B (3:14)

This is like an annual evaluation or evaluation for promotion, or you're just giving a clear description of someone's performance.

A (3:24)

And I think this should be done episodically, annually, semi annually, maybe quarterly. And that is the how well am I doing? And we should just be super crisp and clean about that. The other one, which is where most of the havoc is caused, is on the improvement oriented feedback. And this is feedback we're giving to each other. When done well, we can help each other achieve a better grade. So if I think of my job as a professor, I give you evaluative feedback at the end of the term. I give you improvement oriented feedback every day of the semester to help you earn a better grade. You ask which one can make a bigger difference in someone's life? It's not even close. The improvement oriented feedback is how you change lives.

B (4:12)

So that's our orientation for this conversation, is we are saying words to people to help them improve and get better at the job they have.

A (4:22)

That's exactly what improvement oriented feedback is.

B (4:25)

All right, so how do I do it?

A (4:27)

So when we say words to people to help them get better, if we were going to color code those words, we could probably split them up into positive reinforcement and constructive advice. Positive reinforcement is when you catch me doing something right so that I will do it more often. And here's the thought behind that. I did a hundred things today. I don't know which 10 were the differentiators, but if you tell me which 10 are the differentiators, I'll do them more than 10 times tomorrow. So if you catch me doing things right so that I can do it more often will be better tomorrow than I am today. That's positive reinforcement. Constructive advice is you catch me doing something wrong so that I will do it differently tomorrow. Each of them leads to a better tomorrow. One is do more, the other is do differently.

B (5:24)

So how should we think about these two categories?

A (5:27)

When you catch me doing something right, it feels pretty good. And it's probably a good idea to do it in public if you can. Not just because it feels good, but so that everyone else knows what good looks like. So imagine if every time I gave you positive reinforcement, I did it in private, but I had eight people on my team. Well, now I have to have a private conversation with all eight about that thing. Much better to catch me doing something right in public so that you can open source what grade looks like. Now I have to do it with enough specificity so that you know to do more of it tomorrow. So here's what positive reinforcement does not look like. Good job yesterday, Ann.

B (6:11)

I do a lot of that. Nice work.

A (6:15)

Nice work. You're welcome to say it, but you should just consider that fodder. It has nothing to do with feedback. Improvement oriented feedback helps people get better. If you tell me, nice job, I have no idea what was nice about it. I. I have no idea what to do more about tomorrow. And you might even inject a little performance anxiety about how the heck am I going to do this again if I don't even know what the secret was to success today.

B (6:40)

Got it. So you want to give me this positive reinforcement with enough detail that I can action it and do it again tomorrow and then do more of it if that's going to help.

A (6:52)

That's exactly right. I also need to do it with enough sincerity that you believe me. Okay. Sometimes when people feel like they have been in a positive reinforcement deficit, they just start making up stuff.

B (7:06)

Right.

A (7:06)

They'll just. And we can tell it's insincere. And as we've talked about before on this show, insincerity leads to quite a negative spiral. I don't believe you. I don't trust you. And things just deteriorate from there. So we often say that improvement oriented feedback has to be sincere and specific and ideally public.

B (7:28)

That's my preference.

A (7:29)

Positive reinforcement should be public and so that everyone else knows what good looks like.

B (7:36)

Now, human beings have a negativity bias.

A (7:40)

Yes.

B (7:41)

So often it occurs to me to give feedback when I am noticing that someone is doing something that I don't want them to do.

A (7:48)

Yeah. So let me say a word about constructive advice and then how to handle exactly what you just said. In contrast, constructive advice, because I'm catching you doing something wrong and that can be emotionally charged. That should be done in private. Constructive advice should almost never be done in the moment because one, I have to make sure we can be private. And two, I want to do it at a time that you can hear it because it's an emotional message, not at a time that I want to say it, because I can tell you when I want to say it. Right now I want to say it right.

B (8:27)

I want to because it's uncomfortable and I want to discharge the discomfort.

A (8:31)

And it will also be cathartic to me. I want to hold you accountable in the moment. And when you do that, I just want you to realize that you not only are not going to make that person better, you have a pretty good chance of making them Worse. So constructive advice should be done at the right moment for the person you're giving it to. It should be done in private, and it should not be infected by the simultaneity of positive reinforcement. What I mean by that is that if I'm going to give you constructive advice, I shouldn't start making up vague positive things just to make me feel better because I don't really have the courage to tell you the thing.

B (9:19)

Are you challenging the feedback sandwich, Professor?

