Feedback is an incredibly important moment at multiple points in the creative process because it can make things a lot better or a lot worse. Yet so many people don’t know how to give good feedback which endlessly frustrates creatives. In this episode, we will look at what makes bad feedback, how to give better feedback, and how to hear and act on all of that feedback.
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Feedback is an incredibly important moment at multiple points in the creative process because it can make things a lot better or a lot worse. Yet so many people don’t know how to give good feedback which endlessly frustrates creatives. In this episode, we will look at what makes bad feedback, how to give better feedback, and how to hear and act on all of that feedback.
SHOW NOTES:
http://thecrazy1.com/episode85
FOLLOW THE CRAZY ONE:
Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook
What's going on everybody, and welcome into the 85th episode of The Crazy One podcast. As always, I'm your host, Stephen Gates. And this is the show where we talk about how to help you become more creative, become a better leader, create more innovative work, grow a stronger career, and a whole lot more. You can listen to all the shows, get the show notes, see my essential list of creative tools, and even get some crazy one propaganda all at the crazy one calm. That's the crazy and the number one.com. Now whenever you're on your favorite podcast platform, be sure to hit the subscribe button and leave a review that way you get the latest shows whenever they come out. And people know what you really think about the show. And finally, you've got any questions you want to keep up with my general adventures doing this crazy thing that I call a job, or just get more content like this. You can always follow me on Twitter, Instagram or LinkedIn. Now, you've been listening to the show for a while and you're thinking to yourself the hell's up with a new intro. I don't I've just been thinking a lot about the show lately. wanted to change it up more, think more about what's the focus of the show. And do a few things like that. But you know what? Change is always a good thing. And you know, sometimes you just want to make sure that people are actually listening out there. Now, for today, I do a lot of shows about creativity. And I think that's because like, there are just so many different aspects that go into trying to do it. Well, I think the biggest variable in this whole process, the reason why I talk about it so much, is you, right, like, people have all these different strengths and weaknesses. And there are so many other things that make the creative process unique. It makes it really unique for you. But those variations, I think, go beyond just your creative process. And they're a part of things like your leadership style, your presentation style. And one of the things we're gonna talk about today, and today I want to talk about how do you give and how do you get feedback. Because feedback is such an incredibly important inflection point in the creative process. I think in so many ways, it can make things a lot better. But I think in if done badly, it can make them a whole lot worse. And it's such a subjective thing. So in this episode I want to talk about and really look at, like, honestly, what are some of the things because I think everybody knows, like, wherever you've gotten bad feedback, but I don't know if people have actually taken the time to think about why has it been bad feedback? I've been in as an inverse, want to talk about how do you actually give good feedback? And what are some of the best ways to act on feedback whenever you really get it? And finally, just the importance of just sort of being deliberate with all of this, because like I said, it's such an interesting and such a complicated thing. But let's start with bad feedback. Because if you're like me, then that sort of bad feedback is something you've had to contend with, for for better or worse, you know, probably for your entire career. Because I think like I said before, giving feedback on creative work is different than normal work, right? And that's really it's the opportunity. And it's the problem, because creativity is subjective. So there's not a right answer. I've talked about this before about how two plus two equals burnt sienna. But I think as a result of that, you know, the feedback that you get, can be much more affected by things like personal taste, views, and even like, just sort of personality hang ups. Now, I honestly believe that I think most people don't know that they give bad feedback. I think that maybe they just are a little bit too self absorbed. Maybe they're a little bit too insecure. Maybe it's just something that they've actually never thought about. And they've never put themselves on the other side of that relationship, or thought about really, what is their communication style that maybe there's a problem that prevents that feedback from really being understood. Now, there are a few specific things that I think always make up bad feedback. I think I've gone back and thought about what does that look like when it's been in my career? I think about the teams that I work with If and what does that sound like and look like for them whenever you can just sort of see the room. droop, right? Like you can, you can see whenever it's not working, you can see whenever it's not in a really good place. And I think that there are these few things, these kind of six things that in my experience, are the things that whenever this happens, there's always going to be problems. The number one biggest one, and I think a lot of people do this, and I think a lot of people don't necessarily think about it is and this happens a ton, especially if you're in a leadership position, like write this down, tattoo it backwards, you know, on your forehead or something. So you see it every day. But it's it's really whenever you sort of go from execution into leadership, you don't really learn how to trust your team. And a lot of a lot of everything that we do is about trust. And so if you don't trust somebody, what happens is that whenever you give them feedback, you tend to give them solutions and very, very specific direction. As in this is what is Go do this, make it this color, make it this typeface, do something. In my experience that is so damaging, it's so undermining. Because who wants to work for that person, it completely undermines my creativity, it completely gets rid of all the things that I think I'm really good at. And it just turns me into like a production monkey. Go do this, come back whenever it's done. And I think that that's the first part of it. That's not feedback. That's direction. And I think that's gonna be a big one in the theme in here is that feedback should almost feel more like coaching them direction. So whenever we think about it, mentally just sort of hold on to that model, and we're going to be able to come back to that. I think that the other thing that can happen with bad feedback is that