Feedback

How to give valuable feedback and help people to thrive?

Andy Weeger

Neu-Ulm University of Applied Sciences

September 3, 2024

Prologue

In the workplace, treating feedback not just as something to be endured, but something to be actively sought, can have a profound impact. Feedback-seeking behavior—as it is called in the research literature—has been linked to higher job satisfaction, greater creativity on the job, faster adaptation in a new organization or role, and lower turnover. And seeking out negative feedback is associated with higher performance ratings. Stone and Heen (2014, 9)

Discussion

Decide for the bright or the dark side, reflect on the related questions below, and discuss your findings with your neighbor(s) (approx 10 minutes).

Bright side:

Who are the best leaders you have worked for in your career?
What made them so exceptional?
What can you learn?

Dark side:

Tell a story about the worst boss you ever had.
What did he or she do that made them so bad?
How can you avoid those mistakes?

Foundation

Figure 1: Thanks for the Feedback by Stone and Heen (2014) and Radical Candor by Scott (2019)

This unit is inspired by and (partly) based on the books Thanks for the Feedback by Stone and Heen (2014) and Radical Candor by Scott (2019).

Feedback is everywhere. We may not be able to exert complete control over what someone else thinks of us but we can certainly do something about what we hoose to do with the feedback. “Thanks for the Feedback” is a sensible, breezhily written book. Financial Times

With Radical Candor, Kim has bottled some of Google’s magic and shared it with the world. Shona Brown, former SVP Business Operations at Google

Feedback

Opening remarks

After all, humans are naturally wired for learning. […] In addition to our desire to learn and improve, we long for something else that is fundamental: to be loved, accepted, and respected just as we are. Stone and Heen (2014, 6–8)

Types of feedback

Appreciation
To see, acknowledge, connect motivate, thank.

Coaching
To enhance knowledge, skill, capability, growth or to raise feelings in the relationship.

Evaluation
To tell where you stand, align expectations, and inform decision making.

We need all three!

According to Stone and Heen (2014), there are 3 types of feedback:

Appreciation: Great job!
Coaching: You could fix this part.
Evaluation: Here’s where you stand.

We need all three, but

we should know the purpose of the feedback and discuss it; and
separate evaluation from coaching and appreciation (though all coaching includes a bit of evaluation)

Appreciation

Appreciation is recognition and thanks. It lets you know that your efforts are noticed, making you feel worthwhile. It taps into our primitive need for acceptance. It can be motivating; the anticipation of being appreciated can encourage a person to put in extra effort. It can also be very personal.

Coaching

Coaching is advice. It is aimed at helping you improve, learn, grow, or change, either to meet new challenges or to correct an existing problem. It helps you focus your time and energy where it matters, maintain strong relationships, and keep your efforts productive.

Evaluation

Evaluation is assessment. It accomplishes a number of things:

It tells you where you stand, how you rank, or how you are doing in relation to expectations and to other people. Report cards, performance reviews, medals, and even nicknames are all evaluations.
It aligns expectations between two people. Your performance review lets you know what your manager wants from you.
It clarifies consequences. Your rating determines your bonus.
It guides decision making. We decide whether or not to apply for the new position based on our understanding of how much our managers currently value us.

Radical candor

Core idea

Challenging others and encouraging them to challenge you helps build trusting relationships because it shows …

… that you care enough to point out both the things that aren’t going well and those that are,
… that you are willing to admit when you are wrong
… and that you are committed to fixing mistakes that you or others have made.

Care for people

You were born with a capacity to connect, to care personally.

However, somehow the training you got to “be professional” made you repress that. Well, stop repressing your innate ability to care personally (Scott 2019).

Give a damn!

Leadership

Scott (2019) advices leaders to be guided by two principles:

Caring personally
—care about your people on a personal level

AND

Challenging directly
—have conversations where you criticize or disagree with decisions your people made

As a leader, a significant aspect of your job is dealing with the personal and professional problems of the people that report to you or work with you in a less hierarchical setting. Kim Scott¹ even states that relationship maintenance should be a top priority when you move into a leadership position. She advises leaders in radical candid communication—straightforward and humanizing management, following the principles outlined below.

