Tips for Gathering Performance Feedback – Part One

Over the past year, I delved into a new professional development area by conducting 360 performance reviews. Here is some of what I’ve learned, part one.

1. Find the right people to participate.

a) Upward, downward, and lateral. Get feedback from people the client works for, people who work for him/her, and people he/she works with. Make sure you have an adequate sample size to represent all three categories.

b) Representative viewpoints. Check each category to see if you have an adequate representation of different genders and ethnicities.

c) Positive and constructive. Don’t limit respondees to people with whom the client has a positive relationship. Ask the client: Who will give you positive feedback? And who will have constructive feedback for you? Often, the people the client hasn’t been able to develop a close relationship with are the people who will have the best information for the next learning opportunity.

d) Who stands to benefit. Ask the client who he/she will work with the most in the next six months. Be sure to include these people as respondents, so that their input feeds into the client’s working relationships in the months to come.

Next post: part two – deciding on the best format for gathering feedback.

A Cause I Believe In

I’ve been able to apply a lot of my coaching, facilitating, and organizational development learning with an organization close to my heart, Engineers Without Borders Canada.

I’m happy to be contributing to their end-of-year fundraising campaign through a personal donation webpage that explains why I support the organization. If you’re interested in contributing to an organization that is committed to leadership, personal growth, self-awareness, feedback, coaching, and organizational learning, please join me in supporting them:

http://www.giftofopportunity.ca/lauramcgrath

Tunnelling Through to Authenticity

In conversations and research, I’ve kept coming across one idea over the last year: that for individuals or organizations to keep developing, or to move on into a greater incarnation of themselves, there comes a point where they have to let go of everything that has come before. For the individual this might mean the patterns and reactions that have served them well as their public face; for the CEO it might mean realizing that the strengths that got you to where you are now won’t be what could take you to the next place; for the organization it might mean letting go of something cherished or central in order to make room for something new.

But there is a huge fear, both for individuals and organizations, in letting go of the familiar.

Jonathan Flaum’s Manifesto “Finding Your Howl” says that the fear that holds us back in our complacent familiarity will prevent us from living into our authentic self:

To find our howl we have to pay a price… we may have to sacrifice everything, spend a significant amount of time alone, do things that we believe we can’t do, and walk away from a life that no longer fits our expanding need for freedom. This process may feel like a death. At its most intense, it may terrify us, and at its least intense, unsettle us. This is the price of finding our howl, our own one-of-a-kind authentic voice, and there is no way around it.

… We have to dig through the accumulation of our stuff, our personal history, our geneology, our culture, our choices, our fears, and our need to feel safe… we have to let everything that we examine go along the way and show up with nothing. And this is terrifying, to let go of all that we think we possess…

…The scariest part is when we are in the air releasing our trapeze and not yet touching the other, because unfortunately, it is only when we release the old completely that the new one appears.

Feedback As Growth-Affirming

Some previous posts have looked at feedback from a business books perspective. I thought I’d mix it up with some notes from a training program for psychotherapists (I started taking this program earlier this year).

We’re using information from Christine Caldwell’s book Getting Our Bodies Back to guide our feedback. She describes feedback as: descriptive, value-neutral, without agenda, providing multiple options, and growth-affirming. Feedback is contrasted with criticism, which is interpretive, judgemental, has an agenda, reduces options, and affirms control.

Here are a few quotes from Caldwell – I choose these quotes because I can see their value in an organizational or business context.

Feedback has no agenda. How many times have we said, “But I want him to see what he is doing to himself!”… It may be that the person in question is messing up. But if we need to explain this to him or her from some agenda of our own, we will again pollute that person’s growth opportunity with our own unfinished business.

Caldwell provides the example agenda of deflecting excitement. If the feedback giver is uncomfortable with being with his or her own energy and excitement, and if the feedback recipient generated energy or excitement in him or her, then the feedback giver might give feedback with the agenda of deflecting or reducing excitement (e.g. giving the feedback that the person was too enthusiastic or over-the-top in their presentation). I can definitely think of times when I’ve been guilty of this agenda.

Feedback creates more options in a relationship… With the truth before us, we can choose… We feel free to use this information in our own best interests.

Being criticized decreases our options: we can basically only fight or flee or freeze…

Criticism only affirms control. It gives us one more experience of being wrong and incapable of being right without the constant criticism of others to keep us in line. It affirms that our boundaries are outside of us and that we would fall down without them. It retards the growth and development of internal limits that form from our experience of what works and what doesn’t work.

Finally, she describes true feedback as growth-affirming:

Real feedback allows us to self-regulate, given the proper information and nourishment. Becuase it is a description of either what we are doing or what is occurring in others, it addresses that part of ourselves oriented toward growth and fulfillment.

A lot of managers who have a 360 or similar assessment conducted for them request information on how they give and receive feedback. I wonder what new information could be gleaned if those questions on how they give and receive feedback were framed around some of Caldwell’s descriptions – is my feedback value-neutral, without an agenda? When I give you feedback, do you feel that I have affirmed your growth? Have more options opened in our relationship?

Feedback as Downward Accountability

As part of the feedback theme on this blog, I’m sharing the idea of feedback as downward accountability, which I’ve taken from an anecdote shared in the Most Significant Change handbook. This outlook moves feedback from being viewed as an extra, an optional nice-to-have, and instead puts it in the realm of responsibility.

Perhaps one way to address this problem more directly would be to rename this stage in the M[ost] S[ignificant] C[hange] implementation process “Downward Accountability”, to create and assert rights to knowledge about decisions [...] made by others, rather than treating “feedback” almost as an optional item. (p. 35).

