Of toothache & feedback
As I deal with an imminent extraction, I am reminded of an experiment I conducted on myself some 20–25 years ago. It involved the growth of my 3rd molar (the one that is being led up to the guillotine today) and the pain associated with it. My dentist gave me some painkillers and told me to brave through the pain and that it wouldn’t be a hassle thereafter. The pain was substantial and the 1st day or so I did take the meds. I think it was the 2nd or 3rd day when I asked myself questions: “What is the painkiller really doing?”, “What am I gaining?”, “What do I lose?” and that is when it hit me (thankfully, not literally) — I was denying myself information. The pain was the body’s way of letting me know what was happening, what needed repair, what was probably getting repaired, how I should work my muscles, etc. So I decided to stop taking the meds. But the pain was real. So I decided to observe it, not resist it, not become friends or paint it in new hues or make anything grand out of it but simply observe its movements. Soon I realised that in observing it and not resisting it or wishing it away, the pain ceased to be “painful”. That is when I realised that in resisting the pain, I was creating the painful experience. The sensation remained but the “pain” (the emotions and inconvenience attached to the sensation) wasn’t. Fast forward to a couple of weeks ago when a slab of marble fell on my foot nearly fracturing my toe bones, the nurse recommended pain-killers and my response (while still sensing my toes throb) was — “How would I know where the pain is and where it hurts when I move?” She probably thought that there was some head damage involved, too!
How does this relate to feedback? People who have had to give me feedback have always been requested to not censor and give it as it comes in their head. It helps me to also receive their “feelings” along with the content of the feedback. The feeling is important if I must understand what moves my “senior”, “peer” or “junior”. If they only gave me the sterilised, politically correct and super-softened version then I am left with an experience numbed by pain-killers. I’d then sit down and separate the feelings from the import but deal with them separately. Some people would stop at separating them and ignore the feelings out of “humane consideration” for the person who wasn’t so nuanced at giving feedback. This is missing out on responding to a crucial piece of info. If we are all irrational emotional people, then to disallow the emotions (by demanding political correctness and euphemisms) or discarding them (in an act of “maturity” where one “permits” the other to be emotional) is losing vital details around the effect and impact that one is having on the ecosystem.
I have heard stories of people walking out of a feedback session with a Ruinous Empath, feeling rather pleased about themselves only to be told later that their boss actually was telling them how horrible a job they had done! This entire tribe of people who focus more on making the other person feel nice create ineffective systems where necessary and crucial messaging is lost in the cotton candy fluff. I do not understand why we demand sweet talk in lieu of vital messages.
This is not a case for being rude or mindless. This is the other side of the feedback story. To realise that in unfiltered feedback there is much to gain is important. The ideal would be when everyone cares enough to share content and feelings and helps the other to parse interactions and helps each other grow. How would that look? Something like me telling you what aspects of the decision might need a relook after understanding why you chose to disregard vital data coming from Dept. N and once we have resolved that (even if you acknowledge that you will relook or that you have heard me well and will mull over it) I ask you, “Would you be willing to hear how the decisioning exercise made me feel?” and when you say yes, “I was nearly going to pull my hair off! I was thinking — this is crazy! How could no one be raising an issue?” And then you ask — Why so angry for a process I thought simply had to be gotten over and done with? — and we would discuss why I felt that way which, you would not have gotten to understand if we had stopped at sharing content-feedback.
But we aren’t there yet. There are those who:
- don’t care about anyone or anything or at least don’t care about things improving. Sure, they might care about themselves and they’ll complain about you to get you out of their way if you are an inconvenience.
- who care but are afraid to give you feedback. They care too much about the status quo or their image or their relationship with you, far more than the goodness of the system.
- who care, are unafraid but are inarticulate or untrained on the art of giving feedback and sharing the root cause of feelings felt.
- who care, are unafraid and know how to present both content and feelings in a manner that helps the other person grow.
Let us look at a rather contrived scenario. A walks up to B and gives her an unfiltered view of her behaviour, performance and/or perceived attitude. A doesn’t bother to even call it “perceived”. A practically declares it as a fact. A has done it all “wrong” by the book. But if B focuses only on that, I think she is doing it all wrong by that book that is yet to be written. How?
- In disregarding or complaining about A’s choice of words and tone, B is missing out on raw reaction that her behaviour/attitude/performance is having on people. There is rich insight to be gained there.
- If B only focuses on the “Is that any way to talk to a woman?” or similar gender games, then B is losing an opportunity to unearth the cosmetic gender equality in the system where everyone says the correct thing to your face but are internally simmering.
- If B rushes to judging how wrong A is in feeling this way or that or stating this or that, then B loses the opportunity in identifying the areas of improvement for A, which, B should care about if she truly cares about the org or system.
- Sometimes knowing that these actions of B “just irritated me and made her feel like a pair of goody shoes” can unearth cultural issues and personality types. If A was being militant on political-correctness this would not have been mentioned at all or rather packaged as “your many initiatives and eagerness to pick up tasks often models an idealness that I didn’t know existed outside of books”.
In other words, demanding sweet talk and circuitous messaging dipped in treacle reflects more on the person demanding it and their incapacity to observe the pain and its movements and understand it better. It seems like their need to hear only sweet/polished/good things and weaponising that need as an inconsideration of the other to take the time to soften and sweeten or even ignore things (in favour of the calm and cheer that is prevalent) is a red flag declaring the lack of maturity & resilience to see things as they are or do the hard work of sifting through things to the core issue.
Giving and receiving feedback is already a very messy issue. Most people would happily avoid giving feedback esp. if it is not all laudatory. To correct another feels like walking on hot coals (and I can already hear the reaction of many going — How can you assume that you can correct me?). And then to make it a system where only the sophists and creative obfuscators can survive is utterly a waste of time and an unproductive exercise. Here is how I see learning from feedback. Let’s assume A is not a sophist and is rather candid.
A: I think that presentation was dumb (A has scope for being more specific)
B: What!? How could you be so rude!? (B has scope to be more mature and learn how to steer to specific insights that can help her and perhaps, coach A)
Should A be encouraged to say such things? No. Should B’s response be deemed “understandable”? No!
A should be coached on giving specific feedback by focusing on clearly identifiable areas of improvement. A also needs to learn how to convert reactions and reactionary emotions into insight about oneself or about potential triggers in the substance causing a reaction.
B should be coached on how to gain insight from unpolished and dirty data! She must learn how to not be triggered or abort sudden conversations (and schedule them for later) where she is not in a mental state to manage her triggers. She should be coached in cleaning the data that is coming her way — e.g. asking what makes a presentation dumb? Is it the font? Template? Sequence? Data? Etc. Actually go into what leaves the aftertaste of “dumb”.
We do that as part of a data analytics project. Whatever data that is thrown our way, we clean it, fill in holes (based on documented logic and assumptions), categorise and classify as is deemed valuable to business, remove the noise (without losing access to it), etc. before handing it over to the statisticians and data scientists to extract meaning out of it. Imagine if the commercial world looked at unclean data and simply tossed it all out after judging it as rude and inconsiderate!
My improvement and betterment is purely for my gain (well, not really, if you look at the world as a system, but that’s another discussion). I am grateful to all who can spot my misses and are caring enough to coach me. It is naive and self-centered of me to expect everyone to be my motherly coach. But it is utterly foolish of me to not convert everything coming my way (often free of cost) to my benefit.
In the matters of the body, we subdue information with pain-killers; in matters of the mind (personality/ability/value/potential etc.), we subdue them with moral judgement, political correctness and mistranslations of EQ.