it starts to really include personal likes and dislikes. Because here again, we touched on this just a minute ago, right? The problem with creativity is that there isn't a right answer to any problem. And so as a result, that subjectivity can come into the equation and cloud Everything. And you can spot this from a mile away, right? When you hear things like I like or I don't like. That is always the case whenever someone is then putting their personal likes and personal dislikes into the problem. This is why, since this show started, I have continued to preach about why it is important to have consumers or other things as the central source of truth for your work. This is one of the main reasons why this becomes important because it eliminates that possibility. That feedback is going to include personal likes and dislikes. And again, this is one of these places where as we've talked about research as we talked about some of these other things, we need to fight that potential arrogance that we are our customer we are who we are designing for. We're the designer we know better than anybody. It's a balance right? That's a constant theme on this show that it is a balance because you can go data blind and just do whatever the consumer tells you to and then you wonder why your work comes out like crap. But at the same point, you need to understand that you are not the end all be all opinion for everything that there is a selflessness and humility that needs to come with being really good at being creative. That can be difficult. And it's hard to know when and how to scale it, whenever it gets out of control is whenever you start to hear feedback like that. And I think similar sort of, it's similar but different. In that I think another thing that I see whenever we start to get into bad feedback, is that the feedback is directed to the designer, not the design. Because this is that like I said, it's it's it's a nuanced sort of thing. But if you start hearing your layout, your choice of colors, instead of the layout, or the choice of customer of colors, that's whenever it starts to really start to focus in like I said, on the designer, not the design, because that starts to make it feel personal. And I think that very much goes to the next thing is for me, the absolute worst feedback, especially at work is whenever it gets and feels personal. It can never be a judgment. It can never be an attack, because it can never be what feels like an indictment of your experience or taste. level, anything like that. Because again, for me, whenever it gets personal, that is a real violation of trust. And it's not just bad for the work, but it is going to destroy your team, and is going to make those people want to leave. Because what I want is I don't want people who are going to tear me down, I'm fine with honesty, I'm fine with transparency. But whenever it becomes personal whenever it feels like an attack on me and indictment of my skills, or something like that, screw this place, because that is a violation of trust. And I do not want to stick around for that. Because that is the delicate balance that we do with all this. And I think that's why feedback so often is that bridge where things get screwed up, because it's the place where trust breaks down. Because we go from conversations about goals and things that are very, very clear to suddenly a subjective discussion about what people like. And that becomes where it it becomes a real problem. And I think that you know, part of feedback problem In some of these cases can be very personal. It's about how do you deliver it? How do you do those sort of things? It's a tonal aspect to the feedback. And that that starts to take introspection, it starts to take about thinking about what Oh, how do I communicate? How do I deliver a message? How do I do those things? And that's why it gets sticky, because now it's emotional. It's personal. But I think there's also some parts of feedback that are also operational. And they're more process driven. A big one that I see is whenever feedback actually comes in too late, right, like, that's horrible feedback. Because, you know, it's one of those little things. But it is a process problem, not a personal problem. And because I think you need to be clear about what is the window for when you can give feedback, because if you don't tell people that and they just think that every given moment, every given thing whenever they walk down the hall and walk past that designer's desk and see something that that is a moment for feedback, that sort of chaos, that lack of hierarchy, that lack of structure, will absolutely screw up your next iteration in your entire process. Because it's just chaos. We never have a moment to breathe. We never have a moment to think we're constantly in this reactionary state of Okay, well, if every given moment can be feedback, everything I do has to be thought out. It has to be done. It has to be because it could be judged at any moment. And whenever you're in that state, there's no room for creativity. There's no room for failure, there's no room for thoughts, because everything is just again, like I said, in this reactionary state. But that's the part of it right, is that you need to decipher what are the parts that are personal, what are the things that is the person who is delivering the feedback that has the issue, versus what are the things that maybe we are failing operationally, and that we are not being clear about how and when we want the feedback. And in both cases, it can be bad, but ultimately, the worst combination of this, whether it's personal, whether it's operational, whether it's anything like that is feedback that just leaves you feeling lost because you know, If it's just a list of what isn't working, there's no direction, there's no understanding of the problem you need to solve. There's just a, this is what's wrong. This sucks. I don't like it. You know, you you did something wrong. It's demoralizing. You feel lost, you don't. It's like, where do I go from here? Do I need to, you know, go do a different job like that design, imposter syndrome jumps up and sits on your shoulder, and that little devil starts whispering in your ear, and all of a sudden, you're in a freefall, and you're in a spiral, trying to figure out what it is you can do. And now all of a sudden, you're dealing with personal demons and personal problems, along with the work. But I think that's, that's the ultimate thing is that if you ever give feedback to anybody, and they sort of look like a deer in headlights at the end of that, if they look demoralized, if they if you sort of sapped all the energy out of them, you've failed. And it's not that you know, they need to and I get that so often, and I'll be candid, like it really pisses me off. Because for me, it's a sign of weak leadership when people are like, Oh, you just need to take the feedback and make the best of it. You need to go make it work. Like for me that that's a failure on the leader side to be strong enough to be creative enough to be invested enough to