👍👎The Quest #13: Feedback: how to give it, and how to get it

Hello Friends!

Greetings from Barcelona☀️. Many thanks for your feedback on the last edition. A special shout out to: Charlotte in Singapore, Cathy in Okotoks, and Connie in Toronto 🙌. If you are joining The Quest for the first time, welcome to our weekly exploration of creativity, facilitation, and learning. You can catch up on past editions here.

Before we dive into this edition, I want to say a big thank you to all of you. Thank you for subscribing, reading, and sharing The Quest. I feel so lucky to connect with you each week. I look forward to sharing more ideas and inspiration with you in 2021 and beyond ✨✨✨.

👍👎And now it’s time for the feedback issue!

Have you ever noticed that really good facilitators are highly skilled at giving and receiving feedback? They can help us see our blind spots. Like that tiny mirror that all of us should have on our rearview mirrors.

And they seek out feedback with curiosity and grace. They always seem to know exactly the right questions to ask at the right time. How do they do that?

In our first edition of The Quest 2021, we are going to explore the many aspects of feedback. How to give it (the easy part), and how to get it (the hard part). Here we go!

📋Annual Review. Feedback from myself for myself.

Ahhhh 2021. A blank slate. An opportunity to start afresh. A canvas waiting for new splashes of colour.

At least that’s what I used to believe. Until I realized that a new year is not a blank canvas at all. The previous year is full of valuable feedback for ourselves. When we wipe it all away, we lose the ability to learn and carry these lessons forward.

So instead of drumming up a list of unhelpful resolutions this year, I wrote an Annual Review instead. It’s a tip I learned from friends in Write of Passage. As writer Henneke in her Annual Review says, “rather than ask myself what I’ve achieved, I like to consider what I’ve learned”.

Any annual review for 2020 is likely to be a doozie. All the more reason to spend time reflecting on it.

Here are 10 different questions I asked myself this year that helped me spark some new thinking and ideas for 2021 (some borrowed from Tiago Forte’s Annual Review Template – thanks Jen!):

• What were my favourite memories of 2020?

• What were my biggest challenges? What were my disappointments?

• Who am I grateful to?

• What were my biggest lessons in 2020? What surprised me?

• What do I want to let go of? What do I want to bring forward?

• Who am I and what do I stand for?

• What big questions am I holding for this year?

• What do I want to spend more time doing? And less time?

• What will my biggest risk be this year?

• What habits and systems will help me do more of what I want to do?

What are yours?

🎁Tips for giving feedback to others

Giving feedback is a fundamental part of life. We do it every day. Sometimes skilfully. Sometimes not. Learning how to give feedback well is both an art and a science. In facilitation, we learn to think of feedback as a gift that you give to the other person.

So how do you do it well? Here are some tips I’ve learned from the facilitation pros at PYE, Scaling Intimacy, Write of Passage, and others.

• Ask clarifying questions. Don’t assume that you have all of the information you need in order to give helpful feedback. Ask questions. “So tell me a bit more about why your neighbour is driving you crazy…”. “What have you tried before to get her dog to stop barking that works?”

• Make it specific. Write of Passage creator David Perell shared a quote that says, “a sincere, personal, specific compliment is one of the strongest motivators you can give people. Year’s later people still remember your words.” So, your 14-year old student may not remember “Great job!”. But they are likely to remember “I like the way you added those cool visuals to your presentations. It really shows your creative side.”

• Offer a consideration. Have you tried? I wonder if? How might you? Offering an idea of how to address the feedback can help to spark new ideas. Just don’t take it personally if the person you are speaking to doesn’t take you up on your brilliant suggestions. That’s why they are called “considerations”.

What else would you add?

🙏Thanks for the Feedback

I enjoy giving feedback. But when it comes to receiving feedback, well, that that’s a little trickier for me. OK, a lot trickier. That’s why I was happy to discover the book “Thanks for the Feedback” by Harvard Professors Douglas Stone and Sheila Heen (thanks again Jen!).

Are you a “wrong-spotter”?

Have you ever found yourself in a situation where someone gives you feedback that feels totally off-base? You may smile and say, “I’ll take that into consideration.” But in reality, before the person even finishes their sentence, you’ve already come up with several reasons why the feedback is wrong. And into the trash folder it goes 🚮.

In Thanks for the Feedback I learned that there is a name for this. It’s called “wrong spotting”. And most of us are pretty good at it. Because the truth is that a lot of feedback has flaws. It’s vague. It’s out of context. It can be unhelpful. The problem with wrong-spotting is that you throw out what could be useful feedback out with the rest. In order to get good at receiving feedback we need to shift from “that’s wrong” to “tell me more”.

Here are some other insights from Thanks for the Feedback:

• Understand the feedback. Before jumping to your own defense, your first job is to try to understand the feedback. Be curious. What do they see? What are they worried about? What are they recommending?

• See your blind spots. Yes, we all have them. Those things that others see about us that we don’t. How can we see them? Ask, “what do you see me doing, or failing to do, that is getting in my own way?”

💌Speaking of Feedback…

I’d love to hear yours on The Quest. Do you think you could take a few minutes to fill in a quick survey? Your feedback will help me to focus my writing and research in the most valuable way. Thanks in advance!

Thanks for reading. I always love hearing your feedback and suggestions. Feel free to email me at gwyn@gwynwansbrough.com. Visit my website for ways we can work together here. 

If you are enjoying The Quest, I’d appreciate it if you shared it with anyone you think might like it. 

Until next week!

Gwyn

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