Be Bulletproof

by James Brooke

  So, if feedback is so essential to performance, why are we so lousy at it? Put it this way: the thermostat has no need to preserve self-esteem and rapport. The information does not cause hurt to feelings or awkward and uncomfortable moments. The problem with humans is that they come with a fully integrated complex repertoire of emotions. These help us to navigate social situations but they also bring a range of complications.

  As Harry Levinson argues in his classic Harvard Business Review article, ‘Management by Whose Objectives?’, people simply do not like to evaluate another human being like a piece of machinery. But the underpinning assumption of most organisations is that they readily do so.

  Most corporations assume that line managers ‘performance-manage’ their people. By this we mean an active process of communicating with their people to help to draw out the best performance. We sought to test the extent to which this is genuinely happening by asking for the perceptions of employees.

  Threshold researchers asked the views of a representative random sample of 1,000 employees across the United Kingdom, all of whom work in corporations and have a line manager53 (while we focused on the UK, we hypothesise that the findings would be broadly similar in other developed countries; after all, we are dealing with human universals here).

  The results expose the myth that performance management is happening. Consider this:

  • Less than half of employees (44%) feel that they receive helpful feedback from their line manager frequently enough

  • Scarcely more than half (51%) feel that their line manager is good at giving straight, honest feedback

  • Considerably less than half (41%) feel that their line manger gives performance feedback that is detailed and specific enough

  • And again, considerably less than half (44%) feel that they receive regular enough feedback from their line manager that helps them to do their job better

  • It also appears that most employees do not feel that underperformance is effectively tackled in their organisation. Only 30% of employees agree with the statement: Where I work, underperformance is discussed openly and honestly

  • It would appear that there is a lack of ‘straight-talk’ at work. When asked whether, in their workplace, managers are good at giving straight-talking feedback, scarcely one third agreed (31%)

  The findings may be eye-opening for all of those corporations who assume that their line managers actively manage performance, but a crucial question is, of course, whether or not these findings really matter to the bottom line. The short answer is yes.

  If given honest feedback, are employees more likely to commit additional discretionary effort to their work? The research shows that there is a clear correlation between the parameters above and discretionary effort. We define the ‘high-discretionary-effort group’ as those who answer ‘strongly agree’ to the question: Do you feel motivated to put exceptional effort into your job, and do more than what’s asked of you?

  In contrast to the population as a whole, the high-discretionary-effort group are considerably more likely to receive frequent, honest, straight-talking feedback from their boss. In short, straight-talking feedback makes a difference to performance. If you are going to be a leader, you will need to give feedback.

  Give yourself permission to be straight and direct

  Most managers are ineffective at giving feedback, but the problem is compounded by another factor: most people tend to overrate how effective they are at it. If you are like most of us, then maybe you’re being rather too generous when judging how brave, clear and honest you are when you need to deliver feedback.

  When Threshold asks managers to rate the general effectiveness of honest performance conversations in their organisations as a whole, most rate this as below average. On the other hand, most managers rate themselves as above average at delivering honest performance conversations. We have repeated these questions with literally thousands of managers, in every continent in the world, and the pattern is consistent. The simple fact is that most of us tend to overrate how good we are at honest performance conversations.

  Have you ever avoided an awkward conversation? Have you let something go, which you know you really should have challenged? Have you indicated that you thought something was just fine when really it wasn’t? If you have, you are like the majority of us. As the research bears out, most of us shy away from straight-talking feedback. The more you can make yourself bulletproof, the more readily you can tackle the sort of straight-talking conversations from which most people shy away.

  To understand why humans are not great at giving honest feedback, we need to go back to two fundamental psychological imperatives that – it won’t surprise you to hear – were very important to our cave-dwelling ancestor: ‘esteem’ and ‘rapport’. Both of these are exceptionally important to humans and we will invest considerable effort to sustain them.

  Esteem is important because it is associated both with our personal standing among a social group and with the inner reserves of confidence and resilience that we need in order to perform. Rapport is also vitally important to a social species like humans, because our survival requires interaction with others. Being out of rapport with those around us triggers that sense of unease; it is not a situation that we want to be in for long.

  Our instincts tell us that straight-talking feedback will risk both of these. We will jeopardise rapport with the other person and we will jeopardise his or her self-esteem, and, as a result, we will become unpopular. We want to be liked. We are ‘wired to please’. We humans love being in rapport with other humans; we will do anything to sustain it and we hate to break it.

  Bulletproof people recognise that honest feedback does not have to put the other person’s self-esteem at risk. They also recognise that a brief break in rapport is harmless – and even sometimes necessary – and that rapport can easily be re-established.

  Recall what we said about rigid rules. One of the most common is, ‘I must always be popular or I must always be liked.’ If this rule is too rigid, you will greatly limit your ability to be flexible and effective when communicating with others.