A (9:22)

I'm challenging. The feedback sandwich has had worldwide distribution and it's wrong for so many reasons, but one of which, maybe the most dangerous part, is that there should be a simultaneity of positive reinforcement and constructive advice. It's wrong. There shouldn't.

B (9:39)

But, but can I, can I, can

A (9:42)

we talk about this for a second?

B (9:43)

Because you just told me that I should solve for the recipient of my feedback to be in an emotionally stable place where they can handle what I'm going to say.

A (9:55)

Yes.

B (9:56)

So doesn't it help for me to point out that, you know, you are always also doing this other good thing over here. Doesn't that, doesn't that stabilize you in some way?

A (10:04)

It sounds like it might, but. But if I had seen those things, remember, I should have told you in the moment, right?

B (10:13)

And then here's my memory of receiving feedback sandwiches. In retrospect, all I'm going to remember the constructive advice is the constructive advice.

A (10:23)

And so I should not hoard positive reinforcement to store up so I can make a sandwich of it for the constructive advice. Positive reinforcement. If I want to make you better tomorrow than you are today, I. I have to catch you in the moment. And just think about well trained dogs, right? If they do something right, you give them a treat as close to in the moment as possible. If you delay even a little bit, it becomes less effective.

B (10:46)

This is why our dogs are not well trained. An hour later. You know what? Great job coming in when I called you. Okay, so, but let's go back to constructive advice for a second.

A (10:56)

Yes.

B (10:57)

So it's. It's private, it's at the right time, and you told me that positive reinforcement should be sincere and specific. Are there any other aspects of constructive advice that I should be thinking about?

A (11:09)

Well, so constructive advice should also be sincere and specific.

B (11:13)

Okay.

A (11:14)

And the goal of constructive advice is that I know what to do differently next time.

B (11:20)

Got it?

A (11:21)

So the goal of constructive advice is when you came in at the end of the conversation, you didn't give people a chance to respond afterwards. If you come in in the middle of the conversation, you permit your ideas to, you know, be debated in the conversation. Well, now I know what to try differently next time. So it's a do differently versus a do more.

B (11:42)

Got it. Do more, do differently. Okay. So you've laid out something that feels not easy but doable.

A (11:51)

Yeah.

B (11:52)

Which is making me suspicious. Suspicious if I know my wife, that the hard part is coming.

A (11:57)

Yes, it is.

B (11:58)

So what's the hard part here? Because this doesn't sound that hard.

A (12:02)

No, it doesn't. The hard part is if I want to give you constructive advice, I already need to have done some things in order for it to stick.

B (12:12)

Uh, oh, yeah.

A (12:14)

This is the hard part. I can't just give you constructive advice whenever I want to and say, like, oh, you're welcome. I need to have already done some things. Specifically, I already need to have given you a foundation of positive reinforcement before I can even participate in constructive advice. This is what's hard for the people. Yeah.

B (12:38)

Okay. All right, so let's spend a minute on this, because this is where I think the idea of optimal feedback as you're laying out breaks down in the real world.

A (12:48)

Yes.

B (12:49)

So what is the ratio I should be thinking about of positive reinforcement to constructive advice?

A (12:57)

It's a surprising ratio if you haven't heard it before. But for every one bit of constructive advice that you give someone, you need to already have given them a minimum of five bits of positive reinforcement.

B (13:10)

What?

A (13:10)

Five to one is the minimum this sounds.

B (13:14)

I don't have time for this.

A (13:16)

Yes. That is the number one complaint.

B (13:18)

Solve this problem for me.

A (13:19)

Yeah. We have found that it takes about 12 seconds to deliver sincere and specific positive reinforcement. It takes about 60 seconds to deliver sincere and specific constructive advice. So those people that take 10 minutes to give constructive advice realize that nine of those minutes was like wasted hemming and hawing and trying to make yourself feel okay during it. We're at about a 12 second and a 60 second thing. So the notion that I don't have time, what I think it is, is you don't feel like you can pay close enough attention in order to see. I don't think it's a matter of time. I think it's a matter of attention. And what I would say is, okay, but don't give constructive advice to people who you don't have time to see them. Please don't. Because the chance that you will make them better is close to zero. The chance that you will make them worse, very high.

B (14:15)

Where else do people struggle trying to implement this?

A (14:21)

I think that people are overconfident when they give feedback. They're overconfident in their ability to assess it. So the number of times someone will say to you the thing and then they'll turn around and go and debrief with their friends or their colleagues. Oh my gosh. I told them there's a little bit of an I told them so.

B (14:41)

Right. I checked the box, I feel better, I feel better.

