A common concern of even very successful leaders I work with is lack of sufficient confidence about giving and receiving feedback in the midst of day-to-day work. 

This is not surprising because feedback is inherently uncomfortable and risky. But, providing timely, effective feedback is essential if we are after the highest team capacity for transformation. Confidence in taking this on is enhanced by working with the following five barriers.  

1. Lack of a motivating, compassionate purpose for feedback. 
To counter discomfort, it helps to have a motivating, compassionate purpose. For example: “Feedback is not about correcting bad behavior. Under stress, everyone will, at times, act in ways counter to norms. The purpose of feedback is to help everyone be at their best.” 

2. Lack of sharing and assuring mutual understanding of different perceptions. 
Relational problems usually set off the nearly automatic tendency to leap from limited data to strong but often flawed conclusions. Effective, respectful feedback depends on stepping back from such certainty. Instead of just “giving feedback,” the initial aim should be to stay open and elicit and assure mutual understanding of each person’s view even if in disagreement.  

3. Lack of exchange of information specific enough to enable problem solving .  
Feedback is too often given in global generalizations. Then, the chances are high for provoking defensiveness and not getting to specific information which enables problem solving. For example, a client of mine was told by a colleague: “You are a very negative person.”

​Resisting her impulse to react, my client asked for a specific example and was told: “When I asked you for help yesterday, you said ‘No’ and walked away.”  Such “negativity” had not happened before. My client apologized and they agreed not to use quick hallway conversations to ask for help.  

4. Lack of shared norms for feedback.
Shared norms promote helpful feedback. Examples are: (a) Avoid global generalizations; (b) Use "I" statements and offer feedback as perceptions, not as The Truth; (c) Give descriptions of words and behaviors from specific work situations; and (d) Seek each person’s perception. 

5. Lack of sufficient leadership engagement in giving and receiving feedback.
A key objective is to develop feedback-rich team interactions. To do so, leaders have to model giving and receiving feedback--especially receiving it. Do you often ask how others have experienced interactions with you? All leaders make mistakes at times. Do you acknowledge them? 

Effective, timely feedback is not easy. It requires reformulating what feedback is all about. It reqiures universal respect and compassion. It requires constant practice. Working with the five barriers increases confidence and helps to embed feedback in daily leadership practice. 

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​One of the worst teams I’ve been part of was comprised of experts on facilitating teams.

Our meetings were chaotic and unproductive as some experts got into intense debates without really listening to each other while some fell into silence. 

​I am embarrassed to say I participated in the mess. When we finally stopped to actually apply our team expertise to ourselves, we transformed and had great results. We did not eliminate all problems but we managed them much better.

What helped most in turning this team of experts around? 
It became clear to us that we had overlooked defining and using team norms. Norms are ground rules or guidelines for how members communicate and behave with each other—like really listening to each other, exploring ideas instead of debating them, giving feedback without blaming, assuring everyone’s involvement, and being clear about how decisions will be made.  

Even if, like my experts, team members bring a lot of prior experience with norms, every team has to create them yet again. Norms gain their power through development in conversation.   

Why are team guidelines about communication and behavior so important?
Team which do not define and use norms are at higher risk for falling into mediocre performance or failure. In a study of 120 senior leadership teams, only 21% were high performing and the factor most strongly associated with high performance was clarity and use of norms—not brilliance in things like strategy, quality, or efficiency. (1) 

Defining and using norms leads to better communication, problem solving, and conflict resolution all of which lead to both better results and higher quality work relationships. The latter enhances sustainability and team resilience. 

Why is it so easy to overlook establishing adequate team norms?

• Norms seem so basic and simple.

For my team of experts, needing to create and apply norms felt like being demoted from grad school to grade school. But, impressive credentials don’t protect anyone from the way our brains are hard-wired. At times, in anyone, stress activates ancient brain pathways for survival—for flight or flight. Socially, such activation may lead to strong emotions and fixed opinions or withdrawal into silence. Norms remind us we are human and we all make mistakes.   
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• ​Teams with problems can appear to be doing just fine.  

Not all teams are like my team of experts in which lack of sufficient norms led to “noisy” signs like difficult conflict. It is not uncommon to see teams claim in meetings that they are getting along just fine. But, there are hallway conversations outside of meetings with complaining about problems that never get adequately addressed or about people some members feel are not behaving well. Yet these concerns are not raised in meetings. This is exactly what guidelines for communication and behavior should be designed to address.   

• Developing and using team norms is like learning a new language. 

People have less confidence and experience talking about communication and behavior compared to technical issues like strategy or quality. Developing and using norms takes practice and trial and error as a team. In particular, it takes time and practice to define norms with enough behavioral specificity so that people can check to see if they are being followed. 

For example, compare “We need to feel safe.” to “When someone offers an idea we will always check understanding to make sure they feel heard.” Or, “When we give feedback we will avoid negative labels and be specific about the situation and behaviors we have observed. We will own observations as perceptions and not The Truth and check out each other’s perceptions.”