be the person that can show up and say, okay look like yes, there's a problem. Yes, there's going to be honest, yes, maybe there's even a tough conversation here. But we're going to build each other back up, we're going to find a way forward. Because it's just easier to say, here's what's wrong. It's your problem. Go figure it out. This is another one of these themes that keeps coming up over the day. Right? They they are they are the problem. They are the thing that is doing something wrong. It is not that I'm a bad leader. It's not that I my problem is not that I give bad feedback. It's them. They aren't good enough, they aren't taking it right. They aren't looking at it the right way. And in the end, it becomes really demoralizing. So if that's sort of what bad feedback looks like, then the next natural question for me is then what the hell does good feedback look like? And I think that whenever I start to think about good feedback, for me, it starts to really kind of fall into two different camps. Because I think that there's the part about how do you give good feedback in the fact that if I'm going to talk to a peer, I'm going to talk to a team, I'm going to talk to a superior like anybody like that. What are the things I need to think about so that I'm sure that I'm as constructive, as creative, as open as collaborative as I can be. And then I am additive to the process, I'm making things better and stronger for me being there. I'm not just being this sort of pointless pain in the ass that runs around pointing out everything that's wrong. But then there are two parts to that equation, because then there's the other part of as the person who is receiving the feedback, how do you hear it? How do you act on it? And how do you actually internalize that? Because I think that's the other missing piece for me. That's the Rosetta Stone that rarely in this conversation do I ever hear it being really talked about? Because so often we just talk about well, here's what I don't like, here's a bad feedback is here's what it is you should be doing even as I again did research for the show tons about tons of articles essentially saying the same thing about how do you give good feedback, but almost nobody kind of saying, Okay, how do I receive it in here it. But as we start to talk about what is good feedback look like, like, what does it sound like? A lot of it goes back to the problem statements because if one of the problems that we talked about is that feedback focuses on the solution, then the antithesis to that the response to that would be that you need to speak in questions, not in statements. Because, you know, look, if I want to be able to influence the work of my peers of my team against my boss or something like that, then I have to develop the trust with that person. And yeah, it'd be simpler to just speak first. And to say, what it is that wrong to give them the answer. And like I said, just to speak in solutions, but it, it hurts the work. It's not nobody wants to be a part of that, where it's just like, here's my definitive opinion and prove me wrong. It's a very black and white sort of statement to be in. It's a very emotionally fraught kind of place. And it crushes creativity crushes the discussion, because it's like, I'm right. Somebody challenged me. So I think that you know what? We need to be able to do is whenever you have these conversations, you've got to give people space to work out the problem on their own. You've got to let them bring their experience to leverage all the smart people that you've hired. Because I think that tends to be the secret sauce. Whenever I look at all the companies that everybody tends to love, the Facebook's the Nikes, the apples, the Googles, like, whenever the company is you love, they do this crazy thing where they hire really smart people, and then they trust them. And it's the trust one part that I think most people don't do. But it also gives you the ability to show up and instead of saying make the button this color, instead of saying do this, or do something like that, what you do is you show up, and you say you speak about things in questions in, in problems in insights in areas to explore, because what you're doing is you're giving them something specific to go work against, but you're leaving them enough space and enough freedom and giving them the respect to bring their own approach to the problem. So that whenever you look at it, instead of saying make it this color, do this with the button, say things like this is the problem that we're not getting solved, right? I have the eyeline through this isn't working, I don't understand what my next steps should be that those are the sort of things where it's like, Look, what I need you to do is to go solve that problem and come back with multiple different ways of doing it. Because most of the time, the team will surprise you, no matter what the maturity is of your team, no matter what it is you're doing, in my experience, the team will surprise you because they're going to come back with that moment with that challenge. And to be able to then look at Okay, great, how do we start to solve this problem? Now, you may be sitting through yourself and saying, Steve would love to trust the team would love to be able to do that doesn't always work. And I would say you, your listener are absolutely right. And to go back and refer to the episode that I did on the 10 8010 rule 10% of the time, leave the team completely alone. 80% of the time speaking insights and problems 10% of the time, whenever I am out of time, patients political capital, or budget and like we just have to get something done, where then I am going to tell them what it is to do. But it's the balance in that. It's the two nuclear options that leaving them alone and telling them what to do are only 20% of my total time and that's basically because something has gotten so screwed up, that that has to happen. But again, I think that that turns into a coachable moment about how do we not end up there again. And a lot of that also then comes back to understanding that feedback should not be one dimensional. Because for me, whenever I try to think about good feedback, whenever I try to think about how am I responsible steward of my own opinion, of my position of my title of all those sort of things, because to some people, right, like design can feel like this subjective thing, right? Like, where everybody just sort of runs around and picks their favorite color picker, favorite typeface and like magic, and it's like, boom, and all of a sudden, the project is done. And like, we're wearing berets, and like, I don't know, whatever people think. Right. But I think a lot of people sort of think that's what the creative process is. But we know that's the farthest thing from the truth. And I think that, you know, successful teams, successful creatives are able to incorporate multiple different styles of feedback and multiple sources of truth, to be able to make their work better. Because the thing is, is that if all I'm getting are these like, purely