  A note of caution here: many people are tempted to free themselves from needing to be liked by going to the other extreme. Teenagers will often say things like: ‘I don’t care what anyone else thinks … people can just take me as I am!’ (which is a little ironic as anyone who knows teenagers will know that they tend to be most acutely sensitive to what others think of them). Replacing ‘I must always be liked’ with something along the lines of ‘I don’t care if I am hated’ is counterproductive. The statement is patently untrue, and therefore it is unlikely that it will work for you. That’s why the emphasis is on simply reframing the rule into a preference, the essence of which is true, but which is more flexible: ‘I prefer to be liked, but if once in a while I am not I can live with that.’

  Similarly an alternative way of flexing a rigid rule that often works well for people is the ‘permission to be’ statement.

  What rigid rules are you applying and where would you benefit from being more flexible? What do you give yourself permission to be? Before the next straight-talking conversation that you need to have, remind yourself what you give yourself permission to be. Say the words to yourself. It might be, ‘I give myself permission to be direct.’ Or maybe, ‘I give myself permission to be out of rapport for a while.’ We guarantee that you will be far more effective in the conversation and you will find any break in rapport or hurt to feelings will be temporary.

  Summary

  Most manages are ineffective at honest-feedback conversations

  Most of us overrate how honest and straight-talking we are

  We avoid honest-feedback conversations with others because we dislike being out of rapport and we are hard-wired to be liked

  Being flexible about our need to be liked and be in rapport makes us more effective

  Set the context clearly

  The two most common and yet woefully in
effective ways to start an honest-feedback conversation are:

  • The so-how-do-you-think-it’s-going approach

  • The feedback sandwich

  Let’s take them one at a time. So often when we work with someone who has a potentially tricky conversation coming up and we ask how the person intends to start the conversation, the answer that comes back is along the lines of, ‘Oh, I’m going to start by asking, “How do you think it’s going?’”

  Now, we have all been on coaching courses where we have heard about the great virtue of open questions. It seems that the underpinning hope here is that the would-be recipient of your potential feedback will help things along by teeing up the conversation nicely for you or, better still, have a moment of insight about precisely the shortcomings that you want to address. Surely this person is sufficiently self-aware and honest, and must have noticed – like you – that all is not as it should be.

  It won’t surprise you to hear that there is flaw in this approach. People persistently overestimate the extent to which other people think like them and hold similar views. This person is unlikely to share your point of view. And the problem is compounded by the phenomenon that psychologists refer to as ‘confabulation’.

  Confabulation is that uniquely human ability to spontaneously fabricate a version of reality that works for us and gives us the most comfort, or makes us look good. It is the way we delude ourselves to make ourselves feel better. It is the story we tell ourselves, and we convince ourselves of its truth.

  When we are under pressure, we are particularly likely to see reality in a way that protects our self-esteem. We will fabricate explanations that put us in a better light. That is why any feedback that drives improvement can’t be entirely mediated from within. It requires the input of a measure or observation from the outside. And that is where you come in.

  If you start a conversation by asking a question when your real aim is to communicate a point of view, you appear disingenuous. There is another snag: given that the other person is likely to give a response that does not match your own perception, you have lost control of the conversation. From that moment on, you are likely to be attempting to claw it back on to your agenda.

  Now let’s come on to the feedback sandwich. The concept of the sandwich is that the most effective critical feedback is delivered between two slices of praise, one to start and one to finish. The ‘praise sandwich’ has been a staple of many feedback courses for many years. It is very popular with the poor soul having to deliver the feedback because it gives the illusion of staying comfortable, before and after the criticism, and with any luck you can skate quickly over the nasty bit.

  We have worked with tens of thousands of managers on the subject of giving feedback. We ask their preferred method of receiving feedback and we ask them for real examples of feedback that has worked for them. The ‘sandwich’ is ominously absent. The most commonly cited three words that these managers use to describe the way they would prefer to receive feedback are ‘honest’, ‘direct’ and ‘straight’. As one manger put it, ‘After you have been on the receiving end of the sandwich, you are always left waiting for the “but”.’

  The sandwich gives mixed messages: the praise is contaminated by the criticism and the criticism is diluted by the praise. You need to be prepared to feel uncomfortable if you have difficult feedback to deliver. Do not be tempted to soften it with praise.

  Indeed the sandwich has become such a staple that people are often a little taken aback by our challenging of its supremacy. One senior executive asked, ‘But surely you should always start with a positive?’ Recall that one of the difficulties of delivering honest feedback is the risk to rapport. If you start with praise, you either seem disingenuous or you set a climate at the start, which is simply going to underscore a far greater rupture in rapport when you have to deliver the criticism.

