The process of review and feedback is common in most organizations. What do employees do with the information? Most organizations and individuals don't know how to use the feedback they receive to improve their performance. As a result, nothing ever changes. Performance Specialist Joseph Folkman shares 35 principles that help most turn feedback into long-term change.
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KE: Joe, you have written and co-written several books. What prompted you to write this particular book?
JF: I had been giving people feedback for 20 years. The process is fascinating. Early on, when I was in graduate school, I worked with some of the founders of this field as my professors Bill Dyer, Gene Dalton. They created one of the first 360 feedback surveys and we started giving 360 feedback and looking at people’s reactions. I thought that with all that feedback, I would see more change, but sometimes people were fairly dysfunctional in terms of how they reacted to the feedback, their approach to dealing with it, and their whole attitude about it. The book is really a compilation of experiences and understanding those experiences. I wrote a book several years before this, called Turning Feedback into Change and since then I found some new insights that I wanted to communicate, so this new book contains those, as well some of the long-lasting principles, and I’ve called this one The Power of Feedback.
KE: Joe, what is “feedback”?
JF: It’s any kind of information about your performance. It could be verbal, nonverbal, written, or numeric. And you get it even when you are giving a presentation. One of the things I do is try to look in people’s faces see and what they are telling me. If they are sleeping, that’s certainly feedback. So, it’s the transmission of this information and the acceptance of it that makes it feedback. Ideally, you’re interested in receiving it and then, doing something with it.
KE: I think when we hear someone say that they want to give us “feedback,” we immediately assume it’s going to be negative.
JF: We do, and one of the fascinating things we found is that people are often as blind to their strengths as they are to their weaknesses.
KE: You say in your book that without feedback, we are flying blind. Tell us more about that.
JF: We did an interesting study where we looked at who is most effective at predicting a person’s strengths and weaknesses – is it the person, or others (manager, direct reports, peers)? It turns out that the worst predictor of our strengths and weaknesses is ourselves. By a factor of half, we were half as effective as any other group at predicting what we were both good at and potential weaknesses that we might have. It’s funny because you think, “Well, I should know, I was there, I saw the whole thing and it was obvious to me.” But, one of the problems is that we tend to focus our attention on others and what they are doing, and less on ourselves. So, without feedback from others, we are flying blind, to a certain extent. People who learn to gather feedback from others, interpret it and understand it, end up being much more effective than others who fail to harness the power available through feedback.
KE: Daniel Goleman’s work on Emotional Intelligence talks about self-awareness as one of the critical ingredients of emotional intelligence. I am guessing that those with higher self-awareness would do better at predicting their own strengths and weaknesses.
JF: They do and obviously not everybody was wrong. It is fascinating that generally, people who are rated more negatively, perceive themselves significantly more positively. That could be a kind of overreaction to the fact that they know that they are going to get negative feedback. It is also amazing to me that the people that were rated pretty highly tend to be more humble and self-critical regarding their own effectiveness.
KE: How do other’s form impressions about us?
JF: The way we think people ought to evaluate us is that they look at a series of traits and they weigh them equally. Based on that overall evaluation of all those traits, they form an impression. That’s the way we believe things ought to work. I usually tell people to write a little sign under that image that says, “life is fair.” As most of us know, it’s not. It’s not fair, and if you look at how people really evaluate us, it looks quite different. There is a series of traits that we have and sometimes one sticks out. Now if that trait that sticks out is what we call a fatal flaw or a significant weakness, people pay a lot of attention to that and it colors how they see us in general terms.
KE: So, a real negative trait negatively colors other potentially positive qualities, is that what you mean?
JF: Yes, and as I am talking to managers about this, I ask them the question, “If someone is really, really good at something, what is your natural assumption?” And automatically they respond, “That they are good at other things.” And then I say, “What happens if people are horrible, terrible or really bad at something, what do you assume?” They say, “They are bad at everything.” It’s called the Gestalt effect. The Gestalt philosophy is that we tend to form a whole or an impression of a whole and we try to rationalize those things. Festinger talked about it in terms of cognitive dissonance, we don’t like dissonance, we like things to be rational. Those things that stand out tend to affect us more than the other things that don’t stick out.
