The Feedback Fallacy

jashburn8020 · Fri, 18 Apr 2025

management   feedback

The current emphasis on often critical feedback is misguided for fostering excellence and growth; instead, creating an environment where trusted individuals share their positive experiences and observations about each other’s strengths is far more conducive to helping people thrive and contribute their best.

This summary is mostly generated using Google Gemini from the article listed under Source section.

Introduction

Key Insight: Instead of focusing on identifying and correcting perceived failures through feedback, managers should recognise and reinforce successful outcomes by saying “Yes! That!” and sharing their positive observations. This focus on strengths is more conducive to growth and learning.

  • Traditional management encourages frequent and candid feedback (both praise and criticism).
  • However, research suggests this approach doesn’t help employees thrive due to 3 key reasons:
    • Subjectivity of Ratings: A performance rating mainly reflects the rater’s characteristics, not the individual being rated.
    • Negative Impact of Criticism on the Brain: Criticism triggers a “fight or flight” response, hindering learning.
    • Individual Nature of Excellence: Great performance varies between individuals and cannot be universally defined or transferred. It’s not simply the absence of failure.
  • Neuroscience indicates that growth occurs most when focusing on strengths. Learning is rooted in understanding what we do well.
  • Recent trends like “radical transparency” at Bridgewater and the “harsh feedback” culture at Netflix highlight the prevailing belief in critical feedback for improving performance.
  • The focus on how to give and receive feedback (how much, how often, which app) overlooks a more crucial question: Is feedback always useful for helping people thrive?
  • Instruction (telling people factual knowledge or steps) is useful in objectively defined situations (e.g., checklists in cockpits or operating rooms).
  • “Feedback” in the context of performance (presentations, leadership, strategy) is different.
    • Research shows that telling people what we think of their performance and how to improve actually hinders learning.
  • 3 common but flawed theories underpin the belief in feedback:
    • Theory of the Source of Truth: Others are more aware of your weaknesses than you are.
      • Example: Assuming colleagues know your “shabby suit” is a problem and need to tell you.
    • Theory of Learning: Learning is like filling an empty vessel, and colleagues should teach you missing skills.
      • Example: Believing a salesperson needs to learn “mirroring and matching” to close deals.
    • Theory of Excellence: Great performance is universal, definable, and transferable.
      • Example: Using a company’s supervisor-behaviours model to tell a manager how to improve.
  • These theories are self-centred, assuming “my way is necessarily your way.”
  • Research shows these 3 theories are incorrect, and relying on them and related technologies can decrease learning and productivity.

The Source of Truth

Key Insight: The pursuit of objective feedback on abstract qualities is flawed because human ratings are inherently subjective and unreliable. The focus should shift from trying to provide an objective assessment of someone’s standing to sharing personal reactions and experiences.

  • The first major issue with feedback is that humans are unreliable raters of others.
    • Psychometric research over 40 years demonstrates that people lack the objectivity to consistently define and evaluate abstract qualities like “business acumen” or “assertiveness” in others.
    • Our ratings are significantly influenced by our own understanding, standards, biases, and rater tendencies (harshness or leniency).
    • This is known as the idiosyncratic rater effect, where over half of a rating reflects the rater’s characteristics, not the ratee’s.
      • This effect is substantial and resistant to training.
    • Consequently, feedback is often more a distortion than an accurate reflection of the individual.
  • This unreliability explains why receiving feedback is challenging.
    • Individuals must navigate a “forest of distortion” to find something that resonates with their self-perception.
  • Because feedback is more about the giver than the receiver, it introduces systematic error.
    • Unlike random errors that can be averaged out, systematic errors persist and can be amplified, similar to how multiple colour-blind individuals won’t accurately perceive the redness of a rose.
  • The only area where individuals are truly reliable sources of truth is regarding their own feelings and experiences.
    • Example: A doctor trusts a patient’s self-reported pain level.
  • Similarly, we cannot objectively tell colleagues “where they stand.”
    • However, we can share our personal feelings and experiences, such as whether someone’s voice is grating or their presentation is boring to us.

