Thanks for the Feedback: The Science and Art of Receiving Feedback Well

Grab Bag of Questions for Coach and Coachee

e need to equip receivers to create pull—to drive their own learning, to seek honest mirrors as well as supportive mirrors, to speak up when they need additional appreciation or coaching or are confused about where they stand. As each receiver becomes more skilled at receiving—at creating pull—the organization gets better at it, too. We pull together.

So there are no easy answers. But we assert this: Systems will always be imperfect. We should work to improve them, but that can only take us so far. The greatest leverage is helping the people inside the system communicate more effectively, and as between giver and receiver, it’s the receiver’s skills that have the most impact.

In addition, as we’ve explored here, the feedback lives (or dies) amid the trust, credibility, relationship, and communications skills between giver and receiver

you can’t “metric” your way around the fact that feedback is a relationship-based, judgment-laced process.

Coaching and developing individual and team performance;
Helping to get and retain the right people in the right roles;
Assisting succession planning in key leadership positions;
Promoting job satisfaction and high morale; and
Getting it done on time—in the moment, quarterly, annually.

Aligning individuals with organizational goals and vision;

Incenting positive behaviors and disciplining negative behaviors;
Communicating clear expectations;

Providing consistent evaluation across roles, functions, and regions;

They give artificially high reviews to even mediocre employees, which dilutes the usefulness of reviews for addressing performance or guiding decision making. In one organization 96 percent of employees received the highest rating.2 And researcher Brené Brown observes that a lack of meaningful feedback was the number-one reason cited by talented people for leaving an organization.3