Dealing with Conflict #4: Suck Less at Giving Feedback

What's up, everyone. This is Alex Lieberman, co-founder and Executive Chairman of Morning Brew. Welcome back to Founder’s Journal, my personal audio diary, where I give you, the business builder, the tools you need to think better in order to build better, whether that's building a business, a team, or a new product. This week on Founder’s Journal, we're doing things a little differently. We are dropping a mini series about Dealing with Conflict. We're talking about everything from respectfully disagreeing with your manager to mediating conflict and navigating competition. This week's episodes can serve as a guide to handling uncomfortable situations in a corporate setting and beyond. That means instead of just one episode, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, this week, we're giving you two: a new show that you won't want to miss plus a classic episode you maybe haven't heard before. If you haven't listened to today's classic episode, go back and make sure to check it out. Now for the new episode, I am giving you six rules for sucking less at giving feedback. Let's hop into it.

6 Rules for sucking less at giving feedback

 It's just the truth. Most of us suck at giving feedback. It is not comfortable, but it is necessary to grow yourself, to grow your company, and to grow the people that you're giving feedback to. And all of these rules that I'm about to give you, these have all been things that I have practiced myself and continue to practice because I was the perennial people pleaser, especially at the start of my career where I was horrible at giving feedback, because I didn't want to hurt people's feelings. So let's hop into the rules. 

#1: Act with radical candor

Rule number one: Act with radical candor. Radical candor is the combination of caring deeply about the person that you're giving feedback to while also challenging them directly. And radical candor, if you haven't listened to the past Founder’s Journal on the topic, first of all, you should do that. We'll put it in the show notes. But the whole idea it was created by Kim Scott, who was an executive at Google. She's a CEO coach for executives at Qualtrics and Twitter. And she developed this framework for thinking about how do you build culture and how do you give people feedback? And so what you can imagine is the Y axis of a graph is caring deeply about someone. high on the Y axis is caring a lot low on the Y axis is not caring at all about someone. Then on the X axis, you have challenging directly. All the way to the right is challenging someone directly, all the way to the left is not. All that to say that the top right quadrant of that graph is where you challenge directly and you care deeply. This is known as radical candor, and it is the optimal way to operate a business, but it is not easy. It is the most important thing to set the stage for giving or receiving successful feedback. And the reason this is so important is with radical candor, you have created an environment where the person you're giving feedback to knows you genuinely care about them, which then gives you the permission to challenge them directly without coming off as an asshole. And I absolutely love Kim Scott's story about getting feedback from Sheryl Sandberg, which demonstrated the perfect operation of radical candor. The long story short is that Kim Scott was running AdSense at Google. She was making a presentation to literally the board of directors. She got Eric Schmidt's attention when he was the CEO of the business, because she had shared how well AdSense was doing. Kim describes it as he literally almost flew off his chair, because AdSense was such a fast growing business. He asked what were more resources they could put into it. And so the presentation ended and Kim was feeling great. She was like, I just basically convinced the CEO of the company that I'm crushing it. And our division is crushing it. And what ended up happening was Sheryl Sandberg, who is Kim's boss at the time, walked Kim to her office and was giving her some praise about things that went well in the presentation. And then went on to say to Kim, that when she says the word “um” in her presentations, which she says a lot, she comes off as stupid. And to make the story short, Kim did not feel like Sheryl was being an asshole. She didn't dislike Sheryl for this for a few reasons. One is because Sheryl was really good at giving Kim praise, but Kim also knew that Sheryl really, really cared about Kim, not just as a professional, but as a person. And Kim tells a story about when her dad was ill with terminal cancer, Sheryl did everything possible to make him feel comfortable in her life, not just at work. And so you have to care deeply in order to have the permission to challenge directly.

#2: Praise genuinely as often as possible

Second rule for getting good at giving feedback: Praise genuinely, as often as possible. It's simple. Praise is a more effective form of reinforcing behavior than criticism. And it sounds funny, but this is literally what I was taught when my fiancée and I got our dog, Rambo. We were told that reinforcing his good behaviors was far more effective than us telling him no, or that he did something bad. And the reason for that with people, I guess, and for dogs, is it guides people in the right direction. And it also encourages them to keep improving. And prais is so much more effective to the point where experts have said you need to have a praise-to-criticism ratio of three-to-one, five-to-one, or sometimes seven-to-one, but worse than not giving praise is giving insincere praise. So there's this concept called the compliment sandwich, I don't know if you've heard of it. But basically the compliment sandwich, the way that it goes, is you give someone a compliment. Then you deliver feedback and then you give them another compliment. I do not believe in them. And there was a reason that Ben Horowitz, the founder of Andreessen Horowitz calls them shit sandwiches, not compliment sandwiches. One of two things happens when you give a shit sandwich. Either the person sees through your bullshit and knows you're not being sincere because they clearly see you just wanted to say those things to be able to deliver kind of the heart advice to the hard feedback or the person doesn't realize you're BSing them and they end up focusing on the compliments on either side of the sandwich, rather than the feedback in the middle, which was the actual thing that you wanted them to internalize and get better at. 

#3: Know the context of the relationship

Rule number three: Know the context of the relationship. Steve Jobs used to tell employees, and I quote, your work is shit. He said this to many employees. Sheryl Sandberg told Kim Scott she sounded stupid when she said. Teams in Israel will generally be far more blunt and direct than teams in Japan. You must know the context of the relationship of the person you're giving feedback to in order to understand whether you need to flex more on challenging directly or caring deeply when operating with radical candor. 