Caring personally

Caring personally means caring about people for more than just their jobs. As a leader, you need to care about them on a personal level. This includes learning more about them as a person—their interests, motivations, and ambitions—and learning more about their “whole self”—who they are outside of work and how their personal life might impact their needs at work.

When you show that you care personally about your employees, their trust in you grows. This has far-reaching implications: When your employees trust you and feel that you have their best interests at heart, they will be honest with you, more receptive to your feedback, and more confident in your decisions. Likewise, you will find that you can be more honest with them and have more confidence in their decisions.

We often fail to care personally. One reason is that work culture encourages us to stay professional and hide our feelings. Another one, less virtuous, is a tendency to become arrogant once you find yourself in a boss chair.

Challenging directly

Challenging directly means having difficult but necessary conversations with your employees, e.g., conversations where you criticize or disagree with decisions they’ve made. These conversations might feel too difficult, especially if you haven’t had a chance to build a caring, trusting relationship with the person in question. However, you have to let the principle of challenging directly drive you into these discussions for several important reasons.

First, these conversations offer the recipient of the feedback an opportunity to improve and avoid further problems and difficult conversations. Second, by being direct, you show that you care about the person and their improvement enough to put up with the inconvenience of a difficult conversation. This, of course, helps you build a trusting relationship with the person you are talking to.

If, on the other hand, you didn’t adhere to the principles of radical openness and avoided the conversation, your employee would continue to fall short - and he would probably know it. If you constantly reassure him that everything is “fine,” it shows that you are not being honest with him when necessary, and that destroys the potential for a trusting relationship.

Radical candor framework

Figure 5: Radical Candor framework (Scott 2019)

The framework is meant as a compass to guide individual conversations to a better place.

Being radical candid, you can and should

criticize—but only with the noble aim to help see mistakes and correct them. Praise from a place of radical candor is very specific to the recipient—when you are acting with radical candor, you should be attuned to how your praise is landing with your recipient and be prepared to change it if it’s not quite right.
praise—but make it contextualized and specific, so people know you did notice their achievements. Criticism from a place of radical candor is always sincere, and is given both when things go poorly and when things go well.

If you succeed in two of the dimensions, your guidance is Radical Candor. But what if you fail, in one of those or in both? To demonstrate that, Scott (2019) draws a coordinate system, where care personally is Y, and challenge directly is X. This way, she comes up with three other types of guidance, analyzing those through the prism of criticism and praise.

Offensive aggression

Offensive aggression happens when a boss treats employees without respect, belittling and publicly embarrassing them. Obnoxiously aggressive criticism can be effective but at a very high cost: it “sometimes gets great results short-term but leaves a trail of dead bodies in its wake in the long run.” Similarly, praising people aggressively (for example, under wrong circumstances) can make them feel underestimated or even ashamed instead of valued.

Manipulative insincerity

Manipulative insincere guidance is the result of a leader’s desire to be liked and take advantage of it. In this case, both criticism and praise are used to play on other people’s emotions. Even offensieve, aggressive guidance is better—at least, you know what to expect.

Destructive empathy

Destructive empathy occurs when bosses are trying to reduce tension but instead create even more pain, prioritizing friendly communication over improving performance. Ruinously empathetic bosses do not criticize at all – they do not insist on solving issues but rather let them go. Their praise is superficial and feels like flattery, not proved by any serious background.

Radical candor is different. You can criticize—but only with the noble aim to help see mistakes and correct them. You can praise—but make it contextualized and specific, so people know you did notice their achievements.

Group work

Refer back to Dirks and Ferrin (2001) and set aside approximately 20 minutes to complete the following tasks with your neighbour(s).

Summarise the direct effects (i.e. what main constructs is trust affecting) and the moderating effects (i.e. which relationships is trust affecting)
Explain what situational strength means
Find examples for work settings with strong and weak situational strength
Discuss how communication relates to situational strength

Giving feedback

Discussion

What is your advice for feedback givers?

Must haves

When offering feedback, do these three things:

Get clear in your own mind about what your feedback is and why is helpful. Then, share your intention to be helpful, and be precise on what is good or bad (and how to change it).

