2023 09 When Diversity Meets Feedback
2023 09 When Diversity Meets Feedback
2023 09 When Diversity Meets Feedback
Article
Feedback
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HBR / Magazine Article / When Diversity Meets Feedback
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The hedge fund billionaire and Bridgewater founder Ray Dalio went
a step further in his book Principles, describing a culture of “radical
transparency,” in which employees rate and give feedback about one
another’s contributions to meetings on publicly shared documents as
the meetings actually take place. And in his 2020 book No Rules Rules
(which I coauthored), Reed Hastings, Netflix’s founder and executive
chairman, lists candid feedback as one of the top three ingredients of an
innovative organization. A popular motto at Netflix is “Only say about
someone what you will say to their face.” If an employee comes to the
boss to complain about another employee, the boss is to respond, “What
did your colleague say when you gave them that feedback?”
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The Situation
You go to a meeting with a customer and a teammate. The teammate is
senior to you but isn’t your boss. You’re friendly but not close. In the
meeting your colleague speaks too loudly and is too intense. Your customer,
a reserved person, responds with evident discomfort. When your customer
speaks, your teammate often doesn’t look at her, giving the impression that
he isn’t taking her seriously. When the meeting is over, will you give this
feedback to your colleague?
Your Options
A. Yes. I’ll give it clearly and quickly. It will help him, the client, and the
organization.
B. Maybe. He hasn’t asked for feedback. I’m not his boss, so it’s not my
responsibility. I’ll wait and see if the right opportunity arises.
C. No. Unless he asks me, I won’t provide it. I don’t know if he is open to it,
and I don’t want to risk hurting our relationship.
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(Follow-up comments included things like “In fact, I never receive any
feedback at all, except occasionally from my boss.”)
This prompted me to tease them, asking, “Isn’t it interesting that only those
rare people who would provide the feedback participate in my sessions?”
Apparently, most managers, when faced with this problem in a classroom,
say they’ll give the feedback, but in real life they don’t.
The issue is that the scenario triggers a conflict in people’s brains between
the frontal cortex and the amygdala. The cortex, the most logical part of
the brain, loves candid feedback. But the brain’s most primitive part, the
amygdala, doesn’t.
The challenge with feedback, therefore, is to make sure that your delivery
succeeds in helping the cortex override the amygdala.
[ 1 ]
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Olga hadn’t given cultural differences a lot of thought until she moved
from Ukraine to West Virginia. In her job there, she says, “My colleague
Cathy was responsible for payroll. Each month when the paychecks
went out, there were mistakes. It was causing frustration, so I invited
her into my office and said, ‘Cathy, this absolutely cannot continue.
Your mistakes are creating big headaches.’”
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Jethro describes the situation like this: “I’d thought carefully about how
to provide the feedback. My comments (both verbal and then in writing)
were specific, explaining what actions had led to positive results and
which had been problematic, and then outlining clearly what my
colleagues needed to do differently to improve client satisfaction.”
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Jethro learned the same lesson Olga did: “I saw clearly that what
is normal and appropriate feedback in my culture may come off as
completely inappropriate somewhere else,” he reflects.
With a little awareness you can notice when you’re using upgraders
and downgraders and when those around you are and make slight
adjustments to get the desired results. When it comes to providing
feedback internationally, the message is not “Do unto others as you
would have them do unto you” but “Do unto others as they would have
done unto themselves.”
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[ 2 ]
Research shows that leaders who are women, much more than their
male counterparts, are expected to be warm and nice (traditionally seen
as female traits) as well as competent and tough (traits traditionally
expected from men and leaders). This line is difficult to walk, and
women who provide frank negative feedback risk being perceived
as combative. One 2020 study conducted at Stanford University
demonstrated that while women and men are equally likely to be
described as having technical ability, women are significantly more
likely to be described as aggressive. That’s why women who provide
candid feedback risk being perceived as on the attack.
The dynamics are just as complicated but completely different for men.
In 2008 an essay by Rebecca Solnit inspired the term “mansplaining,”
which describes situations in which a man explains something to a
woman who knows more about it than he does. “Manvising” hasn’t
made it into our lexicon yet, but most women find the phenomenon
equally familiar. The term describes moments when men give women
advice that they have neither asked for nor want. Solnit herself provided
this very simple illustration in an article she wrote in 2022: “A few years
ago, a friend of mine got married, and when I pulled up to the rustic
wedding site, a man I didn’t know positioned himself behind my car to
make dramatic hand signals. I didn’t need or ask for help, but he was
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giving it, and I’m sure he thought the credit for my success in parking
my small car in this very easy spot was at least partly his.”
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make or break the project. Despite her fears, she felt she’d aced the
presentation and, elated, made her way to the speakers’ lounge to wait
for the second presentation. There she bumped into her colleague Miles,
who had spoken earlier that morning.
