Giving Kickass Feedback (and When Not To)
Libby discusses feedback in greater depth: what it is, what it isn't, and how to do it exceptionally well.
Transcript
So I've already done this episode a couple of months ago on something called the feedback wheel, which is a tool that I really like and think is really great. But I realized as I was teaching it to people that not everybody was using it in the way that is gonna be the most useful. And I realized one of the reasons is that not everything is feedback. And I had a really good discussion with one of my partners Kyrr about this. And they were saying, yeah, there are certain things that really aren't feedback. And they gave me some really good examples and I was like, oh, that's cool. And, um, and there's also good feedback and not so good feedback, not so useful feedback. And so I decided today, I'm going to do an episode on what feedback is, what feedback isn't and what can make your feedback really excellent. Because as you know, I'm all for, it's speaking up, standing up, rocking the boat, letting people know what's up, but it helps to know how to do it in a way that's useful for people. So that's what we're gonna talk about today.
I am so happy to know that this podcast is valuable to you. And it's honestly inspired me to keep pushing and keep it going. Even amidst radical changes to my life due to COVID 19 and just everything in the world. I know that it's, gosh, it's been a month since my last episode. And honestly, there's no one more surprise than me that it's been at long. What has happened is that I've actually been facing a bit of a block, uh, and I've had a tough time figuring out what to say when the world has really just been turned upside down in so many ways. But I have been listening to my clients to polyamorous folks who are posting in online communities and to you, my listeners. And I know that even as there are so many big questions about our future together as a society, as a global family, we still have a lot of personal questions too, about how we wanna live our lives, how we wanna heal ourselves and how we wanna love each other.
And I believe also that those two things, how we structure our society and how we love each other and heal ourselves that those things are linked, that our most intimate relationships, the way we structure our families, friendships and love relationships are also the building blocks and the training ground and the model for how we build our society's. So I'm gonna keep this going. It may be a little hip haphazard, um, and I'm trying to stick to a schedule and I'm working on that. I've had people reach out and be like, are you okay? Are you gonna keep putting out episodes? And yes, I am committed to that. I have hundreds and hundreds of ideas of things to talk about. And I also welcome hearing from you, my beautiful listeners, if there is something you really need me to talk about, or if there's a question that you would love me to answer on the show, I'm so here for that. So please definitely keep your messages coming to me. Keep emailing me, keep Facebook messaging me. I welcome the communication and, um, and definitely of course, if you wanna set up a call, we can do that. We can do that too. so, um, anyway, without further ado, we're gonna move into today's episode, but I just wanna thank you again for being here with me. And I look forward to seeing you on the other side.
So I was inspired to create this episode, actually, it was after reading an article, um, from the March, April, 2019 issue of the Harvard business review, and the article was called the feedback fallacy, and it was actually aimed at how to give better employee profile performance reviews, but after reading it light bulbs were just going off in my head about how this applies to relationships. Now, again, if you've been listening to this podcast for more than a minute, you know, that I am a huge advocate for speaking up in your relationship when things aren't working. And I believe that relationships and the people in them can change that, you know, sticking up for what you want, pushing for something to be better, that that's worth it. I'll go so far as to say that relationships are often the containers in which we grow the catalysts for change and the place where we flourish and stretch.
And as I've said before, heal, and I do think an essential part of growth and learning is getting feedback from the people that are close to you, who can see things that maybe you can't see now, several episodes ago, I did an episode called eight sentences, uh, to better understanding. And I offered a tool in that episode called the feedback wheel, which was created by Pia Melody. She's a psychotherapist and it was popularized by, uh, the person that I train under his name is Terry real. So the feedback wheel is really great. I love the feedback wheel and I really recommend actually using it rather than learning how it works and then not using it and just doing feedback the way you've always been doing it. But I also just wanna do a little bit more of a deep dive into feedback, because a tool is a tool and you can use a tool well, or you can use a tool, not well .
And so there's no magic tool. That's gonna make feedback. Great. If you don't think about how you're using it. So first though, before we go there, let's talk about what feedback actually is. So feedback is, and this is the definition I'm working off of feedback is information that is intended to help someone achieve goals that they have express that they want to achieve and, or goals that you have agreed with them that, you know, you both want to achieve. So, you know, if I'm a basketball player, I wanna be a good basketball player. I want to score points. I want to do good defense And so my coach, if they're gonna give me feedback, they might give me feedback on my free throw technique so I can get better at free throwing. Uh, if I'm a public speaker, you know, my goal is to wow, my audience.