subjective comments that isn't bringing a whole lot to the table for me, right? And it's not really helping me improve my design. So for me, it's really starting to think about, I think that there are three types of feedback, all of which have pros and cons. I think that yes, you can get what I would say is objective feedback, non biased feedback, I would again, this is why I tend to turn to consumers as the source of truth. Because I think if you talk to enough of them in the aggregate, you will get a non biased objective opinion about the work, because they will tell you if it works, or if it doesn't, and that is what I'm looking for, is that the moment I will argue the moment anybody in design and product and engineering, anybody in the company starts to work on something to create something, your objectivity at some level gets compromised, because you are both creating and trying to be objective at the same time. The two very rarely can ever coexist in the same place. So what do we do we try to counterbalance that within database feedback. And I think that can like some of the most successful So creatives, and some of my best work has been database, right? Like you bring that in to help improve your work to help improve your process to see what is working to say how many people did click on that button, how many people dropped off the page. That is feedback to right like that is actual feedback on your work. And I think that that, for me is a better way for creatives to think about how data is incorporated, that it is a feedback point. Now, again, it should not be the be all end all. And we've talked again before about why you can go data blind if that's all you look at. Because if you think that the data is the sort of end all be all that because they're doing this, that's exactly what we have to do. Again, it is one form of feedback. And then the last one, which again, I think this is the problematic one, as we think about this is the opinion based feedback, right? It is based on my experience based on my gut. But I think that there is a place for that. Because this and this goes it's the quote that everybody beats to death right but the Henry Ford quote of if he would have gone out and asked everybody, whatever they want Whenever he was making the car, he made a faster horse, right? Like That was an opinion based feedback point, right? Like we can do better, we need to come up with a different form factor. And opinion based tends to be the innovators feedback form, right. And I think this is where the Elon Musk's and the Steve Jobs like those people sort of screw everybody else up, because they feel like they are somehow empowered in their want to have a biography written about them in a same heroic tone someday, that you need to be the end all be all opinion. And that is just not what I think most creativity is it is much more team based, but to think about and to look at, how are you balancing these three types of feedback, right? The objective, the non biased, that we're going to go out there and look to somebody who is not invested in this work to give us feedback on what this is, again, research consumers tend to be a great source of this data, because again, there is a very clear ability to see if the page is working, what the numbers are doing. Is it increasing decreasing? Is it going against the KPIs all that sort of business speak MBA one One stuff, right? Look at that. But then there's also, like I said, the ability to have that opinion based in there, it is just that no one version of this feedback can be the only one. For me, it's about bringing all three of these in there and find the balance between them. Because I think we're gonna be able to do that, then you can start to find balance, you can find truth you can find or at least what passes for truth in your work. Because it's whenever you get down to just one of these, you can go down the wrong path. And like I said, there are pros and cons to all these but for me, whenever you do it in the balance, that's whenever feedback starts to work really well. Now, we talked before about the problem with all this is people. And a lot of it for me is we need to think about the tonality of how do we talk to other people, the tonality of whenever we're talking about creative work, what are we doing? And for me, it's trying to develop and think about the ability to critique impersonally but with honesty, focus on the work right Don't criticize the person. And, and also, I would also kind of say like whenever you do this, you need to give feedback. And again, I'll go back to that word Honestly, it can't be too negative and can't be too positive. Because of the negative whenever we said it's just, you know, here's all the problems becomes really demoralizing. But that negative or the positive part of it for me, I think can be interesting, too. One of the things in a lot of different business schools, I read a lot of different articles. I think even Stewie made fun of it on an episode of family guy was the compliment sandwich, which is whenever I'm going to say something really positive. I'm going to put whatever the critique is in the middle. And then I'm going to finish by saying something else that's positive. So I'm going to sandwich the real critique between two positive things, so you feel better about everything. I personally think this is bullshit. And I don't think it works, right. Because in my experience, whenever I've watched this with teams, whenever I've even tried it, there's sort of two outcomes that I think happened a lot of the times and neither ones are ones that you want, and whenever it happens, they're very hard to correct easily. The one is I think that the person that you're giving the feedback to, they're going to fail to act on, what is the criticism or the negative feedback because it just sort of gets lost in like the general positive vibe, right? Like we started with, you're doing great. And then we ended with, you're doing great. And like there was this thing in the middle, that maybe I need to work on. So I think that understanding the magnitude of that sort of gets lost in all of it, right? So like the percentages, and again, the balance is off on that. Or I think depending on anything, you know, there's a decent percentage of creatives that will fall victim to this, is that they just sort of feel like you're being patronizing, right? Because it's like, you're trying to sugarcoat it like, why can't you just tell me what the problem is come out and just like have the spine to say whatever the problem is, and then let's deal with that. And then whenever you don't do that, then they just feel like you aren't being honest, or you aren't being straightforward. So that's what I said is for me, I believe in honesty, and I believe in approaching all this as a conversation, not as a statement because for me, honesty is always the foundation. of everything because I still remain a really huge believer in that when I'm gonna give somebody feedback when I'm going to do something, the first thing I do is reverse the