Feedback

Feedback is the core of personal and professional growth. Feedback help us being better at what we do establishing clear communications and expectations.

All feedback is good feedback. If you agree with it, it tells you something about yourself which you can to work on correcting. If you don’t agree with it, it tells you that there is an incorrect perception about you in the other persons mind. You can also work on correcting that.

• When someone tells you something is wrong, they’re almost always right.
• When someone tells you how to fix it, they’re almost always wrong.
• Collect feedback from everybody.

Your goal is not to do what you think is best, it’s to help others. This includes respecting their preferences, and respecting their autonomy. It’s key that you listen to feedback, be open to the possibility that your actions are systematically unhelpful, and work to build better models of your friends and their preferences. In an ideal world I’d only take the actions that are net good, and avoid all of the ones that are net bad, but in a limited information world this is impossible. And empirically, actually trying far outweighs not trying at all. But you still want to get as net good as possible!

Taking Feedback

• Use the word advice instead of feedback to get more results.
• The only constant in the world is change. Be open to it and accept it with a smile.
• Understand and accept that you will make mistakes.
• Be mindful. Develop meta-awareness around the areas that you received feedback.
  • Look for opportunities to stop doing or start doing critiqued behaviors.

Technical Feedback

• You are not your work (code, design, …).
• No matter how much you know about something, someone else will always know more.
• Treat people who know less than you with respect, deference, and patience.
• True authority stems from knowledge, not from position.
• Critique code instead of people — be kind to the coder, not to the code.
• Focus on Empathy.

Giving Feedback

• Feedback needs to be informal, frequent, and done authentically.
• Feedback should be offered with a willingness to listen in return. Those giving feedback should also ask for it.
• Challenge ideas, not people. Address behavior, but don’t label people.
• Most feedback you deliver should be positive. This makes the negative feedback more important.
• Prepare. What do you value in someone? Where do you think are their biggest opportunities to improve?
• Keep the feedback actionable, specific, and kind. Be as specific as possible and contain concrete suggestions on how to improve.
• Imagine what things feel like from the other perspective.
• Criticize in private, praise in public.
• You can use a feedback model. These are behavioral and impact focused.
  • Situation-Behavior-Impact: Describe the situation, then the action of the person and finally, the impact it had.
  • Manager Tools Feedback Model: Ask for permission, describe the behavior and its impact, finally offer some potential alternatives.
• How to compose a successful critical commentary (from Daniel Dennett):
  • You should attempt to re-express your target’s position so clearly, vividly, and fairly that your target says, “Thanks, I wish I’d thought of putting it that way”.
  • You should list any points of agreement (if they are not matters of general or widespread agreement).
  • You should mention anything you have learned from your target.
  • Only then are you permitted to say so much as a word of rebuttal or criticism.