And so, uh, if I'm in a public speaking class, my classmates might give me feedback on how I'm coming across at the podium, how they're receiving what I'm saying, whether I've said too many ums or ohs or whatever. And the feedback in both of those situations is to support me in my goal in a relationship feedback would be aimed at, you know, how your partner is doing in their relationship with you and honoring that you have a shared goal of remaining in their relationship and that being a positive experience for the both of you. However, some people confuse feedback with other things. And again, I need to credit my partner here for these distinctions, because they were the one to point these out a few months ago to me. So the first thing that some people confuse with a need for feedback is actually just disagreement now.
So disagreement happens all the time in relationships. Sometimes you don't agree on goals or the best way to do something. Sometimes you have differences in how you think a dishwasher should be loaded or how to discipline your child. After they've broken a family rule and disagree is fine, but it's not the same it's feedback. And treating a disagreement like what's required as feedback is a problem, because feedback, again, it assumes agreement. And so to give feedback about something that your person doesn't actually agree with you on that can be disrespectful at best and kind of coercive and maybe controlling at worst. One reason why it might be tempting to assume feedback instead of disagreement, is that I, I think disagreement is kind of mess and maybe messier than giving feedback. Also disagreement can mean, well, we have some disharmony. We, we are not socialized to, um, be okay with disharmony.
I think we're, our culture generally tells us disharmony is bad and it must be fixed right away, or we've gotta create some distance from it or whatever, you know, that disagreement is something to either be fixed or to, to avoid. And I think disagreement's fine disagreement though, can also be challenging for people who are used to being on the same page as their partner, or, uh, if they're used to just navigating their relationship by consensus, if you're not able to disagree well, you might just not want to acknowledge that it even is there, but if what is going on is disagreement, it doesn't have to mean there's anything wrong. It just means that now you have to proceed differently. You have to be slow and careful you have to listen carefully and really take in each other's point of view. You have to have a lot of respect for the fact that you have different positions right now.
And that's why, you know, engaging in feedback can really throw a wrench in things. Um, sometimes it can be hard to know whether or not there actually is a disagreement. And this comes up a lot, uh, for polyamorous folks who have some kind of either explicit agreement or implicit expectation, and they each have different understandings about what is expected or what, like the letter of the law of the agreement they have is. And that can mean that they think they have an agreement because they haven't discussed it or they think they have, but it wasn't clear. And that can actually mean that they don't have agreement but they think they do. And so here, if you notice, oh, maybe we don't agree before you dive into feedback. It's really good to check things out and see, ask some questions and try to get more information about where your partner might be.
I have a plan for going a whole lot deeper into disagreement and how to disagree well in a future episode. So stay tuned for that. But for now, it's just really important to know that disagreement is different from a moment where there's, where feedback is called for cuz there's not necessarily a shared intent and it's good to slow down and check to see if you're in agreement before assuming, and then just going straight to feedback. So another thing that is not feedback, uh, is giving a correction. Now correction is when you and your partner or whomever, you're speaking to have already worked out, what's supposed to happen. So you've not only read on the goal, but you've agreed on how you're gonna get to the goal and someone just lost track or forgot or dropped the ball in some kind of way, which is a normal thing to have happen, right?
so correction should be pretty gentle, pretty straightforward and pretty low stakes because there's no there's Hey, here's your blind spot. There's a, Hey, remember that thing that we agreed, um, an example here might be, maybe you've worked through your disagreement on how the dishwashers should be loaded. And now you have a plan that you both agree is exactly the right way to do it, but then your partner forgets to put the bowls on the top rack. So you just say, Hey, remember we were gonna put bowls on the top rack, boom, correction. Ideally, this is a really small conversation and pretty chill because again, you there's no tension around it. It's just simply you go at it with an understanding that humans forget things. Sometimes. Now one reason why correction can be challenging is that we are sort of social to think that pointing out a mistake is criticism.
And therefore we anticipate, uh, that being received defensively from the person receiving it, or maybe we are defensive when we receive a correction, uh, as writers like bene brown say often perfection them is rampant in Western culture. And so calling out mistakes might be seen as attacking or otherwise destructive. And so learning how to give correction is an art. For sure, if you giving it in a way that can feel, not like criticism, sometimes a reason that corrections are received poorly is maybe because there's annoyance around having to give a reminder. Maybe there's a story wrapped up in why something was forgotten and that might be worth looking into, but it's also an art to learn to just receive correction and just go, yep. I missed that. Or I messed that up. It doesn't mean anything bigger about me or my character, you know, I can screw up, but it doesn't mean I am a screw up.