• Ongoing feedback is required for making progress and it is uncomfortable.

Some teams, like my team of experts, turn around very quickly once they define norms. More often it takes ongoing feedback to steadily improve alignment of communication and behavior with those norms. Naturally, this raises concerns about embarrassment--feedback is uncomfortable. But it gets less so with steady and frequent practice.

Feedback is facilitated by making explicitly clear that it is not about “bad behavior.” Getting off track from norms can happen to anyone at any time no matter how long a team has worked together. Feedback is about helping people be at their best. Leaders can help greatly by modeling feedback including inviting it about themselves. 

• Changing habits of behavior is hard.

Team norms are not useful unless they are used. And that takes changing habits which is usually hard no matter how simple the new behaviors seem to be. For example, in my team of experts, we had to work hard to assure time at the end of meetings to ask: “What is working and not working in our communication based on our norms?” Also, we had to work to remember to check in during meetings to ask about specific norms--e.g. “Do you feel heard?” 

Transform team problems into learning and creativity. 
Strong evidence links quality of team experience to better results, resilience, and sustainability. Norms are the rudder to maintain the desired team experience. I am humbled by how easy it is, even for experts, to neglect norms. By remembering this aspect of our humanness, I am better at helping myself and others transform team problems into learning and creativity. 

Tool to guide creation of team norms
In-the-Moment Reminder for Team Norms--available for subscribers only. To subscribe for free monthly articles and tools, click on Subscribe. 

Reference
1. Wageman, Ruth et al Senior Leadership Teams Harvard Business Review Press 2008.

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"The single most important skill to have in working through any problem is the ability to give constructive feedback. Why? Because most often problems are expressed as criticism of someone's actions." (1)

The stakes for feedback are higher on teams because "learning what several people expect of you is far more difficult than learning what one other person expects and needs." (2)  In effective teams, everyone helps each other to perform his/her role to meet expected outcomes--in Schein's words, "perpetual helping." But, feedback is the key mechanism for this helping. It is a means of constant course correction.

Because of the nature of personal exposure with feedback, the environment of trust on teams is essential. As Schein states, "What we think of as respect or trust is basically the feeling that you will not be humiliated or embarrassed even if your behavior deviates from the norm and is viewed as unhelpful. Instead you get task relevant information that allows you to figure out how to become more helpful in the effort to achieve goals." (2)

Helpful feedback is an art and skill which only develops with intentional practice. Practice gradually normalizes the discomfort of feedback.(3)  Over time, a feedback-rich culture can make feedback less a source of anticipated discomfort and more a source of desired learning. 

Key components of productive feedback include (from references 1 and 2):
(a) prior setting of team norms and work process specifications
(b) specific, concrete, behavioral descriptions related to achieving goals (not good vs. bad)
(c) avoidance of labels, generalizations, and characterizations (e.g. "You are lazy.")
(d) using "I" statements and owning feedback as perceptions as opposed to "Truth"
(e) asking for the other person's perception in response
(f) stating genuine positive regard along with the feedback wherever appropriate

References
(1) Schein, Edgar Helping: How to Offer, Give, and Receive Help Berrewtt-Koehler Publishers,Inc., 2009
(2) Scholtes, Peter R. et al The Team Handbook, Third Edition Oriel Incorporated, 2003
(3) Brown, Brene Daring Greatly Gotham Books, 2012

“Research confirms that organizations with a strong corporate culture based on a foundation of shared values outperformed other firms by a huge margin.” (Kouzes and Posner, The Leadership Challenge, 4th Edition, 2007)

Paradoxically values do not become shared except through day-to-day acknowledgement of their on-target expression AND learning from incidents of imperfection (i.e. when actions are counter to espoused values).

Even the most skilled and committed leaders and staff will at times make mistakes relative to values. "In spite of your best intentions, you are going to get into hassles, annoy each other, and step on each other’s toes. It is an inevitable feature of work life, even in high-morale, high-performing organizations." (Kegan and Lahey How We Talk Can Change the Way We Work, 2001)

Ongoing discovery and dialogue about the day-to-day expression of values is essential. Without this, people will be more likely to remain silent or, behind the scenes, make negative judgments and complaints which just further undermine values.

A learning environment needs to be created about values. Two ways to accelerate learning:
(1) Via interpersonal feedback--For example, leaders with authority in organizations have a very powerful mpact by asking for feedback about their own actions in private and public meetings--e.g. "How are my statements and actions impacting you? Am I acting consistent with our values?"

(2) Via team check-ins and feedback--Acknowledging and learning from episodes of imperfection can be celebrated. "If people are willing to engage their own 'violations' in a spirit of personal learning (as opposed to remorse or Mao-era confession) others in the group usualy find they can also make a space that goes beyond recrimination." (Kegan and Lahey, 2001)

This kind of vulnerability is not easy. In fact, Kouzes and Posner report that of the 30 items on their leadership inventory, the lowest observed behavior of leaders is asking for feedback. (Kouzes and Posner, 2007) But, with practice, feedback about the expression of values can be done with art and skill. The benefits for everyone far outweigh the risks of personal embarrassment.