roles, that if I was the person, I was going to receive this, and they were the one that was going to tell me what what I want, what would I respect? What would I be okay with whatever this happens, but I still want to be a part of this team. And for me, the thing that I come back to is honesty. Because even when the conversation is hard, even whenever the feedback is hard, what happens at the end of the day is I will respect someone who is being honest about it, and then we can have a discussion about it. As opposed to somebody that's going to be somebody that's going to try to like again, sandwich it do all that other. Like, let's just have a real conversation here. And maybe that's just my makeup. But for me, like I said, even the times that I've had to get hard feedback whenever I've had to hear things that I didn't want to in the end, the thing I'll come back to is I will respect the honesty I respect the person who stood up and said it because then we can have a discussion that I can kind of really understand how do I want to respond to that? But a lot of this is also I think, thinking As we think about impersonality, it's thinking about maybe a little more nuanced things, right. And it's impersonally, not in personality on where the hell that came from. But for me, I like part of it is to think about whenever you give criticism to do it in a passive voice, and some of this maybe gets a little bit nerdy, a little bit too nuanced, but I think it's important. Because I think what, what you want to do is say things like, why was it designed this way? Instead of saying something like, why did you design it this way? Because in the end, we're talking about the product, we're talking about the output of this, what we're talking about the end state of something, as opposed to whenever asked, why did you design this? Whenever I asked you that it feels much more personal. It almost feels accusatory, right, it feels, it has a very different tone to it. So I think even trying to think about using that sort of a passive, almost constructive voice or saying something like instead of you. It's a one word difference, but it's a one word difference that I think can make a huge impact on what it is You're doing? And then the other thing I would say is like, I think that for me, it is also important to to build somebody back up. Because I think the best feedback is honest, it may even be brutal. But it doesn't stop there. Because in many cases, I think you really want to look at for that creative. What are the strengths that they have? What is what is the way forward, that we are going to work on this together? If it's really harsh, maybe even how we're going to work on it together? How are you going to be there for them? How do you build them back up and make them believe that they can make it better? You don't want to soften the blow that there is a problem. But at the same time, you don't want to just simply strip somebody down to their core, and they just kind of go Hey, good luck, figure it out. All right. And I think this is this is that sort of moment, where that line between feedback and coaching bleeds. Because in many cases, you know if you're somebody peer in many cases, you know, if you're somebody whose leader, feedback is that coachable moment, it's the moment to be able to give feedback. It's that moment to be able to say, hey, look, we're in this together. Hey, here's the plan. It's A moment to be able to again, like I said, to build somebody back up and not just leave it as, hey, here's the problem. This is simple way to eat the lazy way. But in my in that that was the change that made the difference for me is whenever I started to think about feedback, more like coaching, as opposed to direction, that that just simple little change made a huge, huge difference for me. Now then, just sort of like what we did a minute ago, right? We we had talked about kind of the personal part of feedback, but then we'd also kind of talked about the operational piece of it. And I think that there's there's probably a moment or two here as well, that I think is worth starting to think about some of the operational things of again, what is good feedback look like? And and some of this, I don't know what I struggled with, should this be a bad one should be a good one. Does it sit in the middle of what do I do with it? But I think a lot of it is also some sort of understanding in the moments where feedback are being given, especially in a group to be thoughtful about how do you set that Up to be successful. And there are two things in particular were, like I said is I think it may be a bit of a negative, maybe a bit of a positive. But there are these sort of moments where I think you need to be deliberate and thoughtful about how do you set up, like I said that the the arena, the moment the place where feedback can kind of come in and be a part of this. Now, the first one is, I think it's common. I see it a lot, right, that if you're in a room of people, you're talking about a particular project, you're talking about something. A lot of the time, you're gonna see like two people almost sort of start to hijack the conversation. Maybe they just really want to be heard, maybe maybe they're just the two people who talk the most, maybe they really want to go deep on like a specific point. But the problem is, whenever that happens, it's a derailleur. And I think a lot of it for me is also thinking about in being deliberate about how do we sort of set up these moments? How are we deliberate in how we work. Now, again, there are similar sort of things that I've done in other shows whenever we talked about in the episode about the seven rules. For brainstorming, this is exactly the same sort of thing. And honestly, I think you could take the seven rules for brainstorming, and you could use them for feedback as well. But there's this sort of moment that we need to be able to set some ground rules. Because I think the reality is I don't, I'm dealing with some complicated things here, right, like, on the one hand, I don't want to make a whole bunch of changes based on what one person thinks. And the other point, I also know that feedback windows are finite, because we'd said feedback comes too late. Not a good thing. So knowing that this is finite, knowing that maybe I only have the team for 15 minutes, 30 minutes, 60 minutes, whatever this is, the clock is ticking. I can't afford the guitar can't afford the loud mouth can't afford the person who's just showing up because they want to hear themselves talk. Right? So that part of it for me is the again, start to think about rules that if you have these sort of issues where people are dominating conversations where you're going down rabbit holes, work differently. Don't make it just an open conversation. do things like actually have everybody go down and around Write down their feedback. Write down as much as you want, write down two things, write down 200 things, right, like whatever that is. But then what I'm going to do is I'm going to go around the room, and I will use a