What you don't want is to be in a situation that this is like a metaphor for this, but like, let's say you're driving somewhere and you're driving along and you're about to miss a turn. And one of the passengers gently reminds you that you're about to miss the turn and instead of going, oh yeah, you're right. And just like moving into the lane to make the turn, you bite their head off and, you know, get all defensive about it, cuz that really doesn't serve anybody except maybe the oil company, but let's not do that. Okay, anyway. So if you find yourself responding to correction with something sharp, like I know or gosh, get off my back, you know, you might wanna check yourself because it might be that you do know, but you also forgotten that moment and it's perfect reasonable and even kind and not insulting to help you out.
So side note here, um, correction can be tricky if you find yourself being in the position of regularly issuing a correction on something that you think you and your partner have agreed to, might be a signal that either, maybe you're not in agreement and you thought you were, which in that case, you might need to have a bigger discussion about whether you're in agreement or, you know, you might need to give some feedback about that. So now we'll go to feedback. One to consider before giving feedback is whether you've thought about what you want to say and how you want to say it. It's not unusual that some people think giving good feedback is just to share what you think and what you feel, whatever feelings and thoughts are coming up for you in the moment. So Terry real has a term for this. It's called unbridled self-expression and this is definitely a thing I used to do.
I am an external processor, so it's really good for me to just get whatever is going on with me out of me, get it off my chest, get my feelings out. The problem with this kind of thing though, is that what you're really kind of doing there is you're just kind of vomiting out whatever's going on inside you and the you're just going blah, and now, oh wow. I've gotten that out of me and whew, I feel better, but the person you've just spoken to is now covered in your word vomit and a now have to clean that up and sort through all of that for what is useful and actionable and maybe process some of the things you might have said in that moment, when you weren't thinking carefully, that might have been hurtful or hard to hear or not true, or even things you didn't mean.
And so that's not cool. So one reason and why I really like the feedback wheel is because it creates a structure for you giving feedback, which requires you to first pause and reflect. And I get it. If you're an external processor, like I am, uh, that can be challenging, but one useful tool that I use to get out of me, what I need to say in a messy way before I share it with someone else is I write it out in an email that I don't send, or I talk it out with someone else who is the person I don't have the feedback for. And I say, Hey, you know, you always have to ask for consent for that. And you have to make sure that they're okay hearing it because they might, you know, feel some tension about hearing your messy feedback about someone, especially if there's interconnectedness there.
But you know, it can be really helpful to just kind of get it out and then sort through it. And then after you've done some sorting through you share, that's been hugely helpful for me. Another useful thing to do when you're giving feedback is to follow the first item on Brene. Brown's really excellent checklist for being ready to give feedback. I'm gonna link that in the show notes, cuz all of the items on that list are great, but I don't just wanna go through every single one. You can read them. They're excellent. But the first one I think is really good, which is to make sure that are willing to sit next to someone rather than across from them. When you're giving feedback, this is so important because it's important when you're speaking to someone that you are coming from a same as place with the person you're talking to rather than feeling like you're above them.
When you're sharing the feedback. Another way to put it is remembering love. Remember that the person you're talking to is someone you care about and that you are not any better or smarter or anything more right than they are. And this also plays into one of the big mistakes. I think people often make about feedback, which is that we think we can objectively tell someone how well they're doing at, at anything. So we tend to offer feedback as though it's just the objective truth. I'm gonna tell you what's what an example of this from my own life. Uh, let's say your partner is spending a lot of time on their phone, scrolling through social media, texting other partners when they're with you. And so your plan is to just give them the feedback that that's rude and it's inattentive and it's objectively not what you're supposed to be doing when you're spending time together.
So first of all, research says that we don't have access to the objective truth about another person. Instead we are subject to something called the idiosyncratic radar effect. In a nutshell, researchers have found that when rating other people, 60% of what we rate them on is actually describing things about ourselves and not the other person. This goes back to what I say in an episode that I did, um, called how could you think that about me? And there's this quote from the Talmud, which is we do not see others as they are. We see them as we are. I think it's kind of cool that science shows us something that religion already knew. um, so anything you think you can tell someone about themselves, you might want to consider first spending a minute asking yourself whether this feedback you have for your partner is really for feedback you have for yourself.
It's uncomfortable when you might have to sit with that. Isn't it for me, I know that when I've had anxieties about one of my partners being on their phone a lot, it's in part because of them. Yes, but also it's because I am worried about me being on my phone too much. I've in the past spent fricking hours on Facebook in just one day and it sucked away so much, otherwise productive, useful time. I found myself easily distracted, maybe not paying attention to the people in my life, the way that I'd like to. And I've done a lot of work to try to contain that and you know, claim my focus, but it's also way easier to complain about someone else doing that than dealing with my own behavior. Though, I'll also say sometimes I can also get especially bothered by behavior that someone else does that I have worked so hard to stop doing again.