Now the logic here is that you can either be angry at this or you can get this process to work for you, rather than against you, by having some strength to stand out. That really helps you because it works for you. People notice that and they don’t tend to focus in on what’s wrong.
KE: I often hear both managers and employees complaining about performance review time approaching. Why is it that the prospect of giving and/or receiving feedback is so threatening to us?
JF: Think about the number of performance reviews that happen annually.Often, at conferences and presentations, I ask audiences, “Thinking back to all of your performance reviews, how many of you have had a really positive experience, please raise your hands.”
I do get a few people that raise their hands and when I ask what happened, they say, “My manager didn’t really follow the formal process.” I find that fascinating. The reality of a performance review is there are two things that people don’t like: 1. Managers don’t like to judge other people in a formal judgment process because it’s tough to do. 2. We as individuals don’t like to be rated negatively, although we do like it if the rating is good.
The typical process runs a little bit like this. You walk into your boss’s office, the boss sits down and then starts saying really positive things and you are thinking, “Oh this is good.” And then you hear that word “but” and then you hear some negative things and when you walk out of the office, the things that you are focused on relate to improving the weaknesses. Sometimes that’s a good place to focus one’s attention and energy, but certainly not always.
I was doing a series of seminars for Fidelity and we asked them to write down one thing they could each do that would significantly improve their productivity and effectiveness, one skill or ability that if they were really good at, would make a huge difference in their ability to be successful. People didn’t really have much problem writing down that one skill. It was based on this personal statement: “If I did ________ really, really well, I could really knock it out of the ballpark.” We then had them reflect back on their last performance review with their manager and we asked, about the one thing that you wrote down, how many of you heard about that in your last performance review, was that skill or ability even mentioned?
Only about 20% of the people had talked about this one critical skill or ability in their last review. I find that fascinating because this was the one area, out of all the possibilities, that the individual knew was key to unlocking greater success.
So, I think that as you think about the performance review process, there are two things: Maybe managers are not always using the right approach. It may be valuable to rethink that approach and maybe it’s not what people are not doing that they ought to work on but it’s what they need to do even better. It’s not always about what’s wrong but what could be more right. The second thing is that I think that people could be better trained in terms of delivering feedback and people could be better trained in terms of receiving the feedback and having a better attitude about the feedback process. That is the intention of that book - to look at some of those issues.
KE: There is a lot of power in that question, “What would be the one thing that would significantly improve your productivity and effectiveness?” Then, the balance of the review could be focused on discussing ways to grow that skill or ability.
JF: It’s a great question, and if we ask it more often, our performance reviews would become much more valuable. The fundamental problem is the belief that the reason why we are not more successful is because we did something wrong versus recognizing that, at least sometimes, it’s because we didn’t do things right or well enough.
KE: What would you describe as a healthy attitude for a person to have in anticipation of receiving feedback?
JF: I called a company a few weeks ago after we had lost a bid and I asked for some feedback. They said, “We can’t give you any.” That was not helpful at all and I said, “I am sorry, I have just written a few books on feedback, so I thought it might be helpful,” and they said, “You may get it from somebody who would dare to tell you.” Well, receiving no feedback at all isn’t helpful.
I have a daughter who is in music, dance, and theater and when she would sing, people would tell her how wonderful she was. She then got a very expensive teacher and I have determined that the difference between a reasonably priced teacher and an expensive teacher is that the pricy teacher gives really tough feedback. He made her cry. He was brutal and that’s why he charged so much. It took her a while to understand that he was just trying to help her; he was not being mean.
Here are a few statements from individuals I’ve talked with that reflect healthy attitudes about feedback:
I would rather receive negative feedback than no feedback at all.
Feedback can be both positive and negative, but I first consider the positive to reinforce the things I do well. I avoid dwelling on the negative and expecting the worst.
Receiving negative feedback does not mean I am the worst person that ever lived. It only means someone cares enough to tell me how to improve. If we really dislike someone, the last thing we would do is to tell them how to improve.