Principles

Scott (2019) offers some guiding principles to help you commit to radical candor and to best set up your employees for sincere feedback:

Focus #1: Humility—your goal is shared understanding
Focus #2: Helpfulness—you are doing this to help
Focus #3: Immediacy—in the moment, or shortly thereafter
Focus #4: In-person—not via text
Focus #5: Public praise, private criticism
Focus #6: Caring personally does not mean personalizing

Humility

Humility is important in both criticism and praise. Criticism without humility can make people feel defensive, and praise without humility can sound insincere or arrogant. There are three concepts on which humble leadership should be based:

Precise framing of your feedback: When you are giving feedback, frame it around three things—the situation, the person’s behavior, and the outcome. This helps you avoid arrogant generalizations about the person, both in criticism and praise.
An effective filter: After feedback that didn’t go well, write down what was actually said in the conversation and what you were thinking during the conversation—this helps you to figure out where the conversation went wrong.
Separation of reality and experience: Remember that your experience or subjective observation of a situation is not necessarily the objective truth—this will help you invite challenge as much as you hand it out. Give people the opportunity to tell you about their reality.

Helpfulness

Radically candid feedback does the heavy lifting by clarifying what the problem is, so your employee can find the solution more quickly—this is accomplished through three helpful actions:

Making your intentions clear. Criticism usually prompts defensive reactions. When you state that your intent is to help, not to be hurtful, your employees become more receptive to your feedback.
Being as precise as possible. It’s tempting to give vague criticism so you don’t have to dive into the discomfort of fully discussing a tough situation. Precision about what’s good or bad about someone’s behavior clearly demonstrates what they should do more or less of.
Outsourcing help when possible. Helping each of your team members personally with their issues would be impossibly time-consuming. Instead, look for external help to offer to your employees when appropriate and available.

Immediacy

Feedback is most effective when it comes immediately after a situation that deserves attention. It is not a good idea to save feedback for meetings for several reasons:

You run the risk of forgetting the very thing you wanted to talk about or the specifics of a situation.
You’ll often find that problems are too far in the past to be fixed, or that successes are too far in the past to build on.

Consistent feedback allows employees to understand and contextualize how their work is perceived or used. Without the context that comes with praise or criticism, employees feel that their work is not noticed or appreciated and become unmotivated and bored with their work.

Make sure your schedule allows for post-meeting feedback by stopping meetings 5 minutes before schedule, or by scheduling meetings a minimum of 15 minutes apart. Good feedback doesn’t need to take a long time—the best feedback is consistent and specific.

In-Person

It’s best to deliver your feedback in person—you can see how your feedback is being received by theother person, and you avoid misunderstandings that can come from the nuances of written communication.

Public praise, private criticism

As a general rule of thumb, you should always default to giving praise in public and criticism in private.

Public praise tends to be more meaningful for the recipient and demonstrates what your team should do more of.
Public criticism tends to trigger defensiveness.

Caring personally does not mean personalizing

When giving criticism, make sure that you are criticizing the problem or the idea, rather than the person. Attributing a character trait to someone as an explanation for their behavior doesn’t get to the root of the problem.

If your criticism starts with “you are,” rethink it.

Getting to the core

Context — What is the specific situation?

Observation — What was said or done?

Result — What is the most meaningful consequence to you and to them?

next steps — What are the expected next steps?

How to give feedback

Consider the logistics, concentrate on the message, manage emotions, practice and repeat.

How to set-up feedback discussions depends on so many things, e.g., the issue you are addressing and the relationship to another. However, following things should be considered any way (’HBR’ 2016):

Consider the logistics when you prepare for feedback discussions. It is easy to take our surroundings for granted, but they have a big impact on any interaction. Paying attention to details like these will help make conversations more productive.
- Timing: Choose a time when you and the other person will both at your best, e.g., at the beginning of the day.
- Duration: Think about how much time a given feedback conversation is likely to take if it goes well—and if it goes poorly.
- Physical location: Choose a location that suits the needs of the conversation, ensures sufficient privacy, and minimizes interruptions and distractions.
- Proximity: Think about the optimal proxiomity between you and the other person at that moment (e.g., authority vs. strong connection)
Concentrate on the message, you want to convey. Focus on facts, not assumptions. I recommend to consider the CORe method. Either way, take enough time to prepare your message.
Manage emotions: Express just enough emotion to engage the other person but not so much that you provoke a hostile ore defensive reaction, shut down the conversation, or damage the relationship.
Practice and repeat: As with any skill you’re trying to master, experiment in low-risk situations before jumping into a high-stakes feedback conversation.

