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Unleash Your Potential
Issue 4.31 - July 30, 2007 - ISSN: 1551-6571

In Kevin's Own Words

Feedback Isn’t Enough

We all want feedback – we want to know how we are doing. Getting that input gives us a benchmark of our current performance and helps us improve. It is important. It is necessary.

And it isn’t enough.

Consider your basic performance review (even if it is a really effective one) or most any performance discussion. Most, if not all, of that conversation focuses on the past – what people have done that worked and went well, and what could be improved or changed.

At the end of that conversation, the supervisor, coach or leader feels better – they have given the person feedback! Unfortunately, for the other person that might not be enough. While they now have a new perspective on their past performance, they must do the translation – they are left to figure out what to do next time.

Four Types of Input

There are four types of input that we can give to people:

• Negative feedback (that didn’t work – remember that).
• Positive feedback (that did work – good job!)
• Negative feedforward (next time, avoid this or that)
• Positive feedforward (next time, try this and repeat this)

While most people think of feedback as positive or negative, that tells only part of the story. As important as it is to learn from the past, we are looking at the past as a guide to adapting, changing or improving future performance.

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Instead of focusing on the past only, why not make your intentions perfectly clear and use the past to give people advice about what do to next time?

Five Reasons to Consider Feedforward

No translation required. If we have ideas about what to do – or not to do next time – why not share them? When we have an expertise, sometimes when we give feedback we are assuming that people will know what or how to change or adapt. When we give clear feedforward we aren’t assuming – there will be no translation required.

It can be faster. Sometimes we spend a long time trying to give the feedback in a way that people will accept and understand. In these cases it might be much faster to just give some clear directions on what to do next time. We all know this is true because in a crisis or overloaded work situation this is what we do. Remember that feedforward isn’t only effective, it can be faster.

It can be more readily accepted. People are less defensive when receiving advice about what to do in the future. On the other hand, there can be lots of defensiveness and denial when people we hearing about their past performance. Because it is future focused, feedforward is often accepted – and therefore used more readily than feedback.

We can’t change the past. Maybe this should have been first on the list. We can learn from the past, but we can’t change it. This is why feedback is still important – if we focus solely on the future our advice may become too directive (do this, do this, but not that). On the other hand if we only think about the past, we aren’t creating the future we desire. Focus some of your conversation on what you can change – which is the future.

Feedforward creates an upward spiral. We are having a conversation about performance because we want people to continue to grow, succeed and be more productive and happy in their work, right? Using feedforward as a tool helps us move people in an upward, engaged spiral of performance.

Feedback is important, but it isn’t enough. Examine how your coaching and mentoring sessions go. Are you sharing feedforward? Are you asking for feedforward? Including this in your discussion will create better relationships and better results – for both the coach and the coached.

Potential Principle - We all need advice, wise counsel and a fresh perspective. You will help others most when you focus some of that advice on what do to next, as opposed to reflecting solely on what they have already done.

Kevin

Kevin's Recommends

the dip: A little book that teaches you when to quit
(and when to stick)
by Seth Godin

I've recommended Seth Godin’s books and his blog before (here and here are a couple of past recommendations). He is a smart guy. In this book he proves to me that he is wise as well as smart. Much of Seth's past work has been in the area of marketing. This book though, fits squarely in personal development area.

In this small (7” x 5”), short (96 pages) book, he gets in your face about your progress and your success (in a fun and engaging way). Specifically he suggests that we need to think more about quitting and when to quit intelligently.

He illustrates his points with some great examples and talks about what he calls the dip; that point where we are past the initial thrills and exuberance of starting something, but we haven’t overcome the challenges to reach success or mastery.

A key lesson for me was the distinction between quitting a tactic ("do it," says Godin) and quitting a strategy ("don’t do it," he advises). I agree. And that distinction, and the way he unwraps that idea itself, is worth reading this book.

Many of us grew up thinking "never quit." This book helps you examine that belief and challenge it too – not completely – but in some useful ways.

You will enjoy The Dip and learn from it too.

You can learn more about the book at Amazon.com.

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