I believe I can change and improve. Others expect me to do something in response to their feedback, and I will find at least one thing I can do something about. I will make changes and then report to those who provided the feedback about the things I have chosen not to change and the areas I would like to change.
KE: You have had extensive experience with 360’s. There has been some discussion over the last couple of years about the value of 360’s and I am curious as to your current perspective on their effectiveness.
JF: I was with a group of 30 to 35 people in Las Vegas in May. They were leadership development and training development leaders from different companies and I asked the question, “What’s your perception of 360 - is it nice, perceptual senses from other people, or is it accurate, reliable, and predictive?” The majority of the room went with perceptual, not reliable and predictive.
Jack and I did studies for our book, The Extraordinary Leader. One of the studies looked at 360 feedback and correlating that with turnover. It was data from an insurance company call center and what we determined was that the leaders who were perceived as the least effective had the highest staff turnover – 19%. The top leaders, as determined by their 360 scores, only had 9% employee turnover. We found this over and over and over again - that there is a very strong correlation between leadership effectiveness as determined by 360-degree feedback, and turnover. You can predict it and it’s really consistent.
We got some 360 data from school principals and looked at the commitment of teachers beneath them. It basically shows that a lousy leader gets low commitment. For anybody who has ever worked for a lousy boss and is asked the question, how does it feel, they say, “I was depressed, I was angry, I was frustrated.” And guess what, if you have a lousy principal, you have a very angry, upset, frustrated teacher and if you ask teachers what would make them happy, they say, give us more money, right? Let’s say that we took these people that had a very bad leader and gave them more money. What would you get then? My prediction is that you would get a very frustrated, angry, upset and more highly paid teacher.
Another study we did was with an oil company and basically we looked at leadership effectiveness on the bottom of a graph and up on the vertical axis, we have the percentage of highly committed employees - I call these folks “gung-ho.” They’re the kind of employees that can’t wait to go out and conquer the world. They are really committed and excited and the first fascinating fact I find is the percentage of the work group that is highly committed. Look at the worst leaders in the world and they still have 15% of the work group that is highly committed, that is pretty impressive.
Think about this: what would it be like to have 50% of your work group who were highly committed, who were just gung ho? Our study results showed that leaders that were in the 80th percentile of effectiveness had 50% of their work group gung ho and then, at the 90thpercentile, that percentage went up to 60% that were highly committed. High commitment leads to higher productivity.
KE: So these determinations of leadership effectiveness came directly from 360 results?
JF: They did. We find that we can consistently predict some outcomes with 360, that in fact while it is perceptual, those perceptions become reality for the people that are working with the leader and if people think you a lousy leader, guess what? You are! And they translate to the bottom line business regarding such metrics as: turnover, customer satisfaction, profitability, engagement of employees, high commitment, all these things.
KE: So why is it Joe, when you asked those senior HR leaders about the value of 360’s, they saw them as only perceptual and nice-to-know?
JF: I think that we have not taken 360s as seriously as we would like organizations to. When people get 360 feedback, the reaction is, “Oh that’s not really me, that’s not really accurate,” and again they are not approaching the feedback appropriately. But I also don’t think that enough of these kinds of studies have been done to constantly show people that this isn’t just nice data, this is accurate and predictive and leads to bottom line results too.
KE: Are some 360 instruments better than others?
JF: I think there is a difference. I think that we can find some that are more predictive and there are some questions that are more predictive but by and large, we think that if you can ask questions appropriately, in almost any 360 given some parameters around how questions are asked and scaled and things like that, that it will be pretty predictive.
KE: It seems to me one of the criteria would be that the qualities which you are evaluating, (the competencies or attributes) are really relevant to the work experience of the leader and the employees.
JF: That makes a lot of difference in terms of improving the quality of the assessment. Scaling is also very important. We use the strength weakness scale where 5 is significant strength, 4 is strength and the middle response is competent. This helps people see more clearly where there are opportunities to improve on something they are already doing satisfactorily and also, where they may be a critical attribute that is a weakness they need to overcome or manage.
KE: Debriefing of the data must be a very important step in the process.