Pitfalls of positive feedback

People don’t trust
Invest in the relationship, don’t use positive feedback to soften the blow.

People take offense
Don’t use feedback to create a “social debt”, i.e., to get what you want.

We praise the wrong
Praise effort, not ability.

Getting feedback

Discussion

What is your advice for feedback receivers?

Triggers to dismiss feedback

Truth triggers
—emotional responses to feedback because we feel it is wrong, unhelpful, or unfair.

Relationship triggers
—emotional responses to the feedback giver that override the content of the feedback.

Identity triggers
—emotional responses to feedback that threatens our sense of who we are.

Truth triggers

Feedback is delivered in vague labels, and we are prone to wrong spotting (Stone and Heen 2014). Thus …

… reflect where the data and interpretations are coming from and going to;
ask what is different about the data and our interpretations;
and ask what is right about the feedback to find out what is legitimate.

Also remember to see yourselve and your blind spots, we need help from others.

When our truth trigger is activated, we reject the content of the feedback and label it as wrong, unhelpful, or unfair. To counteract this instinct, you should fully examine the feedback so that you can properly decipher the “truth” of the feedback.

Feedback usually has two parts: a “looking back” part (“This is what I noticed”) and a “looking forward” part (“This is what you should do”). The “looking back” part consists of observations and interpretations of those observations—how a person feels about them. The forward-looking part of the feedback is about next steps: advice, consequences, and expectations.

To find common ground, recognize that different people have different “truths.” Your views of another person are subjective, your interpretations are not necessarily more correct than other people’s, and your assessment of how to fix problems may vary.

Controlling the truth triggers

Understanding feedback requires examining not only the other person’s thoughts and feelings, but also your own. There are two key strategies: finding your own blind spots and looking for differences rather than “wrongs.”

A “blind spot” is something that we ignore or give little importance to, but that other people see clearly. When other people give us feedback on a trait we are blind to, we dismiss it as untrue. Recognizing our blind spots can prevent this from happening. There are two main categories of blind spots:

Behavioral patterns: a person often engages in behavioral patterns that they themselves are not aware of, but that others around them clearly see.
Your “tells”: your face, voice, and other nonverbal behaviors can reveal your true thoughts and emotions.

These are amplified by:

Emotional bias: we discount our emotions, while others count them double.
Attribution: we attribute our failure to the situation, while others attribute it to the character.
Impact-intent gap: we judge ourselves by our intentions, while others judge us by our impact on them.

Look for differences and rights, not wrongs

Instead of wondering why the feedback is wrong, acknowledge that you and the other person see things differently and try to figure out why. When you master difference-spotting in this way, you will be able to better understand the other person’s views and move from “No, that is wrong” to “Tell me more” (Stone and Heen 2014).

Finally, ask yourself what is right about the other person’s feedback. Figure out what is meaningful about the feedback, what might be worth trying, and how you can make sense of it that might be helpful (Stone and Heen 2014).

Relationship triggers

Sometimes we react to feedback not because of the content of the feedback itself, but because of who gave it to us: It becomes about the who rather than the what.

To manage switch tracking, spot the two topics and discuss them separately. Also, try to see the whole system.

We can manage these relationship triggers by disentangling our reaction to the feedback from our reaction to the person giving it. There are two primary relationship triggers (Stone and Heen 2014):

Our opinion of them: When receiving feedback, we are often quick to look for something that disqualifies the person from giving it (skill or judgment; credibility; and trustworthiness of the giver)
Their treatment of us: Our perception of how the other person treats us often determines whether or not we accept or ignore their feedback.