Another example for me is that, um, I have worked very hard to I'm an only child and I think I unwitingly picked up this habit of making everything in a conversation about me and making, you know, and really centering myself. And I have had to make a concerted effort to make a lot more space for others in conversations, in, uh, in social gatherings and really practice being a good listener and holding lots of space. And so of course I can't stand it when I'm people who act the way that I used to, but that's, that's my shit, right? That's about me. It may not be about them and it, I may be more sensitive to it and make bigger stories about it because of my own stuff, rather than what the other person's actually doing. So it's really worth taking a look at yourself when you have feedback to give, because that colors it.
And I think if you don't acknowledge that it colors it, then you are missing an opportunity there. However, sometimes it isn't really about you or maybe it's only just partly about your behavior. In this case, you still don't have access to objective information about someone else's performance, behavior, whatever. And I would encourage you not to try. I definitely would encourage you not to try to tell someone else what they're thinking or what they're feeling or what they're intending. That's just a no go. What you can tell your partner is about your experience, which is extremely valuable information. You just need to center it on. What's going on with you. These are the two middle steps in the feedback wheel. First, you state the basic facts about what happened and then you share what you experienced, how your brain interpreted that experience and centering it very clearly on that.
And then sharing what feelings came up for you. You know, if you're a nonviolent communication person, this is all about using those "I" statements. So if I am feeling like one of my partners is paying a lot of attention to their phone during quality time with me, instead of saying, that's rude, you shouldn't do that. You're addicted to your phone. You don't love me. Whatever you might say. Instead, you might say something like, Hey, I'm noticing that when you look at your phone, when we're hanging out, I experience it as you ignoring me, it makes me feel like you aren't interested in paying attention to me. I don't like trying to talk to you when you appear to only be halfway listening. And it just really makes me feel neglected and ignored and it hurts. And then of course it helps to say what you'd like here, which might be that you like phones to go away during quality time or something like that.
So another thing we get wrong about feedback is that we think people will learn to do better. If we point out what they're doing wrong or highlight their weaknesses. Now I'm not gonna say this never works, but general. When you're telling someone where they're screwing up, you can end up devolving into criticism and criticism can really send people diving into shame or, you know, sometimes even the opposite flying up into grandiosity, like who are you to tell me who I am or what I'm doing or blah, blah, blah. And this is especially true. When criticism is us making statements about patterns we're seeing or the way a person is like a statement about their character or again, statements about their feelings, their intentions, et cetera. Like if you're saying you always do this and you never do that, or you are of this, that's gonna often and feel like an attack.
And that's generally going to bring out people's stress response. Even if you're not doing it in a mean way. Like even if you think you're very gently pointing out a pattern, um, the person might feel attacked and this isn't great because you know, well attacking someone you love, isn't great. But also the research has shown that when someone is in that kind of state where they're feeling defensive, when they feel attacked, our, our survival instincts come online, we wanna protect ourselves. And in that kind of state, our brains, aren't really open to learning and growing. Furthermore, calling lots of attention to what someone is doing wrong all the time can just make them feel overly focused on problems and weaknesses. And that can lead them to feeling despondent helpless. Like they can never be enough or they might feel like angry and resentful for feeling characterized in a way that doesn't feel true to them.
Now I wanna say it can be hard to stop criticizing, especially if that's something you grew up with. And gosh, our culture is very good at it too. Like we really like to criticize and our brains really like it because of that negativity bias. And also we have this desire to solve puzzles, figure out patterns, identify problems. And, and again, there are times when it is good and necessary to talk about problems and patterns of behavior, but there are times in places for that. And generally focusing on the negative just doesn't really work very well for helping our partners or ourselves when we self criticize as well. It's just not very empowering. So instead, what I would encourage you to do is stay in the particular of all this thing happened. This is how that was hard for me. This is how that particular experience made me feel.
So don't use the feedback wheel for like something that's broad in general or a pattern you wanna really stick to an individual specific experience because it's really way easier for our brains to latch on to something specific that happened then to general patterns or characterizations that are coming from someone else, even if those things are true. So again, to go back to my partner who is distracted by their phone, my best tactic would be to not generalize. Oh, you're always on your phone. You're addicted to your phone, but rather to say, Hey, at dinner, when you were looking on your phone, that and feel great. You know, another thing science has shown is that instead of focusing on shortcomings and weaknesses, learning happens from a place generally in our brains where we're already doing well. Neurobiologists have shown that people grow more neurons and synaptic connections, where they already have them very densely packed together.
