The second belief is that the process of learning is like filling up an empty vessel: You lack certain abilities you need to acquire, so your colleagues should teach them to you. You do not realize that your suit is shabby, that your presentation is boring, or that your voice is grating, so it is up to your colleagues to tell you as plainly as possible “where you stand.” If they didn’t, you would never know, and this would be bad. We can call this our theory of the source of truth. The first is that other people are more aware than you are of your weaknesses, and that the best way to help you, therefore, is for them to show you what you cannot see for yourself. Underpinning the current conviction that feedback is an unalloyed good are three theories that we in the business world commonly accept as truths. And on that, the research is clear: Telling people what we think of their performance doesn’t help them thrive and excel, and telling people how we think they should improve actually hinders learning. Feedback is about telling people what we think of their performance and how they should do it better-whether they’re giving an effective presentation, leading a team, or creating a strategy. What we mean by “feedback” is very different. But the occasions when the actions or knowledge necessary to minimally perform a job can be objectively defined in advance are rare and becoming rarer. There is indeed a right way for a nurse to give an injection safely, and if you as a novice nurse miss one of the steps, or if you’re unaware of critical facts about a patient’s condition, then someone should tell you. To be clear, instruction-telling people what steps to follow or what factual knowledge they’re lacking-can be truly useful: That’s why we have checklists in airplane cockpits and, more recently, in operating rooms. And when we examine that-asking, How can we help each person thrive and excel?-we find that the answers take us in a different direction.
But the only reason we’re pursuing it is to help people do better. The search for ways to give and receive better feedback assumes that feedback is always useful. How much, and how often, and using which new app? And, given the hoopla over the approaches of Bridgewater and Netflix, how hard-edged and fearlessly candid should we be? Behind those questions, however, is another question that we’re missing, and it’s a crucial one. How should we give and receive feedback? we wonder. The ongoing experiment in “radical transparency” at Bridgewater Associates and the culture at Netflix, which the Wall Street Journal recently described as “encouraging harsh feedback” and subjecting workers to “intense and awkward” real-time 360s, are but two examples of the overriding belief that the way to increase performance in companies is through rigorous, frequent, candid, pervasive, and often critical feedback. But recently the discussion has taken on new intensity.
#THE FLOW EXPERIENCE REFERS TO MGMT HOW TO#
Since at least the middle of the last century, the question of how to get employees to improve has generated a good deal of opinion and research. The debate about feedback at work isn’t new.
Learning rests on our grasp of what we’re doing well, not what we’re doing poorly, and certainly not on someone else’s sense of what we’re doing poorly. Neuroscience shows that we grow most when people focus on our strengths. Instead, when managers see a great outcome, they should turn to the person who created it, say, “Yes! That!,” and share their impression of why it was a success. Managers will never produce great performance by identifying what they think is failure and telling people how to correct it. Last, excellence looks different for each individual, so it can’t be defined in advance and transferred from one person to another. Second, neuroscience reveals that criticism provokes the brain’s “fight or flight” response and inhibits learning. First, research shows that people can’t reliably rate the performance of others: More than 50% of your rating of someone reflects your characteristics, not hers. But it turns out that feedback does not help employees thrive. For years managers have been encouraged to candidly praise and criticize just about everything workers do.
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