A (14:43)

I check the box. Honestly, they're giving themselves a participation trophy. And I would say, hold off. You don't get a trophy until after the words that you have said manifested in improved performance. If as a result of the words you said, the person got better, claim that effective feedback trophy. But far more often we say something to people, even if we think it was accurate, we say something to people and there is no change in performance. Well, then I would like you to acknowledge that you gave ineffective feedback. You were ineffective in your attempt to help someone improve. Now, none of us get things right the first time. What do we do in the presence of ineffective? We try differently. We pivot, we try again. But we certainly don't give ourself a participation trophy when we do it. And yet that's what happens in the world of feedback. People give themselves credit for accuracy as opposed to credit for the change in behavior.

B (15:45)

So the metric we should be focused on in evaluating our own feedback is whether or not the recipient, the person we are trying to develop, is getting better based on the words we're sharing with them.

A (15:57)

Improvement oriented feedback is successful when the person improves. Period.

B (16:03)

I love that period. One thing that I think about a lot in this conversation, we spend a lot of time working with teams and leaders on this one, is that this, getting this right is such an extraordinary gift. Back to kind of this idea of a core memory or a vivid memory of this stuff. For people who are good at this, the pace at which the people around them are developing.

A (16:50)

Astonishing.

B (16:51)

Is astonishing. And this question of, you know, you lay this out five to one, it sounds like a lot. And the gut reaction is often, I don't have time for this. And then when you really see people who do this well, you have no other conclusion to reach except, I don't have time not to do this, because this is the path to getting the team you're working with to a level where they can deliver on their performance mandate.

A (17:20)

If you see high performing teams, I am sure there is much more positive reinforcement than low performing teams. Much, much more. It's true, by the way, for sports teams, it's true for family teams and it's true for work teams. We somehow convinced each other that if I give you too much positive reinforcement, I might weaken you or I might appear weak. And so we put that amazingly potent leadership tool away out of misguided fear. And I would say bring it out. And if you're wondering, try it and marvel at how the rate of improvement changes. Marvel at how your relationships change.

B (18:09)

And why are we so stingy with this gift?

A (18:12)

Do you think we confuse evaluative and improvement oriented? So most people say to me, I have an underperformer. Won't I mislead them if I give them positive reinforcement? And I say, if you want your underperformer to become an over performer, you need to catch them doing things right so that they know to do more of it. I'm often asked, if you could only give one type, which would you pick? It's not even close. If I could only give positive reinforcement and you could only give constructive advice, my team is gonna thump you all day.

B (18:53)

I think the liberation of that distinction is very helpful. You know, because you are giving developmental feedback doesn't mean you won't have that evaluation moment.

A (19:04)

And be honest. In the evaluation, you're a two. Today, I'm gonna help you get, get higher. And then the next one, you're a three. Congratulations. And the next one, what I'm never going to do is out of kindness, distort your evaluation. Instead, I want to pour all of that kindness into the improvement oriented feedback and pay that close of attention to help get you better.

B (19:26)

Yeah. The way I often think about it is develop, develop, develop, develop, develop to the point at which you evaluate, then develop, develop, develop. But it's one or the other.

A (19:35)

That's right.

B (19:35)

And I think it's really, I mean, this research on judgment versus curiosity, it does really feel like two different parts of the brain. And it is a choice we have to make because we can't do both at the same time. And I feel like a lot of these conversations, one of the problems is that we're trying to do both at the same time, or we're assuming that we're doing both at the same time when that's not the agenda.

A (19:57)

And the truth is, evaluative feedback is looking in the rearview mirror and improvement oriented feedback is looking forward to. So, like, when I give you evaluative feedback, I'm not making you better. I'm just telling you what you earned.

B (20:09)

Yeah.

A (20:10)

If I want to make you better so that you can earn more later, I got to go to improvement oriented feedback. And if I'm going to go to improvement oriented feedback, I can tell you that your instinct is going to be to be stingy on the positive reinforcement for some misguided emotional reasons. And so I would ask you to simply experiment with it. But don't forget, sincere and specific are both really important. Vague. Oh, great job. Oh, right. I'm supposed to say something nice. Good effort.

B (20:39)

Yeah. Well, so let's pivot now to what we can do in those moments when we are receiving ineffective feedback, which is 90% of the time, which is most of us are doing. So let's go back to that moment of me hearing you are bad at presentations.

A (21:01)

Yeah.

B (21:01)

You know, in my. I think I was still in my 20s at this point. Not a lot of pattern recognition. What could I have done in that situation?