Switchtracking

Often when we are relationship-triggered, we “switchtrack”: We respond to a piece of feedback with a reciprocal piece of feedback that is usually aimed at the person raising the issue rather than the issue itself. The conversation splits and starts following two entirely different tracks. For example, if your roommate tells you she’s tired of you not cleaning up the kitchen, and you respond, “Why are you always so critical of me?”, you have just switchtracked the conversation. When we don’t realize we are dealing with two separate topics, we end up talking over one another instead of resolving problems (Stone and Heen 2014).

Controlling relationship triggers

Control your relationship triggers by properly managing switchtracking and then stepping back to see the whole system. The goal in controlling a relationship trigger is to recognize when you have two topics on the table, and address each properly.

Spot the two topics: Be alert for conversations where one person raises an issue and the second person responds with a statement or question that focuses on the first person herself, instead of the content of the issue.
Discuss the two topics: Give each topic its own track by acknowledging that you are now talking about two different things. Then, decide with the other person which topic to discuss first.
Watch for additional triggers: Just because you have identified two separate topics doesn’t mean you are out of the woods. Be alert for ambiguities that might hint at deeper issues lurking below, and address them explicitly.

Sometimes, we are too close to a situation to see it clearly. Viewing your conflict as part of a system can help you get a fuller understanding of how and why you might be clashing with someone else. Using a systems-focused lens will allow you to take control of the influences around you instead of being controlled by them.

Identity triggers

Your identity is the story you tell yourself about yourself:
what you are good at, what you stand for, what you are like.

When feedback challenges this story, your sense of identity can start to collapse, and you have run into an identity trigger.

Counter your emotional reactions and shift from a fixed to a growth mindset.

How well we tell our identity story affects how we take in and use feedback (Stone and Heen 2014).

Controlling identity triggers

Before you can decide what you think of the feedback, counter your emotional reactions thoughtfully. Stone and Heen (2014) proposes to …

… be prepared, be mindful: be aware of your reactions in the moment—slow down when you feel yourself getting emotional;
separate your emotions from the story: name your feelings explicitly so that you can judge how they are affecting your interpretation of the feedback;
contain the story: change your point of view, imagine you are an observer of your own situation, or imagine how you’ll see it five years from now. Try to see the humor in it that you’ll probably see one day in the future; and to
accept the limits of your control: accept the fact that you can’t control how others feel about you. If you still can’t get a handle on your emotional reactions to feedback despite your best efforts, seek help from friends, family, or professionals.

Adopting a growth mindset

A person with a growth mindset sees her traits as evolving.

She views feedback as commentary on her actions rather than her identity (“Last week I nailed my sales pitch; this week I dropped the ball”)
She sees setbacks as opportunities for learning. A person with a fixed mindset sees her abilities as stable and finished
She views feedback not as a commentary on her person (“Last week I was great, this week I’m a failure”)
She sees setbacks not as permanent failures.

To adopt a growth mindset, consider following guidelines as proposed by Stone and Heen (2014):

Listen for coaching rather than evaluation: Coaching doesn’t hint at who you are; it relates to what you do, so it’s easier to take.
Separate judgment from evaluation: Focus on the assessment and consequences piece of an evaluation you receive; don’t fixate on how you think this reflects on you in the other person’s eyes.
Give yourself a “shadow score”: Rate yourself on how well you handle the evaluation from the other person. Recognizing when you handle bad feedback well will help you bounce back from it sooner.

Anatomy of a feedback conversation

The open
—get aligned with the other person

The body
—discuss the content of the feedback

The close
—clarify commitments, expectations, and follow-up

Now that you understand your triggers and how to control them, we’ll explore how to get the most out of a feedback conversation. Broadly speaking, feedback conversations have three parts making up an overall arc (Stone and Heen 2014)

The open: where you get aligned with the other person
The body: where you discuss the content of the feedback
The close: where you clarify commitments, expectations, and follow-up

The open

Get on the same page as your feedback-giver by asking yourself some questions:

What kind of feedback is this? Evaluation, coaching, or appreciation?
What is the giver’s intent?
Who has the final word? When your manager gives you a suggestion, is it just that—a suggestion? Or is it a requirement?
Is this feedback negotiable? Know up front if an evaluation is final or if there is something you can do to change it.