Research in positive psychology suggests that "how you celebrate is more predictive of strong relations than how you fight." (Martin E.P.Seligman Flourish, 2011)

Capitalizing on positive actions, experiences, and events to improve satisfaction, well-being and quality of relationships involves offering detailed, nuanced responses rather than the more common brief exclamation. Here are two types of situations and the recommended approach.

(1) When someone does something you appreciate, offer positive regard. (termed "ongoing regard" in Robert Kegan and Lisa Lahey How The Way We Talk Can Change The Way We Work, 2001)

More powerful positive effect is achieved by offering behaviorally specific information rather than a brief, general response--e.g. "I really appreciate the way you took the time before our meeting to summarize the key supporting data. That really facilitated our decision making." This is in contrast to the relatively common "You did a great job!"

The detail in the first response is likely to feel more thoughtful and genuine than the more vague and global "great job." Also, starting with "I" rather than "You" makes it feel more like the speaker is offering potentially valuable information from experience for the receiver to consider rather than conferring some form of judgment. The latter can subtly diminish any intended positive effect.

(2) When someone reports experiencing a positive event, respond in an active-constructive way. Such responses have been linked by research to increased well-being and relationship benefits such as increased commitment and trust. (Shelley T. Gable et al in Advances in Experimental Psychology Vol. 42, 195-257, 2010)

As with positive regard, benefits are achieved by going beyond the more usual brief exclamation (e.g. "That's great. Congratulations.") and asking questions about the event, seeking additional details, elaborating on the possible implications and benefits for the discloser, and commenting on why the event is meaningful to the discloser in particular. Such responses are also more powerful when accompanied by conveying emotions of interest, happiness, or pride. (Gable et al, 2010)

The traditional yearly performance review has been called a "soul-less and soul-crushing exercise." (Sutton and Rao Scaling up Excellence, 2014)

What are some of the characteristics of performance management that enable commitment to excellence as well as a highly engaged work-force? (based on Sutton and Rao, 2014; Buckingham and Coffman First, Break All the Rules, 1999)

One key appears to be more frequent meetings between managers and staff--at least quarterly and more often if needed. Managers convey expectations but also foster growth and development, offer practical advice and coaching, ask for and give feedback, and enable self-tracking of performance.

The object is to make regular adjustments to improve performance as well as employee experience. In this context, there is more opportunity to build relationships in which managers and employees are less likely to put off sensitive conversations. Details about specific issues impacting performance are more fresh in mind. 

Based in these elements, one company of 11,000 employees replaced its much maligned yearly performance system with more frequent "checking-in" between managers and staff. There was no prescribed frequency though an ongoing employee survey was designed to tap into how well these meetings were going. There was a 30% drop in voluntary attrition of employees.(Suttton and Rao)

How often do you deal with people at work who cause headaches due to what seem like deeply ingrained personality issues?

There is hope.

(See the full article online at Unexpected transformations. The following are brief excerpts).)

In the large majority of circumstances of such difficult behavior, situational factors are the predominant driving forces—not personality traits or even lack of skills.
Quite often, these situational factors are amenable to change.

Psychological research has shown that attributing difficult behavior to fixed personality traits as opposed to situational factors (the “fundamental attribution error”) is a pervasive and nearly automatic cognitive bias.

Undiscussables are strong drivers of fear in the workplace—a factor which undermines the performance potential of organizations. In this study (Ryan, Oestreich) involving 260 people from 22 organizations, the top category of undiscussables by far was “management performance, competence and interpersonal style” followed by co-worker performance.

This suggests that leaders can have a powerful impact on fear and quality of work environment by stepping forward to seek feedback about themselves. In fact, research has suggested employee engagement is significantly improved with two-way rather than one-way feedback in supervisory relationships. (See the blog post The most important variable for employee engagement.)

Helpful references:
On receiving feedback: Thanks for the Feedback by Stone and Heen, 2014.
On a key aspect of giving feedback that may be difficult to hear: Considering confrontation and challenge.

When people act in ways contradictory to their stated values and principles, it creates a trap. If we call attention to the contradiction, we risk conflict and uncomfortable exposure for the other person.

That can lead to another contradiction—we say we value openness and honesty, but tend to stay quiet about the problem in public and complain in private. Research from Argyris (2010) has found such self-contradictory behavior to be quite common even in successful organizations. This occurs with difficult situations, especially "when problems to be solved are likely to be upsetting and threatening to all concerned." Traps impair collaboration and problem solving.

Four methods to decrease risk in addressing the trap: (1) treat imperfect adherence to stated values as an expected, normal human reaction to complexity and pressure; (2) explicitly state a desire for and pursue mutual reflection and inquiry; (3) self disclose about our own uneasiness and contradictions; and (4) appreciate the other’s good intentions. For an excellent brief review of the work of Argyris, see Senge, The Fifth Discipline, pages 232 – 240.