How We Learn

Key Insight: Effective learning is not about correcting weaknesses through feedback. It’s about recognising and building upon existing strengths within a comfortable environment, where individuals are most receptive to growth.

  • Another flawed theory is that feedback provides useful information that accelerates learning.
  • However, research suggests the opposite: learning is about recognising, reinforcing, and refining existing strengths.
  • There are 2 main reasons for this:
    • Neurological Growth: Brains develop most in areas of existing strength. Each brain is uniquely wired, with varying densities of synaptic connections. New connections build on existing patterns. Therefore, learning involves understanding and building upon individual patterns, not someone else’s.
    • Impact of Attention on Learning: Attention to strengths catalyses learning, while attention to weaknesses hinders it.
      • In an experiment, students who received positive coaching (focusing on dreams and how to achieve them) showed activation of the parasympathetic nervous system (“rest and digest”), which promotes neurogenesis, well-being, and cognitive openness.
      • Students who received feedback on what they needed to fix showed activation of the sympathetic nervous system (“fight or flight”), which narrows brain activity and inhibits learning. Critical feedback is perceived as a threat.
  • Therefore, focusing on shortcomings impairs learning.
  • We learn best when others focus on our strengths and encourage us to cultivate them.
  • Contrary to the idea of getting out of our comfort zones, learning happens most effectively within them.

Excellence

Key Insight: Excellence is a unique expression of an individual’s strengths and cannot be achieved by focusing on deficits or adhering to a generic model. True excellence emerges from cultivating individual talents and understanding the patterns of success, not the patterns of failure.

  • We often believe that defining excellence is easy, but the real challenge is figuring out how to achieve it.
    • The truth is the opposite: excellence is hard to define, but achieving it (for each individual) is relatively straightforward.
  • Excellence is idiosyncratic, meaning it’s unique to the individual.
    • Example: In basketball, even players in the same position have distinct playing styles, and top free-throw shooters have different techniques.
  • Excellence is inherently linked to the person demonstrating it, shaped by their individuality. It’s a natural and unforced expression of their best qualities that can be cultivated.
  • Excellence is not simply the opposite of failure. Studying failure reveals information about failure, not about achieving excellence.
    • Example: Studying depression won’t lead to understanding joy, and analysing divorce won’t explain happy marriages.
  • Furthermore, excellence and failure can share common traits.
    • Example: Top salespeople take rejection personally because they are invested, similar to poor salespeople, but their reaction and subsequent actions differ.
  • Therefore, we cannot help someone achieve excellence by comparing their performance to a predefined model, pointing out where they fall short, and telling them to fix the gaps. This approach only leads to adequate performance.
    • Example: Telling a teacher when students lose interest and how to fix it might prevent students from falling asleep but won’t guarantee better learning.

How to Help People Excel

Look for Outcomes

Key Insight: The most effective way to foster excellence is to identify and highlight successful outcomes and the specific actions that led to them. This allows individuals to recognise and build upon their unique patterns of effectiveness.

  • To help people excel, focus on outcomes. Notice when things go well (e.g., a prospect engages, a project flows smoothly, a customer calms down).
  • When you observe a positive outcome, immediately acknowledge the person responsible by saying, “That! Yes, that!” This interrupts the workflow briefly to draw their attention to a successful action.
  • Legendary Dallas Cowboys coach Tom Landry believed that while there are endless ways to do something wrong, each player has a limited number of “right” ways.
    • Identifying these moments of excellence was key.
    • While this approach boosted morale, Landry’s primary goal was learning. He intuitively understood that individuals improve most by seeing their personal excellence in action.
  • By drawing attention to these successful patterns already within them, you enable them to understand, remember, replicate, and improve upon those actions. This is true learning.

Replay Your Instinctive Reactions

Key Insight: To help individuals excel, share your specific personal reactions to their positive actions, focusing on the impact those actions had on you. As a team member, actively seek your leader’s detailed observations to gain a clearer understanding of your own effectiveness.