The body

This is the content part of the talk. Make sure to hit each of these points in this section:

Listen: really pay attention to your feedback-giver and ask focused questions to let her know you’re listening. Also listen to your own internal voice and watch for triggers.
Clarify: ask the other person to clarify her advice or to specify the consequences and her expectations.
Add your own input: complete the picture she’s painting by explaining your observations, interpretations, and feelings. Referee your conversation: Try to diagnose and describe communication problems as they come up so that you can propose solutions in real time.

The close

When wrapping up your discussion, address:

Action plan: Who is going to do what specifically when you each leave the meeting?
Benchmarks: How will progress be measured?
Consequences: What happens if the benchmarks are not met?
Procedure: How are you going to approach this topic again?
Strategies: If you are not coming up with solutions that directly solve your conflict, what strategies will you each adopt to accommodate the other successfully?

Incorporating feedback

Focus on one thing, look for options, test with small experiments, get properly motivated, and make the other feel valued.

Five techniques that can help you find specific ways to incorporate feedback into your life:

Focus on one thing: Sometimes feedback has several strands and encompasses a wide area. Focus on just one specific aspect of it first.
Look for options: Make sure you understand the other person’s true concerns and determine what your options are for addressing them.
Test with small experiments: Try out advice on a small scale before committing to a larger change.
Get properly motivated: Increase the benefits of positive changes by adding rewards. Increase the costs of not changing by adding more consequences. Keep in mind that when making changes, things will get harder before they get easier.
Make the other person feel valued: Be open to her advice and she will likely later be open to your advice.

A radical candid workplace

Set an example

To built trust, you should first ask for radically candid guidance—seeing you react well to criticism will naturally build your team’s trust and their respect.

Scott (2019) proposes following steps to take when asking a team for criticism.

Step #1: Request public criticism
—foster trust and psychological safety
Step #2: Kick things off with a question
—what can I … ?
Step #3: Push through discomfort to get answers
—wait a few seconds
Step #4: Manage your response
—listen with the intent to understand, don’t get defensive
Step #5: Demonstrate your gratitude
—reward the candor by getting it and working to address it

Request public criticism

As a leader, you need to be willing to be publicly criticized to

demonstrate to your team that there’s value in criticism, and that its intent is to make everyone better at their jobs— not to be hurtful;
establish you as a strong leader who isn’t afraid to make mistakes and is open to learning;
to get everyone’s feedback as efficiently a spossible; and
to save time by hearing each criticism once, instead of over and over again across multiple meetings.

Kick things off with a question

Asking questions can provide a jumping-off point for coming up with issues that need addressing, and helps cut through the discomfort of offering criticism, e.g.

How can I better support you?
What is something I’m doing that you find frustrating?

Keep a close eye on the balance of praise and criticism you are receiving in public feedback sessions.

Push through discomfort to get answers

Hesitation and silence don’t indicate an absence of issues—they indicate that you’llhave to keep pushing to get sincere feedback from your employees. There are several ways to accomplish this:

Create silence: count to six after asking for criticism. Your employee may be more uncomfortable with silence than with criticizing you, and will say what’s on their mind to fill the space.
Keep asking: Keep insisting that they come up with something.
Notice body language: If someone says they have no criticism, but their body language clearly says otherwise, bring it to their attention.

Manage your response

When someone offers you criticism, it’s crucial that you respond in a way that shows that their criticism iswelcome and well-received—this is where trust is built.

Don’t tell them how their criticism is wrong or not radically candid.
Be careful not to become angry or defensive in response to what they are saying.
Listen with the intent to clarify and fullyunderstand the criticism.
Repeat what’s been said and checking that your interpretation is correct.

Demonstrate your gratitude

Showing your gratitude for criticism encourages people to keep giving it. The best way to show gratitude for criticism is responding with demonstrated change.

If it’s a change that can be done right away, do so.
If it’s a change that can’t be accomplished right away, make a perceptible effort toward the change

It’s important to express gratitude for criticism even when you think it’s unfair, or don’t agree. Arguing with or dismissing criticism you disagree with will only serve to undermine the trust you are trying to build, so instead focus on ways to work through it.

Steps you should take, if you do not agree:

Find something in the criticism that you can agree with
Make sure you fully understand what the other person is expressing
Tell them you’d like to think about it and get back to them.
In your follow-up, explain clearly why you disagree, or why making a change won’t be possible.

