(Another!!) quick thought on feedback…

I’m sure this happens to you often. You’re in the middle of something and a colleague/partner/child wants to quickly get your feedback on something that apparently just can’t wait!

What can be useful in this situation is to understand that sometimes when people ask for feedback they actual don’t want feedback. They want you to tell them that what they’re proposing to do is right. An affirmation. This is good to know as giving your feedback in these moments can actually lead to performance suffering (it’s now going to take more time, you might not fully understand the issue and give poor advice that may be hard for them to dismiss and it can knock their confidence for example).

Once you know this, what can you do?

• First ask yourself, does this require any feedback or is it an affirmation situation?
• As this won’t always be clear, try to find out how they got to where they are – the longer they have spent on something, and the nearer they feel they are to completion, the more likely they are to be seeking affirmation.
• Try to establish the impact of any potential errors. If this would be minimal, or indeed could be useful to long-term learning, don’t spend too much time giving feedback and instead help them see they’ve been able to get themselves to a good place without your input (hopefully leading to less affirmation being required in future – saving you both time!). Then make a note to ask if what they did went well and commit to coach them if any issues do come up.

There are of course other options but being aware that sometimes even very accurate feedback delivered at the wrong time doesn’t always help performance is important I think.

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