“Tell Me How I’m Doing” – Interaction as Feedback

After mulling over Tell Me How I’m Doing (excerpt here) for a few days, here’s what I think is worth taking away:

1. The leadership fable genre is overdone. I hope to never use it.

2. Interaction as feedback; feedback as interaction. Author Richard Williams basically classifies any form of human interaction – conversation, body language, small talk – as feedback, and points out that without it we shrivel up and become shadows of our former self. What I’ll take away is that attention is sometimes the type of feedback that’s needed, and that all too often the better a job an employee (or manager) does, the less attention is paid to him/her. Less attention equals less interaction equals less feedback equals shrivelling up and wondering if anything you’re doing matters at all. I think Williams is trying to promote a mindset shift from feedback as a specific, planned, timed act to a mode of relating to each other. We relate to each other all the time, interact with each other all the time, and therefore are always giving each other feedback.