  • Focus on replaying your own instinctive reactions to their moments of excellence.
  • Avoid telling someone how “good” they are, as you aren’t the objective authority on performance.
  • Instead, describe your personal experience and feelings when their effective action caught your attention.
    • Sharing your perspective is believable and authoritative.
  • Use phrases like, “This is how that came across for me,” “This is what that made me think,” or “Did you see what you did there?”
  • By detailing your experience, you’re not judging, rating, or trying to fix them.
    • You’re simply reflecting the impact they had, as you perceived it, which provides valuable insight.
  • If you’re the team member and your leader acknowledges something you did well, ask them to elaborate on their reaction.
    • Instead of just accepting “Good job!”, ask “Which bit? What did you see that seemed to work well?”
    • We are often too close to our own performance to see its patterns clearly.
INSTEAD OF TRY
Can I give you some feedback? Here’s my reaction.
Good job! Here are three things that really worked for me. What was going through your mind when you did them?
Here’s what you should do. Here’s what I would do.
Here’s where you need to improve. Here’s what worked best for me, and here’s why.
That didn’t really work. When you did x, I felt y; or I didn’t get that.
You need to improve your communication skills. Here’s exactly where you started to lose me.
You need to be more responsive. When I don’t hear from you, I worry that we’re not on the same page.
You lack strategic thinking. I’m struggling to understand your plan.
You should do x [in response to a request for advice]. What do you feel you’re struggling with, and what have you done in the past that’s worked in a similar situation?

Never Lose Sight of Your Highest-Priority Interrupt

Key Insight: While addressing problems is important, identifying and dissecting moments of success should be a team leader’s highest priority. This focus on excellence fosters a learning environment and drives improvement more effectively than solely focusing on fixing mistakes.

  • Team leaders should recognise and act on their “highest-priority interrupt”: moments of excellence.
  • The natural instinct when something goes wrong (e.g., a mishandled call, a missed meeting, a failing project) is to stop and correct the mistake.
    • While addressing issues is necessary, it’s remediation that hinders learning and doesn’t lead to excellence.
  • Creating excellence requires a different focus. When you witness a team member doing something that truly works, interrupting their flow to dissect that success with them should be your top priority.
  • Their understanding of what excellence feels and looks like internally becomes clearer.
    • Their brain becomes more open to new information and makes connections, leading to learning, growth, and improved performance.

Explore the Present, Past, and Future

Key Insight: When helping team members with challenges or development, guide them to find their own solutions by exploring what’s working in the present, recalling past successes, and identifying future actions they already know to take. Focus on concrete “what” questions rather than speculative “why” questions.

  • When team members seek feedback or ways to improve for promotion, use a 3-stage approach focusing on the present, past, and future.
  • Present: If someone brings a problem, instead of directly addressing the problem, ask them to identify 3 things that are working for them right now – related or unrelated, significant or small.
    • This question releases oxytocin, promoting openness to new solutions and ways of thinking.
  • Past: Ask, “When you had a problem like this in the past, what did you do that worked?”
    • People often encounter similar issues, and they likely found a solution previously.
  • Future: Ask, “What do you already know you need to do? What do you already know works in this situation?”
    • Offer one or two of your experiences to potentially clarify their thinking, but assume they already possess the solution and you’re helping them recognise it.
  • Avoid “why” questions (“Why didn’t that work?”, “Why do you think you should do that?”) as they lead to speculation.
  • Instead, focus on “what” questions (“What do you actually want to have happen?”, “What are a couple of actions you could take right now?”) to elicit concrete, actionable answers.

Conclusion

  • The current business focus on “radical candour” and constant critical feedback is often presented as a sign of courage and necessary for high performance, implying that discomfort with such an environment equates to a lack of resilience and potential for mediocrity.
  • However, this approach to feedback is only truly useful for correcting objective errors in well-defined processes and can be detrimental as it doesn’t foster the contribution of unique talents or support innovation in evolving environments.
  • Individuals thrive when trusted colleagues share their genuine experiences and feelings, especially when highlighting what works well, rather than when subjected to judgment about their standing and flaws by those with unclear intentions.

Source

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