point and offer a single, focused suggestion for improvement. And the truth is, we rarely seek that kind of feedback. When we ask “what do you think?”, we’re usually looking for those confidence-boosting pats on the back. But giving such feedback – and seeking it out – is hugely important.
(On which topic, Peter Sims has an excellent book, “Little Bets“, which among many excellent topics discusses this kind of focused feedback at Pixar. Buy it for Christmas and enjoy.)
8 Comments
patently says:
I can’t help but think that, given the international nature of the Internet, a picture of a Spitfire would have helped here.
8th of November, 2012banner says:
http://www.spitfireale.co.uk/gfx/gfx-spitfire-full-pint.jpg Now everyone understands.
8th of November, 2012tim says:
Does this help?
8th of November, 2012http://www.wto.org/english/news_e/news12_e/trip_06nov12_e.htm#innovation
timR says:
No, sorry, it doesn’t (wrong link). Also I see my alias was confusing…
8th of November, 2012Francis says:
I suggest you put an interrogation point to your post title so that we know it’s musing on a question, not a how-to. How’s that for direct feedback?
8th of November, 2012CdrJameson says:
Ooh! Adapt and this post related.
In modern (Agile) software development we have this kind of retrospective regularly (from weekly to monthly) – ask ‘what did I/we do well’ but also ask ‘what could I/we do better?’.
In that way it separates the back-slapping from the constructive criticism. It also reduces the non-constructive criticism by forcing you to think about how things could be improved, not on what you did wrong.
9th of November, 2012CdrJameson says:
(Adapt related because this is part of the whole process of making sure we’re going in the right direction, and making a quick switch if we aren’t)
9th of November, 2012Robert Grant says:
In my line of work (statistician) I encounter a lot of polite silence interspersed with the occasional rant, both unhelpful. Some years ago I went on a music composition summer school (long story) where the best thing I learnt was to practise sharing four *brief* points: one thing you liked, why, one thing you didn’t like, why. (Thanks to Michael Finnissy). It has been extremely useful for me at work ever since. I wish everybody used it!
13th of November, 2012