Feedback Loops
In defence of telling people they’re good at their jobs
Years ago, I read a book called Radical Candor, written by a woman called Kim Scott whose CV includes stints at Silicon Valley mainstays Apple and Google. In its opening chapter, she describes a situation in which she let an employee down. There was a person in her team that wasn’t doing their job particularly well and, for the kind of reasons that will be familiar to many of us (it was never the right time to give feedback, she thought he’d get better on his own etc), she never really told him this clearly and honestly. It got to a stage where this person’s underperformance was so bad, she had no choice but to fire him. The book leads with this story to emphasise the point that, even though giving difficult feedback on someone’s work can feel unkind or uncomfortable, in reality we are doing them a disservice by not doing so, because we are essentially allowing them to fail.
The book’s pretty American in its style, and the context that Kim Scott worked in is about a million miles away from mine, but some of the concepts stuck with me - in particular, the idea that you let your team down by not giving them the feedback that they need in order to improve. Having a candid conversation when something hasn’t gone well is hard for many people (me included), and I worried that I wasn’t setting up a workplace culture that was conducive to these types of difficult conversations and, therefore, was unintentionally stopping my colleagues from shining as brightly as they could.
A famous example of what might be described as a radical feedback culture is Bridgewater Associates, an investment management firm founded by a chap called Ray Dalio. Bridgewater pops up as an example in lots of articles and books about feedback because of their very specific approach, which they called ‘radical transparency’. Dalio set an expectation that everyone should be giving feedback to everyone else (including him) all the time - there are examples of employees sending him emails telling him he was rubbish at his job that day, and there are systems where teams can give each other real-time ratings on how much they’re listening or contributing to a discussion.
Part of me thinks this is impressive and part of me thinks this sounds both macho and insane. But the argument goes that this is the culture that makes Bridgewater a high performing organisation. Is this what we should all be aiming for?
A couple of weeks ago, I was listening to one of my favourite leadership / work podcasts, Fixable, and came across this episode on giving better feedback. I was slightly braced for another tranche of tips from the same school of thought as Kim Scott’s and Ray Dalio’s - but what I got was quite a different take. The hosts, Anne and Frances, start by talking about how important it is to give positive feedback - that your baseline is noticing and articulating whenever someone in your team is doing something great and calling attention to it, ideally in front of other team members so they also get to see and understand the positive traits or achievements that you want to encourage. When it comes to constructive feedback, they spend a lot of time talking about how to set up the circumstances where this feedback stands the best chance of being fully received - for instance, getting the time and place right, ensuring that no other colleagues are present. They also cite a striking statistic - the optimum ratio of positive to constructive feedback for employee performance is five to one. So for every one piece of constructive feedback you want to give, you should be giving five pieces of positive feedback to that same person.
This, in a funny way, is a different version of the Bridgewater Associates culture of feedback - you, as the manager or leader, are setting up an environment where positive stuff gets attributed and called out all the time. You’re making it really clear the kinds of behaviours and approaches you value, you’re shining a light on excellence when you see it and you’re demonstrating that you will give (public) credit where credit is due. This is your baseline feedback culture, and, by investing in those positive comments, you are building a base upon which, should you need to, you will be able to have the (hopefully) less frequent constructive feedback conversation when you need to address something that isn’t going so well.
On the podcast, one of the hosts says that, if she were only allowed to give one type of feedback (positive or constructive) it would be positive, every time. This really jumped out at me because it highlights the misinterpretation of the word ‘feedback’ when it comes to work. When we talk about ‘giving feedback’ I immediately imagine conveying something negative. But feedback is actually a much more neutral word than this - it’s how you, as a leader, reflect back what you’re seeing in all its colours. A radical feedback culture, through this lens, isn’t about rankings or ratings - it’s about creating an environment where people feel seen, where they know that the energy they are putting in is being actively noticed and appreciated, and that, if things don’t go so well, you’ll notice that too and help them to put it right.
You might be reading the above and thinking: great! I love giving positive feedback - I’m absolutely nailing it! But wait: are you? You know that team member that you love working with and think is brilliant and are constantly praying doesn’t get another job and leave you? Are you actually telling them this? You know when you sit in a meeting with a colleague and they make a really brilliant point that changes the direction of the conversation? Did you congratulate them on it afterwards? If we really stopped and thought about it - how much of this kind of feedback are we actually giving on a typical day?
If I can leave you with one action point today, it’s to shout out someone in your team who does something fab, no matter how small or how large. By turning our gaze outwards and investing the time and energy to highlight, on a regular basis, when someone’s done something well, we build a baseline of trust that sets us up for the more uncomfortable task of giving constructive feedback when someone hasn’t hit the standard that we expect. So do your future self a favour and start telling your brilliant team just how brilliant they are.