JF: It really is. I was with a group of managers in a large company and they, by mandate, receive 360 feedback every two years. They would get it e-mailed to them and I asked the question, “how many of you received feedback last year?” and every hand went up. I then asked, “How many of you took action on the feedback?” and about 40% of the hands went up. So that means 60% just ignored it.
KE: So they received it only by e-mail, no coaching, no conversation. That’s unbelievable to me, that a company would make the investment in 360s and then not harvest the fruits of their labor.
JF: I think the company thought that of course, these leaders would look at it, I mean, they’d be stupid not to look at it. But you know what? Their attitude was, “Well, it’s just perception, it’s not really valid. It’s a popularity contest and nobody is holding me accountable. You are the first guy that has ever asked if I would do anything with it but we are busy and we have lots of other things to do.” So it was a big waste of money and it’s too bad because it’s very valuable.
KE: I have participated in your Extraordinary Leader program and I so valued the coaching and help with interpretation that went along with my 360 debrief. Otherwise, I think most individuals are left with wondering, “What do I do with all of this?”
JF: I think that’s the other piece. It’s kind of difficult when people do look at it; sometimes it’s hard to interpret, understand it and create some meaning around it. Also, a traditional approach to working with 360 feedback is to focus in on the low scores and how to raise them to average. In our work, we encourage a different approach, which is to focus on moving the average to good scores to great, and then, also fix any major weakness that is standing in your way. We call those “fatal flaws.”
KE: What are people’s most common reactions to feedback?
JF: I have watched people through the years, you have some people that really try to completely rationalize the feedback and that’s not very helpful. And on the other side of the continuum, you have this sort of literal acceptance of every piece of feedback, which can make it hard to understand because people see things differently. Participants can get very upset when one person views them differently and they say, “How can this be, I am either this or that?” You need to find a balance between those two extreme approaches. Also, it tends to put people in either flight or fight mode. They respond to it as “interesting,” and remain detached from it, or they hold it as “terrible” and take it all very personally. Then, there’s the one extreme of analysis paralysis, in which the participant wants to dissect the data, to the other extreme, where they have preferred blindness. The key is to find a balanced approach, somewhere in the middle of each of these pairs of extremes I’ve just mentioned.
KE: So, what would you describe as a skillful approach to then responding to the feedback, once it’s been received?
JF: Well, we have actually found that it is very important to acknowledge that you have received the feedback and to thank people for taking the time, making the effort and having the courage to be honest. Also, clarify the feedback by asking, “I have received some feedback that I am ____. Can you give me some examples of how I am behaving that causes people to see me this way?” Then, let people know the issue you are working on improving (either strength or weakness) and ask them for their help to improve this issue. You can invite them to point out the next time you are acting that way, or they can identify when they are noticing progress.
We’ve done some tests around what is involved in feedback leading to change and it seems there is a lot to be said for simply saying, “Thank you, I received your feedback.” The probability of an individual changing increases if they simply acknowledge and thank the sender of the feedback. So, that is a good thing, and part of the reason for that is people took some time and effort in terms of telling you something, and when you take some time and effort to say thanks, I think, it changes people’s view of it.
If we will tell people here is what I’m working on, could you be my coach? Could you assist me? People will remind you, or they will help you to change those behaviors, and you know what, you get better. I become a better dad, because my kids keep reminding me of commitments that I have made to change.
KE: Talk to us a little about the halo effect.
JF: The halo effect refers to something I alluded to earlier. That is, if you are really very good at something, people assume you are good at many things. The same holds true in reverse. If you have a large weakness, people tend to assume you aren’t very effective at other things as well. These halos can affect our feedback and so, often times when we see somebody who is really failing as a manager, it is hard to identify in the 360 feedback what is the real problem because everything is rated as negative. Also, when people are perceived very positively, their reaction is, “I’m not this good.”
If you have a fatal flaw you need to overcome it or manage it so that it doesn’t continue to be all that other people pay attention to. On the other side, if you don’t have a strength, some distinctive quality that stands out, then you are probably missing out on that positive halo.
KE: Your research highlights some very interesting information regarding the way some leadership competencies interact. Why don’t you tell us about the non-linear relationship of some of these competencies?