timer. I know it may sound a little overkill. But what I want to do is I want to give each person the same amount of time to be able to talk, maybe it's three minutes, maybe it's five minutes, like, again, depending on whatever the room is how deep the feedback is, whatever that is, I want to be able to give them a certain amount of time to give their feedback. And then I want to create another window for people to respond. But what I can do then is I can timebox what everybody is doing. It keeps us from going down a rabbit hole because I know that at a certain amount of time, like if you want to go down to one, do one piece of feedback and go down one rabbit hole for your piece of feedback have at it. But in three minutes or five minutes that is going to be done. You're not going to suck other people into it. This is not going to be just this road to nowhere sort of way of working. So again, there's this aspect of kind of social engineering that I think is an incredibly important part of creativity. You need to be able to think about if there are these sort of issues, how do you actually make it better? Now another one that I see a lot, right, like the the people who dominate is definitely one problem. But the other one is whenever you just get where you just go off topic, right, like maybe you get bad feedback, maybe it's just, you're getting a lot of feedback, but it's not what you need. Because there are different levels, different types of feedback. And, and a lot of it like I said, some of it could be that we want data, we want evidence, we want objective, you know, maybe this is just early on. And we just want you know, feedback on the concept. And maybe this is about to be able to actually get handed over into engineering. So we need like the real finite, just tuning little feedback. But the thing is, is that don't assume that everyone knows what type of feedback you are looking for. And don't assume that they know the goals of what that meeting is be clear about what are you trying to achieve, right. Where are we in the process? What type of feedback are we discussing are we like expecting to I've done this really successful and it works really well with teams in the past that whenever they would show up to a design review, whenever they would show up to something, we would ask them to be declarative about where they are in the process, and what type of feedback are they looking for? And then to do a recap of if we gave feedback last time, what was that feedback? How was it acted on what worked and what didn't, right? Like, give us a recap so that we can start there, because then that gives us context, it gives us grounding, we are very clear about where we're at in this and where everyone in the room is very clear about what it is that we are there to communicate. And then anything that deviates from that, you then have the ability to say, Hey, remember we said we are just looking for conceptual feedback, we are looking for fine detail feedback we are looking for because we are here in the process, and anything that doesn't align to that. Because if I'm about to hand over to engineering, no, I don't want to have a conversation about how you think the concept is all wrong. And we need to be going in a different direction. Great. Write it down, stick it in the backlog, boy Come back to it. That's not what we're doing here in this meeting. So again, to be deliberate about the way that you work to set context and to use recaps, and to be specific about the type of feedback you want. I think that operationally those sort of two approaches, so that sort of social engineering and setting context that will also really help you create more good feedback, because here again, I think that there's this sort of trap that for too many of us, we feel like it's a problem with the individual, that that person is too egotistical. That person doesn't understand what's going on that person again, it's the them. But my challenge to all of you is, are you setting them up for success? Are you giving them the context? Are you giving them the grounding? Are you giving them the structure? Because then if they're going against that, anyway, then yes, it is absolutely an individual problem. And then yes, that absolutely is a moment where you want to go and interact with that person and do whatever it is to try to fix it with them. But give them the benefit of the doubt. Don't just blame them for it. Look at your structure. Look at what you're doing and then act on that. Now the last part, whenever you're actually giving feedback, there are two words that are so powerful. And I will argue that they're probably two of the least used words whenever we do work. And whenever we give feedback, is that whenever you're working with people, be humble, be grateful, and say, thank you. Because again, whenever we are doing this work, whenever you're doing anything creative, it's personal. It is something that people are investing time they're investing sweat, like, hopefully, this is something that they really care about. Just to recognize that work, to recognize the effort to be able to say thank you goes a really long way. This is something that I personally have really struggled with in my career, because for me, what I do is I'll go into a meeting, and for me, great is assumed, right? Like if we're doing great work, that's where we should be. That's what the team should be doing. And for me, I have this arrogance, blind spot stupidity, whatever the hell you want to Right where I just have that assumption that this is what it is we should be doing. And so I was grateful, I was thankful I was happy where the team was. But all that said in my head, and last time I checked, nobody psychic. Everybody has the Jedi mind trick is on the frets. So the ability to say it out loud to say thank you to be appreciative to understand what it is that they're doing and do those sorts of things goes a hell of a long way to making it better for everybody. Now, finally, let's talk a little bit about how do you actually hear and act on that feedback that right, because the reality is, is that the work isn't over whenever that critique session ends. It's just not. The next step, obviously, is to address the feedback that you heard. But I think part of it is also knowing that you're not because for me, I think there's a tendency to be emotional and say, like, Look, I'm gonna respond right away. I want to be able to offend my work. I want to like you just have that sort of thing because again, this is personal. But I think it's really important in hearing and acting on it and hearing is the first part of it, because I think you need to give your brain and also candidly your team's brain a little bit of time to absorb what got discussed. And I think, you know, in preferably only starting to address it later that day, the next day, to be able to actually be thoughtful about what this is, as opposed as opposed to just going into this like knee jerk. They said they didn't like this, I'm gonna go prove that, like, Look, sometimes that works for some