So we're more likely to grow and expand from where we are already strong. Part of that is because when we're working from where things are going well, instead of from our stress response, instead of from our like out way outside our comfort zone, if we're in a place where we feel strong, our bodies go into rest and digest mode, that's the opposite of fight or flight, right? And rest and digest mode actually stimulates brain cell growth. So if you want your partner to hear your feedback and be able to turn it into action or behavior change, it can really help to acknowledge the things that are already going well that they could do more of or do better at. So to again, to apply this to my phone, distracted partner, you know, know I could harp on the fact that they're always on their phone or I could say I really love it when we are so deep into a conversation that we lose track of time, or I love going on walks with you, or I love putting on music and just dancing in our living room.
Those things feel really good to me. Can we do that right now? Focusing on what's good. And what you want is also really empowering to your partner. You're telling them precisely how to make things good with you. And again, this is the last step of the feedback wheel. You can also take this step further with this information about neurobiology though. So when you're thinking about what you really want to ask for, maybe start by thinking about what your partner is already doing well instead of where they're falling short. So an example here, let's say your feedback is that, you know, you don't get enough intentional time with your partner and you wish that you had more dates together. And, um, the problem is, is that your partner really, he struggles with thinking ahead and putting things on the calendar, but they're super good at coming up with fun ideas of things to do together. Maybe what you could say is, Hey, would you be willing to make a list of 10 things we could do together on a date? And then maybe we can sit down together and schedule them since I know that part's hard for you. See it's like playing on their strength.
So one final thing that I'm gonna say about giving good feedback is that we can also often misunderstand what the goal actually is or how we define excellence basically. So where I'm coming from here is that it's common to think that there is some agreed upon objective, good thing that we're shooting for, but we might be assuming that rather than getting clear on it and talking about it, I think it's possible to assume that there's some standardized idea of what it means to be a good person, what it means to be in a good relationship, what healthy means, et cetera. Now, as polyamorous people, I think we generally know this isn't true. Our choice to break with monogamy is built on the belief that there's not one right way to be, but I think some of us still find very attractive. The idea that there is some clear standard that we're striving for.
And I wanna be clear like, yes, there, there is a standard that we're striving for, but I think there's a lot of variation and I think the love languages teach us that, right? That there are some ways that some people feel loved and other people don't. There are some things that feel good. Like some people wanna spend, like not a lot of time together and some people wanna spend every waking moment together. It's so varying my objective, good might be lots of transparency and sharing information and all of my feelings, the minute I feel them. And some people might feel really good about that too, but someone that I'm close to might really value their privacy and only when wanna share certain kinds of things or only wanna share things after they've chewed on them for a while. You know, one partner might think that being on time exactly on the dot.is exactly the best way to show love and show respect, and show care.
Whereas another partner might think that showing grace and flexibility is the way to show love. And I don't think either is right or wrong. The truth is excellence is really just the way Mr. Rogers put it. You know, it's being the best version of exactly who you are. So it's really important when you think about the feedback that you wanna give to take a step back from the stories you might have about what it means to say, you know, be on time or scroll through your phone or not share everything with a partner, the minute it comes up or, you know, those kind of things. And instead get curious about what it means to your partner, if they're different from you rather than immediately being critical of it, or, you know, asking them to do it differently. And also when you are getting something that you want from a partner or when you can see that they're putting some effort into making you happy.
It's huge. If you vocally acknowledge that I've worked really hard to, of put this into practice in my own family and with my close people, uh, just creating a culture of appreciation and both for the ways that we're different, that I see in value. And also the ways that we are in sync or the ways in which people are really stepping up, it can actually be especially potent to appreciate someone you love when they're doing something unintentionally and without putting any effort into it. It's just a natural part of who they are and how they are highlighting their good qualities. And actions is one of the best ways to encourage someone. You love to be even more of the best version of, of who they are. So to recap, not everything is feedback and it's important to know what it is and what it isn't sometimes what could be going on is disagreement, or sometimes what's needed is actually a correction. And if you have determined that feedback is what you need to give you wanna pause and reflect first, get in the right headspace and then be very intentional about how you give the feedback so that you're setting your partner up for success. Stay subjective, be specific, empower your partner with what they're doing well and can do more of help them out and stay open to different ways of being and cherish each other for the things that you value.
