Delivering Criticism So It’s Heard

In this New York Times article, Alina Tugend explores different ways people give feedback. A common approach is to start with a compliment, then point out a problem, and end on a positive note – the praise sandwich. “It turns out it’s not that simple,” says Tugend. “Those who have studied the issue have found that negative feedback isn’t always bad and positive feedback isn’t always good. Too often, they say, we forget the purpose of feedback – it’s not to make people feel better, it’s to help them do better.” Some specifics:

• When people are experts on a subject, they’re more open to critical feedback, whereas novices need encouragement to boost their confidence. 

• General comments are unhelpful. For example, a karate teacher saying performance is “really good” or “really bad” adds very little, whereas specific observations are instructive. “We need to separate the emotional side from the technical points,” says Tim Hartford, author of Adapt: Why Success Always Starts with Failure. 

• “People pleasers” tend to shy away from giving critical feedback because they don’t want to be the bad guy. They bury the criticism and aren’t specific, and many recipients of these “balanced” messages hear only the positive and think they are doing great.

• One way around this is “plussing” – building on and improving ideas without using judgmental language by using words like “and” and “what if” rather than “but.” In the film company Pixar, which has adopted this technique, a director might say to an animator, “I like Woody’s eyes, and what if his eyes rolled left?”

• Brain scans show that judgmental language and being told you have to do something in a certain way lead to self-censoring. 

• “That’s the trick then,” concludes Tugend: “making negative feedback precise and timely enough so that it’s helpful but neutral enough so that it’s not perceived as harshly critical. That’s particularly difficult in a culture like ours, where anything short of effusive praise can be viewed as an affront.” Basically, people want to know how to improve and they deserve to know how.

“You’ve Been Doing a Fantastic Job. Just One Thing…” by Alina Tugend in The New York Times, April 6, 2013 (p. B5), http://nyti.ms/ZGE8FX 

From the Marshall Memo #485