“How Can I Help?”

There’s a plastic box in the basement of my folks’ house that contains paper-clipped stacks of paper that are poems, essays, and stories dating back to my graduate-school days. They are marked up in a strange code of other people’s underlining, stars, exclamation marks, scribbled suggestions, and questions; sometimes red ink, sometimes blue, and occasionally a Sakura gel-based silver or purple. First as a student, and now as a teacher, I’ve been taking part in workshops for over two decades. For writers, critique is a love language.  

In a 2013 Harvard Business Review report, those who ranked in the top 10% of asking for feedback were in the 86^th percentile (on average) in leadership effectiveness. Yet as we explored in last week’s post, this evidently valuable process can also cause stress and trigger our basic fight, flight, or freeze responses. To get past that, we recommend that you ask for feedback on your work explicitly; be specific in your request; assume good intentions; address the difficulty of the process head-on; and go through this process early and often. 

What we haven’t fully unpacked is how to give quality feedback. A 2019 Gallup report found that only 26% of employees strongly agree that the feedback they receive helps them do better work. If you’re in the position of offering feedback, as a leader or as a peer, how can you do your best when conversation enters the sensitive territories of workplace performance? 

HONOR THE TERMS

Creative writers present drafts in a collaborative space called a “workshop,” where everyone reads the work in advance, gathers, and shares reactions and suggestions for improvement. A standard convention is that, before the draft is discussed, the writer reads a portion aloud. This refreshes everyone’s knowledge of the piece’s topics and tone. Usually, this is also a moment of discovery for the author, who may have only been considering words on the page—and who, after hearing the work out loud, almost always recognizes edits that they want to make.

What this ritual isn’t, usually, is a test of the author’s dramatic skills. Which is why, during a workshop I took part in many years ago, the students were perplexed when our teacher kicked off every workshop discussion by critiquing the poet’s literal voice: volume, pacing, enunciation. None of us, he noted, were very good at reading our poems. He told a particularly shy student that she’d swallowed her words. Meanwhile, he prided himself on his compelling (some would say hammy) style at the microphone.  

Were his concerns valid? Maybe, in the long run, for when we became authors trying to sell our poetry collections on book tour. But in this vulnerable space, knowing these texts needed a lot more work before they were ready for publication, we were students who felt ambushed. This wasn’t a test we’d come to the table prepared to be given. We didn’t take his subsequent suggestions seriously, even after he had turned his attention to our ideas and craft on the page.

If someone has been specific about the feedback that they’re looking for, honor the terms of their request. Imagine asking for feedback on your demo’s structure, and having the first thing you hear be, “Well, your fly was down.” Is that a fair observation? Sure. Will the demo-specific notes that follow register? Only filtered through a steady buzz of embarrassment. 

If you’re tasked with feedback on someone’s performance, whether a live interaction or written copy, you’ll notice a variety of issues. But in framing your response, remember to 1) first offer something positive, and 2) lead with what’s relevant to the agreed-upon goal. (To further fine-tune your style, clarify whether you’re seeking to manage, coach, or mentor.) This approach doesn’t mean quashing other observations—“Zip up” will be appreciated—but let that feedback land on the cushion of the trust and goodwill generated by what has come before. 

DEATH BY A THOUSAND “MEH”S

In a poetry workshop, I once brought in an “okay” sonnet. I knew it was merely okay because it got the kiss of death, which, in a workshop, takes the form of…quiet. Someone said, “yep, this poem has fourteen lines. And a rhyme scheme.” After that, there wasn’t much else to talk about. I’d shown off my knowledge of the form’s rules in terms of meter and sound play, but there was nothing original or inspiring about my lovelorn sentiments. My poem was merely competent, which meant Shakespeare had nothing to fear. The moment we left the classroom, my readers would forget about it. 

What’s the worst thing to hear when you’ve asked for feedback? I’d argue that it isn’t a long list of things to improve, though that doesn’t feel great in the moment. The worst thing is “you did fine,” which is what gets said to your face, or “meh,” which might be said behind your back; a shrug, or the thumb turned sideways. For the person on the receiving end, this kind of feedback doesn’t define any next steps toward improvement. And, crushingly, the response usually hints that the person providing the feedback doesn’t care enough to have a strong opinion. 

When you’re on someone’s sales team, and invested in their performance, you owe it to them to come up with more than “you did fine.” Remember that your ambivalent reaction is probably composed, on a granular level, of strong positive and negative reactions. The trick is to sift the good from the bad and articulate them separately. 

If you think someone’s pacing in a roleplay is “fine,” try:

“Your explanation of how our services work conveyed so many great insights—even I learned something! When you were talking about [Product A], I got a little impatient. Maybe you could tie in some of that information to the discussion of [Product B], which felt rushed.”

If you think someone’s draft of a press release is “fine,” try:

“I love how the opening shows value and how we’re working to address a pressing concern in the industry. In comparison, the ending trails off into describing our company’s profile and location. What’s a more compelling detail that could wrap things up?”

If someone’s researched list of prospects is “fine,” try:

“These are promising choices in terms of our ICP. I’m psyched for you to connect with [Person X] and [Person Y]. But I’m not sure you’re targeting the right personas. Go through the list with that in mind and think about who else might have decision-making power.” 

DON’T BET AGAINST THE HOUSE

When I publish my work in magazines, I encounter something that is known as “house style,” which is the rules for writing and text specific to that organization. Sometimes the rules have to do with branding (“lite” for light). Sometimes house style determines among multiple, competing rules (capitalizing titles according to Chicago style, or MLA, or AP; this nifty online tool helps us keep them straight at Maestro). Sometimes house style reinforces a relatively arcane rule, such as using small caps for acronyms longer than three letters. 

In sales, when you’re external or new to an organization, there may be something you notice right off the bat that you want to “fix.” Can you give feedback that runs contrary to how they’ve been doing things? Absolutely. They may embrace your suggestion. But the other possibility is that you’ll be overruled, even if your input is objectively correct. Before you get stuck in a cycle of making the same change, over and over, find out if there’s a house style. Consistency may be more important than your conviction of how things should be done. 

In the absence of house style, small battles are often waged in the margins of a proof between an author and her editor, or sometimes between the editors themselves, over how to handle quirky language questions. Would you write “Chris’ house” or “Chris’s house”? To settle the argument once and for all on the print edition, someone will write STET, which comes from the Latin for “let it stand.” Unlike most editorial marks composed of lines and dots and squiggles, “STET” is very difficult to erase or alter; it functions as the last word on the matter.

Even the best feedback exchanges sometimes result in a “STET.” If I’d held out for submitting only poems, essays, and stories that my creative writing workshop had deemed perfect, I’d have never submitted at all. The practical reality is that we need to move forward—the demo has been scheduled, that press release needs to go out, your AE just needs to pick up the phone and start calling—and your team’s performance will improve through a mix of reflection and action. But with best practices in mind, you’re doing your part to help them get there. 

1-2-3-4…don’t waste your time declaring thumb wars. Get higher sales, faster. Reach out at mastery@maestrogroup.co for more information on training, coaching, assessments, and more.