people. But I think as a part of the creative process, the ability to give yourself time, right, like we talked about this with confidence. And I think that it's a similar sort of thing here, but to a lesser extent. You need to give yourself a moment, to be emotional, right to take it in to see the forest for the trees, and to be able to come back with fresh eyes and say, was it as good as I thought it was what is as bad as I thought it was? What was it really like, whenever I've had a moment to breathe and just sort of let it absorb. Now what's really key to that is to be able to catch that feedback, I think in the most basic form, but I would say is, you know, to write it down. I think just because tangibly, it says something when you are in the room it is, it is a way of saying that you appreciate what the feedback is that you're getting, without actually saying it in those words. But for me that the bigger part of it just sort of the symbology of it, is the fact that it helps you remember the details later on. Right. And I think it's important that you collect all those details that you need to be able to act on, don't just sort of take innocuous notes. I mean, one of the things that I really enjoy is also the ability to record it, whether it's sticking my iPhone on the table, and just hitting like an audio record. So I can go back and listen to it. I found that to be incredibly helpful in some cases, or the ability to take notes to record the video call to do something so that there's a fairly accurate record of what actually happened there. But I think a lot of it is also sort of understanding that whenever you go into this and you want to be able to hear what that is, is to really do it with a mindset. Like patience and respect. Because I think what what you don't want to do is you don't want to go in and you don't want to be emotional about it, you don't want to try to over interpret it, you don't want to almost sort of like contradict in your mind. And because I think the thing is, is that look, at the end of the day, whether you agree the feedback or not, that person is taking the time to engage with your work, right? They've showed up, because the reality was that they truly didn't care they would have been there, right. So for me that there is a patient centered respect that they are due, because they showed up to be able to do that, that deserves patience and respect, but also for the fact that they are sharing their opinion. And for me, and sometimes this is really hard to do, even if it is an opinion that I do not agree with. There is truth, and it is deserving again of patience and respect in the fact that it is their opinion. And I need to understand where does that opinion come from what is driving this, what is putting this into play, and making them say this? And again, I think that the ability to To show up with that style of work to be able to show with that kind of patience and respect for what people are doing, makes everything better. Because you know, in many cases, you're then kind of showing what should good look like. But the other part of that, it's not just simply saying, like, I'm going to be patient and respectful. And we've talked about this multiple times, most notably whenever I did the episode on improv about active listening. Because for feedback to really work, right, you need to make sure that you're wholeheartedly listening and paying attention to what is being said, much like in brainstorms. With a lot of feedback sessions, what I see is that people who are listening not for the feedback, not sort of shorting up hope and showing up wholeheartedly and really trying to understand what's being said, what they're doing, is they're listening for the silence. So they can jump into defend the work, tell that other person while they're wrong, understand and point out to them with the insight was that they have missed, right, you're in such a rush to judgment, that you're not listening. Right? Take those critical points and listen to them, consider them, and do it with an open mind. Because, look, even if you need to absorb that feedback for a while, let people know like, Look, I need to think about that. And I'm going to get back to you, if you are prone to being overly emotional, if you're prone to not taking that feedback, particularly well understand that then that is your problem. And to say, look, I need to be able to think about this, I need an hour to I need to come back tomorrow, like at some point, let me think about this. And let's come back and have a discussion whenever I'm gonna be in a better place. Because that's the other problem with this is that, you know, whenever you respond to feedback, even if it's the right message, even if you're in the right place, but it's done in the wrong style, it still lands wrong. So again, the ability to show up and actively listen, to really try to understand not just, you know, to try to listen for the things that agree with my viewpoint, or to listen to the things that I need to defend and shoot down. Again, very, very different. But I think in a lot of cases, there's also like, Look, if you don't understand things, and I see this happen so many times and it's so frustrating. If you don't understand something or Like if, if you get a piece of feedback that makes no sense. If somebody's saying something and you think the rationale behind it is complete Bs, right? Ask them to clarify. Right? Get rid of that ambiguity in doubt, right? Ask for specifically, you know, something around that. And to be able to get them to clarify what is going on. Because also in many cases, we may be a little bit afraid to do that, because what's the worst feedback you can get? I suck. This sucks. I don't like it. I don't like the color. I don't like the typography. I don't like the way it looks. I can do nothing, nothing with any of that feedback, right? Because I don't know where to start. Don't know what it means. What don't you like? Do you really not like it? are you just saying that like, so again, asking for clarification, digging past that becomes really, really important. But I think the other part of this too, is to do it in a way that isn't defensive because that's that's what I said a minute ago about the delivery of this message, right? Because defending something in many cases, you know, and again, it depends on the tone depends on the person depends on the team. This isn't always an absolute, but it made sense. cases that defense will come across as adversarial, right shuts down that further discussion. And as opposed to asking somebody to explain something, right, asking for that clarification, that is something that is much more neutral, it leads to discussion, it leads to mutual understanding. Those are the things that we want, right? I don't want this sort of pissing match about who's Right, right. We've talked so many other episodes, that hopefully your lip synching along at this point about why being right is all wrong, right, that's just not something you can do. And I think a lot of it then also is to just, you