A (21:10)

Well, I'll tell you what our friend and colleague Leslie John suggests we do, which was when somebody gives us constructive advice, that's not great. She recommends verbatim saying thank you. I'll reflect on that. Now, here's why I think she's doing that. She's saying thank you to acknowledge it. And she's also saying, don't trust yourself to respond right then that. I mean, you know, how did you feel when people said that to you? And do you feel like you were in a place to be productive? For most of us, we're just not.

B (21:50)

Yeah. I love her work on this. And the phrase that she has used which really resonated with me in helping me understand my own reactions, is that in that moment when someone is giving you constructive advice or saying something that doesn't even qualify as constructive advice, maybe it's even. It is a biological threat event. And I feel like that string of words has the weight to really describe what is happening in that moment. For the recipient. It's a biological threat event. It is a threat to our core existential need to belong to the group. And this is why I think people bring so much armor to these conversations, because the stakes really do feel that high for us in those moments.

A (22:45)

And it's also why we want to, if we can relieve any expectation that we are going to respond well in the moment. So it's gather and license to return. I'll reflect on that.

B (23:01)

Great. So in the moment, I'm just getting through the conversation and I have some phrases in my pocket and I love that one. I'm not agreeing necessarily.

A (23:10)

In fact, indeed you're not agreeing.

B (23:13)

So these are a relatively neutral phrase that allows me to survive the conversation, but not necessarily agree with the, you know, I need some time for my nervous system to calm down and then I can make sense of what I've heard.

A (23:29)

Yes, and then when you're making sense of what you heard, it will almost always be useful to ask some follow up questions. Yep. But we should never ask follow up questions in the moment because when our nervous system was hijacked, our gentle follow up in our head comes across as a fierce interrogation of the other person. That's what it sounds like.

B (23:58)

Yeah.

A (23:59)

And then there are of course, when you say that to someone, what's the chance that they're going to try to help you improve again in the future

B (24:06)

or tell you the truth or give you useful information?

A (24:09)

No, they'll just give you vague platitudes and then you end up stumbling in the dark. Remember, the whole reason we wanna give feedback is because we want people to be better tomorrow than they are today. So we gotta make sure we are not blocking access. Cause we need peripheral vision, we can't see it. And if we interrogate people on the delivery, they're not gonna give the delivery, they're gonna choose the easy way out.

B (24:35)

So in the situation with me, what's your coaching? Get through. I would have said pull out my neutral phrases, get through the conversation.

A (24:42)

Get through the conversation, go back and reflect. I'm not in the moment saying, you know, thank you, I'm gonna reflect on that and I'm gonna get on your calendar in two days. I have the expectation that we are going to talk about it again, but I get a moment to reflect on it and you will really use the reflection. And then in that conversation, that's when you're gonna collect data and just say, had I done it well, what would that have looked like? Or when other people do this well, what does it look like? Question I often ask is, if you had magic dust and you could have changed my behavior, what are the two things you would have changed in that context that you think would have made a big difference and why? What I'm really trying to do is give them space to get nuanced about it so that I can then pick out some kernels that might be helpful

B (25:41)

and I can in my follow up questions, push you to the specificity and sincerity that it's gonna make the advice useful to me.

A (25:50)

Yes. And remember, you're not done until you know what to do differently. So constructive advice is do differently. Positive reinforcement is do more. I gotta stay in that conversation until I can run some pilots of what to do differently.

B (26:05)

Yep. And I love Leslie's advice too. To use an intelligent filter on what you're hearing.

A (26:13)

Yes.

B (26:13)

Just because someone has reached a conclusion about my choices doesn't necessarily mean that it's accurate.

A (26:21)

So I think this is really important. There is a signal and noise problem with feedback. I'm going to tell you from my perspective, signal and noise, but that doesn't mean it reflects reality. It's my perspective. And so you need to be an intelligent consumer of that and listen to it. Now, we want to make sure we're not ignoring the signal. But if something sounds completely off, I'm not sure I would go act on it. I'd probably go and triangulate it. And is there someone else who observes my behavior, who I, you know, I believe is emotionally distant enough that they're not gonna be caught up in this? Can they tell me So I think our gut matters a lot here in how we do it. But we're trying to get signal, not noise.

B (27:13)

And it doesn't have to be a solo sport. To your point, I can go ask other people.

A (27:17)

Digesting constructive advice I'm pretty sure should never be a solo sport because it's emotionally disregarded. It conjures up who knows what happened in my childhood, what other people who have given me back, and every one

B (27:30)

of us, what other biological threat events I am bringing into the conversation.

A (27:35)

And everyone on the planet has those. And so it will be triggering in some ways, we need to metabolize it. And we should just acknowledge that we are not at our logical peak. So let's go process it. I often say if you can process it with a bystander you trust, that's the best way to do it. But even if it's someone that wasn't a bystander that you that. But you do trust them and you can. They can help you think through it. That's also good.

