How Balance Can Help You Give Great Feedback
Enabling teams to do better is a key role of leaders, and feedback is an essential tool. Giving feedback is often difficult because it is contextual. There is no one-size-fits-all solution because what we say and when we say depends on the reality of each individual and the context they are in. One thing fabulous leaders have in common is how they carry messages and offer criticism. What can we learn from them?
We intuitively believe that negative information carries much more impact and weight than positive. So, when you have to give criticism, you naturally start softening the blow because (i) you want people to hear you, and (ii) you naturally know that if you start negative people get defensive and don't listen.
This perception led to the creation of the sandwich technique that goes like this:
“I’ll start with a compliment to relax you, then I’ll give you the negative feedback, and I’ll finalize with more positive feedback so you don’t get angry at me”
It is very well known that this technique has a lot of flaws and should be avoided. When we use it, the positive fall on deaf ears and compliments outweighs the criticism, which is the actual point of improvement.
There are numerous tips about feedback out there, but the one I liked the most I learned from an interview with Randall Stutman in one of my favorite podcasts, The Knowledge Project, where he talks about how great leaders balance feedback to have better outcomes.
To illustrate the concept of balance, let’s assume you gave an important presentation, and you received 2 feedbacks.
❌ Feedback out of Balance:
“Hey, the presentation went pretty well, I think the audience was engaged, but listen, slide 10 was just not really understandable, and slide 15 confused everybody. I didn't think you tied the introduction to your conclusion, so you lost people at the end. When you got to Q&A, you started okay but were clumsy on the second question, and your answer was weak. So I think the audience was not as responsive at the end as they should have been across the presentation.”
If you’re somehow like me, you could be thinking:
“Wow okay, really? You thought the thing went okay, and then the audience was fairly engaged? I don't remember that, but I remember you just crapped a lot on everything I just did, and I don't hear much of that.”
✔️ Feedback in Balance:
“Hey listen, I think the audience was engaged across your presentation, and it went pretty well. I never saw slide 8 before, but I thought it was masterful the way you took something complex and made it simple. When you reached your main point, you hit it hard several times to the point where it resonated with the group. They were excited to get to Q&A to ask you questions. I thought you started Q&A really well, and you did a great job answering the 4th question, which was the hardest of all. Now, let me be critical on the other side: your slide 5 was indecipherable we have to work on that. Your slide 10 took something complex and made it even more complex. I didn't think you tied the introduction to the conclusion nearly strongly enough. When you got to the Q&A, your answer to the 2nd question was clumsy and left people wanting more. Overall, people could have been a lot more engaged if some of those things were fixed.”
I know some people wouldn’t like either feedback, but I cannot think of anyone who would like the first one.
When we look at the best and most admired leaders, they all do the same thing: they all start with positive, just like we all do intuitively, but their positive comments are as vivid, elaborate, and detailed as the negatives.
If you’re thinking: “well, sometimes I have five criticisms, but I only have one really good positive that I can focus on.” Well, stretch yourself and see if you can come up with two or three. But more importantly, they're only ready to hear one or two criticisms right now because that’s the only way to keep that in balance.
Being in balance doesn’t mean necessarily having the exact same number of positive and negative, it doesn’t have to be two to two or three to three. But if I'm going to give you five criticisms, I probably need to have three or five really positive things. It’s also important to keep a balance at the level of vividness and detail.
🔍 Balance in Relationships
Another different aspect of it lies in the balance of the relationship between a leader and a team member and I want to explore it with a couple of personal experiences.
A few years ago, I was working on a project for a big client in mining and metallurgy. Although my project team leader was trying his best to deliver the project, he would continuously give negative criticism to his team and just occasionally spike on a couple of positive things. This way, his relationship with all team members was out of balance on the negative side. After a while, whenever he would say something, we would become defensive and counter-argue or just stop listening.
Having a relationship out of balance on the positive side could also become an issue. A couple of years ago, I was working in financial services, in a dynamic and high-pressure environment. We had a brilliant analyst on the team, a true high performer. When he was working on a cross-functional project, he received a piece of criticism (honest and objective, in my view). Because he had been used to so much superlative positive feedback for so long and from so many people, he went catatonic when he saw this particular feedback and couldn't see it as honest and fair.
💡 To make somebody better with feedback, we need to start with the positive and make that positive set of remarks as vivid, as elaborate, and as detailed as the negative is going to be. We also should keep our relationships in balance so it feels more natural when someone receives positive or negative feedback from us.