Feedback Failure

My Harvard Business Review magazine landed on the kitchen table in the usual pile of junk mail, and as I stood there sorting the bills from the pizza coupons I almost tossed the HBR into the recycle bin. Why? Because the cover story was “Why Feedback Fails.” Okay, I thought with a snort, they’ve finally jumped the shark. Haven’t they been telling me how and why to give feedback for the past lo-these-many-years, and NOW it’s a failure? Great.

I did read the article. Shall I save you the trouble? The article shouldn’t have been titled “Why Feedback Fails,” but “Why Judgement Fails.” If that seems like wishy-washy semantics, we have more talking to do about feedback and human nature.

Have you ever read the comments section on an article on weight loss in the New York Times or the Washington Post? Doesn’t matter what the article is about – keto, calorie counting, intermittent fasting, the grapefruit diet – some percentage of those comments will always boil down to: we need to shame fat people so they know they are fat and then they do something about it. As a woman of some extra padding, this always amuses me (in a dark, angry sort of way) – what overweight person isn’t acutely aware that they are overweight? Our society, and even our bodies themselves, inform us every day. The world’s notice and judgement adds no new information.

Work feedback, the article seems to say, is just like that: no new information.

The HBR article argues that, at work, feedback is generally the same as judgement (though they don’t use that word). People usually know what they are bad at, and they are ashamed of it. Criticizing failures and weaknesses doesn’t bring insight and change. This isn’t surprising – good feedback is nothing but information on how something worked, or didn’t. If there is judgement involved it is because we add it.

What is the solution the article proposes? Building on strengths, rather than struggling fruitlessly to improve weaknesses. Providing feedback on specific actions and tasks, rather than on whether someone is doing a “good job,” which is an awful lot like passing judgement on someone’s worth as a worker, or a human being. We can leave out whether that is moral or right or just – the article argues it simply isn’t helpful in terms of people’s performance.

So is feedback a failure? Only if telling someone something they already know and are ashamed of is the definition of feedback. But I don’t think it is. I think feedback is information – as I wrote in one of my first blog posts, feedback is shooting the ball at the hoop and seeing if it goes in, and adjusting the next time. No judgement necessary.