B (28:23)

So, Frances, for our listeners out there, tell everyone when they should be taking away from this conversation. I want to go out and do this tomorrow. I want to be better at it than I was today. What should I keep in mind?

A (28:35)

You should wear praise tinted glasses and catch people doing things right with enough specificity so that they can do more of it. And I think it's safe to assume that you haven't been doing enough of that, if you are at all typical to our species.

B (28:52)

Yep.

A (28:53)

So that's number one, is just get in the habit of catching people doing things right and watch when they do more of it and they get better. How so many things improve? I mean, I just did this with someone and what usually happens is I get an email within, I don't know, 60 or 90 minutes after they tried it saying, oh my gosh, it just changed everything. That's what this is. So that's number one. Number one is practice praise with specificity. Number two, with your insights into how people should change. Honor the fact that that's a dangerous weapon you're walking around with. Yeah. Even if you are accurate, it's a dangerous weapon because if you discharge it when they're not ready, they're going to be made worse even in the presence of accuracy. And you might not be right. And so I need you to go in with that kind of humility. So when you see how someone should improve, resist all temptation to tell them it in the moment, even if they ask you for will not stick. You need the sanding of positive reinforcement before you can come in and paint with constructive advice. So what I often find and I would pick up in the wake of junior faculty development at hbs, I would see a junior faculty member who was doing great and then all of a sudden not. And when I would go and talk to him, invariably a well intentioned colleague who never stopped by their office before stopped by their office and gave them all kinds of constructive advice. And that person, I'm sure went home and expected like a celebrity reception because they told them the hard thing that no one else was telling them and they in some cases ruined somebody's career. That's how powerful it can be.

B (30:50)

All right, so I'm putting on praise colored glasses. I'm putting the weapon of constructive, I'm holstering the weapon of constructive advice until

A (30:59)

you have a foundation of positive reinforcement. And when you give the constructive advice, there has to be an implicit do differently in it. It's not enough to tell me I was wrong. You have to help me. What you're doing is you're saying, I'm going to join you on this journey of improvement. When you came in at the end, I want you to experiment with coming in the middle or I want you to experiment with coming in at the beginning. It's not enough to just say it and get out. You're actually getting in there with me.

B (31:32)

I love it. And finally, for those of us subjected to clumsy feedback, which is everyone listening to this conversation, what is your advice for how to handle it?

A (31:45)

When I hear clumsy feedback, I in the moment am pretty sure it's clumsy. And I always say thank you. And the reason I say thank you is because I really have conditioned myself to hear I love you. The subtitles of their clumsy feedback to me is I love you. And they're investing in me. They're investing. They're doing it for a good reason. They're terrible at it, but they're doing it for a good reason. So I sincerely say thank you and then I schedule a follow up, not in the moment. And then I try to set them up for success. Then it's a, then it's a treasure hunt. They probably have some, I think, the

B (32:30)

power of really tapping into gratitude in that moment. And sometimes it's not realistic, but it's also a way to remind yourself that this isn't a biological threat event. And if I can, you know, the habit of accessing that gratitude, it's so powerful in so many situations. But I think in this situation in particular, it's a pretty revolutionary act and gift to give yourself.

A (32:54)

Yeah. And if we don't do it, you have to realize it's hard for people to give constructive advice and they would really like a pass to never have to do it again. And so if you're insincere, thank you. Or you interrogate them in the moment, it's not that they're going to stop giving you feedback, they're just going to stop giving you anything that's at all specific. It's all going to be vague platitudes and then you just lost that chance to improve. So I think that the gratitude they're investing in you. I really do hear I love you amidst the clumsiness.

B (33:29)

It's beautiful. All right, we want to hear from you on this one. We want to invite you to go try this practice the 5 to 1 ratio, positive reinforcement to constructive advice. Let us know how it goes and what results you get. Thank you so much for joining us for this episode. Your participation helps us make great episodes like this. Please keep reaching out directly. Let us know how it's going out there for you in the workplace. If you want to figure out a specific question, please send us a message. Leave us a voicemail. Send us a text ixabled.com or 234-fixable. That's 234-349. Fixable is a podcast from ted.

A (34:25)

It's hosted by me, Anne Morris and me, Frances Fry.

B (34:29)

This episode was produced by Rahima Nassa from Pushkin Industries. Our team includes Constanza Gallardo, Banban Chang, Daniela Balaurasso and Roxanne Hylash.

A (34:40)

And our show was mixed by Louis at story yard.