  We recommend you start the crucial part of the conversation by setting out the context stall clearly. A good setting-the-context statement opening does these things:

  • States the context

  • States your positive intent towards the other person (i.e. your commitment to listen and do what you can to help)

  • States the need for change

  It should be clear and brief. Be prepared to stay silent once you have set out your stall. Don’t feel the need to keep talking. Get in the habit of preparing setting out your stall in advance. Hone it down. Practise it. For example:

  • ‘I need to talk to you about X. I’m not happy about the situation and I sense that you are not either’

  • ‘I want to support you in putting the situation right’

  • ‘I am not prepared to let things continue the way they are’

  This is not to suggest that praise is not important – quite the contrary. Praise generously and authentically. If you praise authentically, the recipient will view you as someone whose views are valid. Keep the praise separate. It is too important to use as a Trojan horse to make criticism more comfortable to deliver.

  Summary

  Start an honest-feedback conversation by setting out the context clearly

  Praise generously and authentically, but never as a Trojan horse for criticism

  Describe the gap

  Amanda came to us with her problem: she was a junior architect at a large international design and building firm, had set herself the goal of becoming a junior partner within a given timeframe, but expressed frustration that she had not received feedback on how she was progressing from the senior partner to whom she reported. We suggested that she ask for feedback.

  When we next saw Amanda, she seemed like a new person, but not for the better. ‘I asked for it straight,’ she told us, ‘but he was brutal. He ripped into everything. It really slayed my confidence.’

  When we suggested that it did not sound as though the senior partner had gratuitously bashed her confidence, she replied along the lines: ‘Well, what else could he do? He was only being honest.’

  This is the misconception that is at the heart of the paradox about giving feedback. There is an erroneous assumption that a trade-off is necessary: we either deliver it in a sandwich surrounded by comforting fluffy slices of bread, or we are hurtful and prompt inevitable defensiveness in the recipient. Neither is necessary. We encourage people to look at feedback simply in terms of describing a gap. Looked at this way, the toxicity is taken out of a situation.

  This is an incredibly simple but effective way to give feedback that you fear may be difficult, emotive, sensitive or uncomfortable. Try it out:

  • State in clear, non-emotive terms what you are currently seeing versus what you would like or expect to be seeing. ‘What I would like/expect to see is …, but what I am currently seeing is …’

  • Think of it this way: you are taking all of the heat but none of the weight out of the situation

  The senior partner’s best approach would have been to state where Amanda should currently be if she were on track to reach her goal, state where he perceives her to be currently, and agree that the gap between the two is what they need to work on together.

  And, of course, the gap is the way you see it. Remember the principle of ‘I-speak’. You speak for yourself in a feedback conversation. It is your observation, and your observation is valid and important, but you don’t have the monopoly on universal truth. If you suggest that you do, you are more inclined to alienate the recipient of the feedback.

  So, you have clearly stated the context at the outset and you have stated the gap as you see it. Now is a good time to show that you are happy to do some listening and that this is not simply a one-sided download. The important thing is that you have put your observation out on the table. Now that you have delivered your feedback honestly, you have set the groundwork to start listening.

  Once you have described the gap, ask an open question. Keep it open and broad. You do not want to lead the other person in a given direction. We once worked with a manager who gave
one of his team some feedback about reports persistently being handed in late. After describing the gap, he asked his question: ‘Is it because the deadlines that I give you are not realistic in the first place?’

  ‘Sure, that’s it,’ replied the employee. End of conversation.

  So, keep the question open and broad. Good phrases are simply: ‘What do you say?’ or, ‘What are your thoughts?’

  If Joe used this approach with Francis it would look like this: ‘I want to have this conversation with you, Francis, because I am not happy with the way I see things going. I want you to know that I am committed to listening and giving you all the support I can in helping to improve the situation. By this point in the project I would expect to see … but in reality, I feel that I am only seeing … That leaves a gap and I am really concerned about. That’s the gap that I would like us to work together on closing. What do you say?’

  Looked at this way, there is no lack of clarity or impact in what Joe is saying, but the heat or toxicity has been taken out of it.

  Summary

  When you give feedback, simply approach it as describing a gap

  Point out that the gap is the thing that the two of you will work together to close

  Ask a question to show that you are ready and willing to listen – keep it brief, broad and open

  Always preserve the other person’s self-esteem

  When you are describing the gap, you are solely addressing the behaviour that you observe and nothing more. That is both your right and responsibility as a leader, coach or friend. If you step beyond that, you can scarcely be surprised if you encounter defensiveness or even hostility.

  Recall how our inner cave dweller likes to make rapid judgements and form them into universal rules – a safety-first survival strategy that worked for our ancestors but causes untold obstacles in communication and relationships.

  Most of us like to believe that we are good judges of character, that we get a fix or a read on a person very rapidly. The simple fact that most people rate themselves as above average as a judge of character is a good indicator that this is erroneous.54