The Art of Feedback

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“Can I give you some feedback?”

What is feedback? Feedback is information sent to the person, or team, about its prior behavior so it can adjust its future behavior.

  • It’s not about the past - its about being better in the future

  • It can be positive OR negative (although we often view it negative)

  • Giving feedback = having an effective team, building relationships, developing trust

Radical Candor

  • Awesome book by Kim Scott (link here)

  • Care personally, challenge directly; really interesting in medicine. The average medicine group either falls under obnoxious aggression or ruinous empathy category

How to Give Feedback

  • DON’T give the S***t sandwich (open or closed faced)

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Rather than this, you should:

  1. Use a simple phrase - “Can I give you some feedback?” If they say no, DON’T give them feedback

  2. Tell them the behavior

  3. Describe the impact of the behavior; key words to try - “Heres what happens”

  4. Discuss next steps; what can they do differently next time?

Example: “When you keep making jokes about my driving, it makes me feel like you can’t find a new joke. in the future, I think you should find a different joke to make on this podcast”

When do you give feedback?

  • <7 days from incident; don’t wait until yearly evals

  • “As soon as its practical”

  • They will react the first 50 times you do it- why? because poor feedback in the past

  • Consider hot vs cold debriefs

How should i start giving feedback?

  • start with positive feedback only for 6-8 weeks, then transition to small negatives; as you build trust with teammates can do harder feedback

how often should you give feedback

  • Business research says in a 5:1 ratio (5 positives for every 1 negative)

  • Start at once daily then slowly increase

Barriers to feedback

  • Ego - remember that we are all fallible, and our worth isn’t solely in our job. Being bad at a central line does not mean bad at your entire job

  • Perceived Power Gradients - people who are up the perceived power gradient will take longer to build trust with; try to be open to feedback to

  • Timing - you may not see people often enough to give them “cold feedback” (e.g. far from the event), you want to re-consider calling someone after night shift

How to Recieve feedback

  • Number one thing: ask for feedback yourself

  • ask for specific behavior based suggestions

  • state facts but don’t over explain yourself; appears defensive

  • “What can I do differently next time?”

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Attributions

“Endless Rivers”, “Drowning in Air”, “Campfire”, “Cake”, “Blessed Time”, and “New Soul” by Ketsa is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0/ Songs have been cropped in length from original form

Rachel Mulder20211 Comment