know, to, to really go out and try to make some changes, right, and to try to get more feedback, because I'll also see a lot of a lot of creators and again, this is the problem. This is an us problem and not a them problem, where we don't want the criticism. We want our perfect little baby this this amazing little thing that we've created to somehow live on intact and unaltered. And everybody say that it's beautiful and fantastic and perfect, and everybody's gonna love it. And that's really the case and that is not the how this this world works. Right. So What do we do? Whenever we feel that way, whenever we have this perfect little like thing that we've created, we don't want anybody to talk bad about it. But it needs to be the opposite, right? Try to break your ideas. Go out there, iterate on it, try to find more critiques, find more feedback, find ways of like getting the team to find the weak spots in it. That's where the best work comes from, is in those moments where you're able to have that honest conversation about what's going on there. But a lot of this, right, like just to put a bow on all this. A lot of this is is sort of what I've said about a lot of this is that it's not these big surface issues, right? That's why it was so many of these shows, it never is the big obvious thing that you think, in this case, for me, it's really important to be deliberate about a couple of really important things. Because at the end of the day, the best feedback, the most useful feedback is going to come from somebody that I trust because people who care about their team people who care about you Other people who are showing up in saying this could be better. And hey, here's a way to be able to do that. Or this is what the problem is or like, whatever that is, right? Trust is the real byproduct of great feedback, right? And people I don't trust tends to be the byproduct of bad feedback. It's the foundational thing that sits underneath all of this. It's the thing that goes on spoken unseen, in many cases, and not understood, that you know so much about feedback is about trust, if it is an opinion that I trust, if it's somebody that I trust, because again, if you think about that right now about whenever I get feedback from people who are the people I love to get it from, who are the people I really respect whenever they give it to me, the next thing you're gonna think of is that is somebody who I really trust. And then oftentimes the people who give you the bad feedback, it's the executive that you're never around so you don't trust them. It's the leader who doesn't really understand what's going on, so you don't trust them. It's the person who comes in and tries to be in charge and want to be able to give this big sweeping feedback. Don't trust them. It's the foundation that sits underneath all of this and so being deliberate and try and talking about it. I think becomes a really important part of that. But a lot of that is also then the ability for you to develop understanding. Right? If I hit on this before, right, I think it's really important that you need to understand where other people are coming from. Don't be blinded by your own arrogance and your own opinion that because I think this I did this, I created it, so it must be right. And that anyone else who doesn't agree with this is wrong. Because again, now you are the person that the other person has no reason to trust. Because if that's gonna be your opinion, that either you know you completely agree with me, or I don't want to hear from you don't trust that person, you know, because there's no understanding there. But a lot of it for me is also how do you create structures because I think you know it with all this stuff. There's an operational as I operate. You need to operationalize, there we go, whoo. Like you need to operationalize. It's been a really long day. You need to be able to operationalize some of these things and part of it is also what do you do if two different opinions are conflicting or there's conflicting feedback Right, what do you do? most teams that I go to most teams that I talk with don't have an answer to that question. And that is a huge problem. Because whenever the discussion gets too personal, like coming up with a way to be able to solve that, to be able to think about that, as some way to have a source of truth for that becomes really, really important. And what I will tell you is that, in my experience, having some like, I don't know what punching contest about which one of us is right, or trying to see which one of us can interpret our persona, to make it make the most sense is not the way to do it. Right? You need a source of truth. And again, for me, this is why going back to customers is such a big part of this because if you put it in front of somebody, and they say yes, I like it, or No, I don't. It's not about who's right. It's about what does the customer want. And that realignment on that feedback becomes incredibly valuable. But a lot of it is also look, if you're the one who's giving feedback, take the time to get feedback on your feedback. Whenever you get to the end of a meeting. whenever you've talked about a bunch of stuff, go around to people afterwards and say was that useful? Again, good. start, stop, continue do something on it to say, hey, Was that good? What can I do better? And that's what I said, Because for me, looking at feedback, more as coaching, than feedback and the fact that I need to coach other people, and they need to coach me, the mindset and the underpinning on that works way, way better than if it's much more about leadership and feedback and those sort of things that tend to lead to more finite discussions. And so again, I think, if you can go into it, that mindset, that you're there to help give somebody some feedback, and then to help coach them, they'll build them up to send them off, more empowered and better than whenever they walked in. That's the definition of great feedback. So as always, hopefully you like the show, right? So you know, subscribe to the podcast, leave a review, head over to the crazy one calm, there'll be the complete Show Notes for this episode, you know, other articles, things like that. It's always the crazy one and the crazy one and the number one, calm to be able to look at that. Like I said, you got more questions. There are other things you want to talk about. on social media, you can like the show on Facebook, all that sort of stuff. As always, everybody in downing legal wants me to remind you that the views are just my own. They don't represent any of my current or former employers. And finally, I say it every time because I mean it every time. But I know that time is truly the only real luxury any of us have. And I'm always incredibly, incredibly humbled. You won't spend any of it with me. So go out, give people some feedback, build some trust, to help a little bit of understanding, try to make things better than than where you've left them. And really understand how critical that feedback is. And as always, while you're doing it, stay crazy.