#4: Receive feedback well before you dish it well

Next up, rule number four for giving feedback well: Receive it well before you dish it well. The best way to give feedback is to show what it looks like to receive feedback really well. It creates a sense of trust that you're practicing what you preach and it gives people a model for what it looks like within a company to give feedback often and how specifically to give feedback the right way. So if you're wondering, okay, how do I receive feedback well? Here are a few methods for doing it. First method, something that Michelle Peluso, the CEO of Gilt Groupe practices is this idea of criticizing in public for leaders. So normally people will say praise publicly, criticize privately. But what Michelle basically says is if you are a leader being criticized in public is actually an amazing tool for growth and for showing what dishing out feedback looks like. So Michelle Peluso will start 360 degree reviews by sharing with her team, what she's doing well and what she's not doing well and literally emailing the whole company for help on specific things that she's not good at. By criticizing publicly, you show your team that you genuinely want the criticism. Second thing you can do: Have a go-to question that forces someone to give you feedback. Majority of the time, when you ask someone for feedback, especially someone that is a direct report, they are not going to give that feedback to you. It's not a comfortable environment. There's no upside to them giving feedback. And so the way that Fred Kofman, who is the author of Conscious Business, asks it, is he says a very specific question to force feedback. He says, what could I do or stop doing that would make it easier to work with me? And by avoiding a yes or no question, people have a way harder time of copping out of giving you feedback. Now, still, some of the time, even if you ask that question, what can I do or not do in order to make life easier? Some people still won't answer it. And so this leads to the third technique, which is embracing the discomfort and keep fighting for your feedback. What will happen in most conversations is you'll be talking to your direct report. You'll say, what feedback can you give me to get better? And the direct report will say, no, everything you're doing is great. I don't have any feedback. And then the conversation will be over because you won't push them. That is the biggest mistake you can make. You need to fight for the feedback, even when it gets really uncomfortable and painful, even when there's awkward silence, because it shows what a true feedback conversation looks like for other people in your company to practice.

#5: Be humble

This leads to rule number five of getting good at feedback. Be humble. Think about it this way. Feedback conversations are naturally a very emotionally provoking conversation. People's guards are up when you give feedback and being humble breaks down the resistance and the walls that will inevitably be put up when you have these conversations. And there's a great framework that's shared in Kim Scott's book, Radical Candor, to basically be humble, but have very direct feedback conversations. And the way it goes is: situation, behavior, impact. It was developed by the Center for Creative Leadership, and it ensures you’re staying humble in your conversations. Basically the way that you guide any feedback conversation is you start by describing the situation you saw, then you share what the person did, and then finally you offer up the impact you observed from what the person did. And by the way, this applies to giving praise also, not just giving critical feedback and this framework of situation, behavior, impact, does two things. First, it separates what you know to be fact from what you know to be your opinion. And the reason that is so important is it makes it clear to the person you don't believe you're this all-knowing person that has all the right answers. You are sharing sometimes when you have a story, but you don't know if that story is true. The second thing this framework does is it forces you to challenge actions and ideas, not the person's attributes. And obviously if it comes off as you challenging the person and their character, it can be incredibly provoking for the person you give feedback to and they likely won't receive it well. 

#6: Be helpful

And rule number six for sucking less at giving feedback, be helpful. The more that you can actually help someone with the feedback that you're giving, the less it comes off as empty judgment and the more it shows that you genuinely care about helping the person grow. So three things you can do to be more helpful: Be specific, be actionable, and be frequent. How can you be specific? You use the situation, behavior, impact framework that I just shared to be as specific as possible when you're giving feedback. So for example, me saying to a direct report, hey, you sounded like an idiot on the phone with our client. That is horrible feedback. Instead, if you say, hey, on the phone with our client, when you were stating things as fact, the tone of your voice sounded like you were asking a question. And because it sounded like you were asking a question, it came off as if you weren't prepared. That second description provides so much more to work with between me and, in this situation, say, my direct report. Next, be actionable. Once you've diagnosed where there's a potential problem, offer the person a potential solution and make sure that you are clear that you don't think your solution is necessarily right, but you think it could be a viable option. And then finally, be frequent. Frequency of feedback conversations is helpful because it sets a standard for the type of culture that you want to encourage. It shortens the time from the action that the person had, say, the meeting that they were in that they didn't perform at their best to the feedback that you're giving, so everyone's memory of the situation is fresh in their minds. And finally frequent feedback conversations, you know, these two-minute, real-time conversations after a meeting or whatever the thing is happens, it allows you to prevent these really intense bubbled up conversations happening where you have a monthly conversation, it's 45 minutes long, you have a laundry list of feedback you want to give, and the person you're giving feedback to feels like they're just getting piled on with criticism. 

Recap

And so those are my six rules for sucking less at giving feedback. You know, you literally have to spend your whole career giving and receiving feedback, so why not use this episode and invest some time to get better at it? So to recap, first act with radical candor, care deeply and challenge directly; second, praise genuinely as often as possible. Compliment sandwiches are really shit sandwiches. So make sure when you praise it is sincere. Third, know the context of the relationship. There was a reason that Steve Jobs could say your work was shitty or Shery Sandberg could say you sounded stupid. It is all about the context. Fourth, receive feedback well before you dish it well. Fifth, be humble when you give feedback, since it is such an emotionally provoking experience for the person receiving it. And sixth, be helpful, be specific, and be actionable. Finally, if you enjoyed this episode, please share it with co-workers, co-founders, or co-friends that would benefit from all the rules for giving feedback well. It will benefit them for the rest of their careers. Just copy the link and share it in iMmessage or SMS if god forbid, you're an Android person, no judgment, or your company’s Slack or Teams channels. Thanks again for listening, and I'll catch you next episode.