Feelings First Feedback

Feelings first to build an atmosphere of collaboration.

I am annoyed. Too often I hear the advice or see it in action. The idea that feedback should start by stating the observable facts, followed by a dispassionate interpretation and only then acknowledging how this situation made you feel.

This is a good approach for broaching a difficult topic between teams that depend on each other but do not work closely together. It tries to get emotions out of the way to provide both sides with a factual perspective on what went wrong where. This allows teams to dissect a problem, identify how processes should be improved and make structural changes, without any one person feeling that it is entirely their fault. Ultimately this approach is good for clarifying and arguing about facts, when things went really wrong.

However, what works well for fixing structural issues between teams, does not work well for building a feedback culture within a team, because the feedback I give to a close colleague serves a very different purpose from the feedback I give to a team whose service my work tangentially relies on.

As far as I am concerned, feedback within a team should build cohesion and lead to incremental improvements. I feel much more connected to my colleagues, when they share what annoys them. The more connected I feel, the easier it becomes to raise issues. The more issues that we discuss and resolve the more connected everybody feels. It’s a virtuous cycle emerging from an atmosphere of casual feedback.

It should be obvious that the format of observable facts first is not conducive to such an atmosphere. It makes feedback less casual both on the giving and receiving side. On the receiving end, it puts people in a mindset that what is about to come is a serious conversation in which they have to argue and justify. It puts the emphasis on them, making it harder for them to empathise with you. On the giving side, it makes raising an issue much harder because you first have to deconstruct your feelings and identify observable causes. As a result, feedback becomes this large difficult ordeal.

But what if we started with the feeling ? You are annoyed. That is easy to express. It is also easy to empathise with. Empathy makes it easier to talk about what exactly annoys you. Some of it will be rooted in observable facts, some of it in misunderstandings and some of it in the quirks of our personalities. All of those are valid reasons to be annoyed, not all of them can be fixed. If we discuss them together, there is a good chance we can improve the parts that can be fixed.