Once you get the ball rolling and your employees are gaining confidence in giving you guidance, you need to start giving them guidance in return.

Additional must haves

Nurture relationships
Make the other person feel “known”, respond to even small bids for attention

Impede gossiping
Never allow an employee to talk about one of their colleagues while they are not present

Appreciate, regularly
Create valuable learning opportunities by motivating team members to share their experiences.

Making sure your team learns how to effectively give guidance to one another is essential to building a radically candid workplace.

Conflict resolution: Commit your team members to challenging directly and caring personally by never allowing an employee to talk about one of their colleagues while they are not present.
Public recognition of accomplishments and mistakes: Create valuable learning opportunities by asking team members to get comfortable sharing their experiences.

A simple way to achieve public recognition is to award two prizes—such as stuffed animals or trophies—at weekly staff meetings. Any employee can nominate another for the achievement award by naming an accomplishment or outstanding work they have seen from their colleague during the week. Any employee can nominate themselves for the mistake award by stating a mistake or failure they have seen during the week.

Towards a conclusion

Challenges

You want to learn how to give (and receive) more helpful feedback? Here are three challenges that might help you along the way.

Level 1: Start a feedback diary. Note situations where you had to give (and/or received) feedback. Write down what was said. Analyse the intention and the CORe of the feedback. Was it radically candid? What has it triggered in the receiver? How could the feedback be improved?
Level 2: Give and ask for feedback, multiple times. Practice by applying the knowlege teached here and/or outlined in the radical candid workbook. Reflect on how the techniques have improved your feedback conversations and relationships (including trust).
Level 3: Spread the word. Teach your team at work, a group of friends or your family about the radical candor framework (e.g., using the one-pager and the workbook). Introduce Whoops-a-Daisy & the Killer Whale and practice it at least once a week over the upcoming weeks (remember the CORE-model). Reflect on how the feedback culture and your relationships have changed.

Reading list

For digging deeper, I recommend reading the articles of the reading exercise (again) plus following articles/books:

Feedback-seeking: Ashford (1986), Ashford, Blatt, and VandeWalle (2003), Gong et al. (2017), Wu, Parker, and De Jong (2014), Crommelinck and Anseel (2013)
Feedback-seeking and proactivity at work: Grant and Ashford (2008)
Formative feedback: Shute (2008)
Feedback giving and receiving: Stone and Heen (2014)
Destructive criticism: Baron (1988), Raver et al. (2012)
Fundamental attribution error: Tetlock (1985)
Actor-observer asymmetry: Malle (2006)
Confirmation bias: Nickerson (1998)

Q&A

Literature

Ashford, Susan J. 1986. “Feedback-Seeking in Individual Adaptation: A Resource Perspective.” Academy of Management Journal 29 (3): 465–87.

Ashford, Susan J, Ruth Blatt, and Don VandeWalle. 2003. “Reflections on the Looking Glass: A Review of Research on Feedback-Seeking Behavior in Organizations.” Journal of Management 29 (6): 773–99.

Baron, Robert A. 1988. “Negative Effects of Destructive Criticism: Impact on Conflict, Self-Efficacy, and Task Performance.” Journal of Applied Psychology 73 (2): 199.

Crommelinck, Michiel, and Frederik Anseel. 2013. “Understanding and Encouraging Feedback-Seeking Behaviour: A Literature Review.” Medical Education 47 (3): 232–41.

Dirks, Kurt T, and Donald L Ferrin. 2001. “The Role of Trust in Organizational Settings.” Organization Science 12 (4): 450–67.

Gong, Yaping, Mo Wang, Jia-Chi Huang, and Siu Yin Cheung. 2017. “Toward a Goal Orientation–Based Feedback-Seeking Typology: Implications for Employee Performance Outcomes.” Journal of Management 43 (4): 1234–60.

Grant, Adam M, and Susan J Ashford. 2008. “The Dynamics of Proactivity at Work.” Research in Organizational Behavior 28: 3–34.

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Footnotes

A leader of high-profile teams in the Silicon Valley at Google, Apple and Twitter.