JF: One of the relationships we researched was the combination of interpersonal skills and also drive for results. First, we looked at what happens when a leader is perceived as being very good at interpersonal skills alone. Of the leaders who were identified as having this one strength, 9% were identified as extraordinary leaders. Of the leaders who were identified as having one strength and that strength being drive for results, 13% were identified as extraordinary.
So, we wondered what would happen with leaders who were identified as very good at both of these competencies. Would it mean that 9% + 13% = 22% and therefore 22% of them would be identified as extraordinary? In fact, the results show that when leaders are good at both, the probability of being perceived as an extraordinary leader shot up to a whopping 66%. The increase was exponential, not linear.
We have no evidence to suggest that a strength can be taken too far. Rather, we support the idea that one’s strengths need to be balanced, as we just saw in the combination of interpersonal skills and drive for results. That is a very powerful combination for a highly effective leader.
KE: Your book The Extraordinary Leader does a wonderful job of walking through this research. It demonstrates the importance of looking at the interaction of competencies versus seeing each one in isolation. Let’s talk a little bit now about what it takes to change as a result of receiving feedback. What is really required for us to change?
JF: A couple of things as we have looked at our research. We looked at a group of people who were successful at making change happen. And then we said what did they do? And here is the checklist.
1. Their goal was clear. They had vision. They asked themselves such things as, “What does it look like to be interpersonally strong? What drives results? What does that look like? What does that feel like? Who is good at that?” So they have set up role models for themselves and really understood it and had a rich sense of it.
2. The second thing is that they have done a good job of planning and organizing that plan and have invested the time necessary. I am amazed at how people will spend weeks putting a budget together and they have a hard time spending 10 minutes writing their own action plan for their own development. It’s like they are lazy. What is your plan?
3. The third thing is that it’s time bound. Everybody knows what happens on Monday morning. There are a slew of things that hit you and if you don’t have some deadlines and force yourself to be accountable around those, you don’t tend to do anything.
4.Follow through is critical. Marshall Goldsmith has a ton of research on this. We do too in terms of knowing that for change to happen, you have got to have some followup activities. If you don’t, that commitment will be lost.
5. People need to understand that it’s important. It’s got to rank up there as being critical to do and there are just so many important things. If you don’t view this change as being critical, then it will wash out.
6. People have to feel accountable.
7. It’s great if they anticipate barriers and risks and have plans in place to address them.
KE: How many strengths does a leader need to be considered an excellent leader?
JF: This comes out of our extraordinary leader research. What we found is that when we measured people on 16 competencies or 18 or 12, whatever number you would measure them on, we find this general result that if people were good at three things and when we define good here, I should say excellent, if they had three strengths, (strengths were defined as a competency in the 90th percentile), their average overall effectiveness rating would be the 77th percentile, top quartile. So the reality of this is you don’t have to be perfect at everything to be an extraordinary leader.
There is this misperception we have that we have to be perfect at everything and that is why we always work on our weaknesses. What we found is if people can become great at something, or two or three things, their perceived effectiveness goes way up. One thing to note here, however, is that building a strength requires a different process than fixing a weakness.
KE: What process is required for building a strength?
JF: You would think that if you wanted to become good at something, you could just use the same approach as if you were trying to fix a weakness. But what we found is that when building strengths, you cannot always simply just do more of a good thing. It introduces the importance of “companion behaviors.” In our research, we looked at people that were very effective at a certain skill or certain competency and we said, are they also good at other skills or competencies? And we found that there was a very common set of companion behaviors and that developing any of these behaviors led to increased perceived effectiveness in the original competency.
For the competency of Making Personal Change, we identified through our research several companion behaviors which include: “willingness to take on a challenge” so if people start to think about improving or changing, are they in fact willing to take it on, or do they assume they are too busy to take on another challenge? Another companion behavior is clear goals and priorities. Yet another is optimism – do I believe that I can change? The competency of “Develops Others” is a companion to making personal change, as are innovation, concern for others, integrity and trust, and accepting feedback. Working on any of these behaviors will lead to an increased perception of your ability to change.
If you’ve enjoyed this interview, be sure to look for Joseph Folkman’s new book called The Power of Feedback.