Here’s what happened next: “I was pleased to relax and have a chat,”
Cassandra recalls. “After a few friendly exchanges, Miles surprised me
with feedback: ‘Your presentation was 90% perfect. The audience was
eating it up! I do think you spoke a little too fast, which made you sound
nervous. Also, maybe your mouth was too close to the mic because your
voice somehow sounded tinny.’ Although Miles’s feedback in retrospect
was actionable and meant to help before I went back onstage, I felt like
he had hijacked my self-confidence. I had been feeling great about what
I’d accomplished, and now I felt like an inexperienced child receiving
coaching from a teacher. I noticed my body physically shifting back in
my chair to get as far away from Miles as possible.”
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History isn’t destiny, however. Using what I call the “three A’s of
feedback,” you can teach your workforce how to offer advice in a way
that gets the useful input out there while still balancing the power
dynamics. The first A is that feedback must be intended to assist. (It
should always be provided with the genuine intention of helping your
counterpart succeed and never be given just to get frustration off your
chest.) The second is that it must be actionable. If it’s not crystal clear
from your input what your counterpart can do to improve, then keep it
to yourself.
The third A is to ask for feedback before you provide it. This is
especially important with cross-gender interactions. Unless someone
has specifically requested your advice (in which case jump in and give
it), solicit suggestions about your own work before you offer anyone
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[ 3 ]
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Baby Boomers (now in their late fifties and sixties and seventies)
were the first to get graded in school on “works well with others.”
They were also the first to have work discussions about interpersonal
effectiveness and emotional intelligence and saw feedback as a way to
improve both. Though previous generations were more likely to hint
at what should be done differently than to state feedback outright,
Boomers introduced the annual performance review. According to
the generational researcher Lynne Lancaster (coauthor of When
Generations Collide), they learned that feedback should be formal
and documented and given in annual meetings between boss and
subordinate.
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Gen Xers (in their forties to mid fifties) grew up with rising divorce
rates and two-income families. Left to fend for themselves at home,
these “latchkey kids” learned to get along without an authority figure.
Do-it-yourselfers, they relied on notes from Mom explaining how to
cook pasta. They tend to be considerably less formal than their Boomer
colleagues and don’t want to wait all year to know how they’re doing.
They are the first generation to begin giving upward feedback to the
boss. And according to Lancaster, they’re more likely to want feedback
instantaneously.
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Zoomers (in their teens to mid twenties) were the first generation to
grow up surrounded by social media. With YouTube channels and
TikTok platforms they came of age in a world of constant informal
feedback. Zoomers learned to post something on social media in the
morning and watch reactions come in all day long. They are more
likely to expect to give and receive frequent, real-time feedback in all
directions (subordinate to boss, peer to peer, and so on).
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A talented writer in his mid twenties, Connor was less flattering. “This is
all right,” he told Richard, “but you completely left your personality
out. Your audience wants to feel that you’re with them, but your
individual voice is absent.” Richard took it badly. “Something about
getting feedback from this kid who has decades less experience than
me felt very uncomfortable,” he recalls. “My immediate reaction was to
reject his comments. I wasn’t ready to listen to what he was saying, let
alone collaborate with him again.”
Not only was Connor decades younger than Richard, leading to status
incongruence, but in Richard’s Baby Boomer generation, feedback from
someone who is not your boss is infrequent and inappropriate. Richard
left the meeting shaking his head at this inexperienced kid telling him
his writing was missing a clear voice.
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what my writing was lacking. I went back to it with new eyes and wrote
something infinitely better.”
[ ~ ]
In setting up any loop, you need to clarify how much positive versus
constructive feedback each teammate should supply. You can, for
example, have people structure their feedback as one thing they feel
that the other person is doing well and one thing the other person could
do to up his or her performance. Alternatively, you can use a “start, stop,
continue” structure, describing one thing to start doing, one thing to
stop doing, and one thing to continue.
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Given the maturity and cohesion of your team, you may institute loops
that are more or less public. Here are three possible approaches:
One-to-one chats. If your team members have never given one another
feedback, a good initial step is to ask your immediate reports to meet
individually with each of their team members in the coming month to
share feedback, following the ground rules just described. The feedback
remains between the two teammates.
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•••
Once you have the right feedback loops in place, you’re on your way to
building a team full of learn-it-alls who thrive on diverse perspectives. If
your group is made up of people from a variety of cultures, genders, and
generations, getting your employees to give feedback to one another
frequently and openly allows each to get myriad ideas for how to
improve, pushes the team toward excellence, exposes blind spots, and
promotes greater cohesion. That’s how you can make sure DEI and
radical candor converge rather than collide.
@ErinMeyerINSEAD
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