This term makes feedback one-directional, though, and I believe in upward and downward and lateral accountability. But the accountability notion is a useful change in mindset. So perhaps rather than using the word “feedback”, I’ll start playing with the notion of feedback as “accountability” instead – information I need to share and receive from a position of my own responsibilities.

Most Significant Change

Someone interning with the Aga Khan Foundation sent me the handbook for the Most Significant Change technique. The MSC combines storytelling with a focus on impact to conduct monitoring and evaluation and to stimulate organizational learning.

At the heart of the technique, individuals tell how the project/program in question has affected them, answering the question, “Over the last month, what has been the most significant change as a result of program x?” Depending on how you’re evaluating, you can change the time period for the question, can specify who or what is being changed (the most significant change for you? for the community? for the organization?), and/or specify an area of change.

The answers to the questions are then fed forward through different levels (of the organization, or of people being affected by the program), with each level establishing criteria to select the most significant of the significant changes that have been reported, and then passing that most significant change up to the next level.

I’m drawn to the potential of the Most Significant Change technique as a tool for organizational learning, because it uses storytelling (and it’s in our stories, I believe, that we recognize and record the things that are significant in our lives) and because it allows for unexpected change to surface. If evaluating a program but only looking for intended results, you miss the unintended consequences. If you’re open to asking questions that will reveal what you didn’t expect – that’s how organizational learning can happen.

From the handbook, here are some advantages to using the technique (particularly valuable for anyone working in the social change sector):

There are several reasons why a wide range of organisations have found MSC monitoring very useful and these include the following.
1. It is a good means of identifying unexpected changes.
2. It is a good way to clearly identify the values that prevail in an organisation and to have a practical discussion about which of those values are the most important. This happens when people think through and discuss which of the SCs is the most significant. This can happen at all levels of the organisation.
3. It is a participatory form of monitoring that requires no special professional skills. Compared to other monitoring approaches, it is easy to communicate across cultures. There is no need to explain what an indicator is. Everyone can tell stories about events they think were important.
4. It encourages analysis as well as data collection because people have to explain why they believe one change is more important than another.
5. It can build staff capacity in analysing data and conceptualising impact.
6. It can deliver a rich picture of what is happening, rather than an overly simplified picture where organisational, social and economic developments are reduced to a single number.
7. It can be used to monitor and evaluate bottom-up initiatives that do not have predefined outcomes against which to evaluate.

You can read more about the technique in the hundred-page handbook.

Networks, Communities, and the Whole Person

Someone gave me the gift of referring me to the online book The Southern Wall, which tells the story of the magic of Santropol Roulant. Santropol Roulant is known as a grassroots, volunteer-driven, bicycle-supported meals-on-wheels organization in Montreal, but is also known for so much more. It’s known for a different way of connecting and engaging volunteers and clients as part of a circle of community and trust, a circle that frequently nurtures other projects grown out of the passion and commitment of its volunteers.

The Southern Wall captures the magic of Santropol Roulant’s “art of engagement” – the low management, low structure way in which its volunteers enter into a relationship with the organization and its clients that goes far beyond what any volunteer contract might specify. In explaining the phenomenon, the author (W.O. Nilsson) quotes John Taylor Gatto on networks (the dominant organizing structure in our society, and built on contractual relationships) versus communities (created out of commitment):

“Networks, however, don’t require the whole person, but only a narrow piece. If you function in a network it asks you to repress all the parts of yourself except the network-interest part – a highly unnatural act although one you can get used to. In exchange, the network will deliver efficiency in the pursuit of some limited aim. This is in fact a devil’s bargain, since on the promise of some future gain one must surrender the wholeness of one’s present humanity… A community is a place in which people face each other over time in all their human variety, good parts, bad parts, and all the rest. Such places promote the highest quality of life possible, lives of engagement and participation.” (Gatto quoted in Nilsson, pg.29).

Over the past year I’ve talked to a number of people concerned with alumni engagement in different non-profit organizations – how do alumni want to remain -expect to be- connected to an organization in which they participated in the past? Do organizations have obligations to their alumni? In exploring answers to those questions, I have heard from many people, from many organizations, who feel that, as alumni, they only hear from the organization “when it needs something from me.” I understand the factors that lead to this reality, particularly in a resource-stretched non-profit context, but I also wonder what type of engagement we have missed when we call on each other only in our network-interest capacities.

On Conciseness

At the intersection of learning about clarity in writing and learning about organizational culture comes this tidbit from In Search of Excellence:

The authors describe Procter & Gamble’s “fabled one-page memorandum” – that anything you needed to say at P&G, you had to be able to say in one page or less.

We recently had breakfast with a P&G brand manager and asked if the one-page memorandum legend was really true. “It waxes and wanes,” he said, “but I just submitted a set of recommendations to make a few changes to my brand’s strategy. It ran a page and a quarter and got kicked back. It was too long.” (p.150)

…

John Steinbeck once said that the first step toward writing a novel is to write a one-page statement of purpose. If you can’t get the one page clear, it isn’t likely you’ll get far with the novel. (p.151)

Storytelling and Scenario Planning

My previous posts on scenario planning (here and here) are some of the most searched on this blog. This past weekend, I used the storytelling procedure from the scenario planning module I attended at the Authentic Leadership in Action program. That module had relied heavily on the three days of preparation that led up to our creation and sharing of future scenario stories. We had brainstormed and plotted and fleshed out current and future trends that would affect the future of leadership, created scenarios around the major trends, and then set ourselves inside these scenarios to write stories from the future.

I spent Saturday facilitating the annual meeting between The Otesha Project’s Board of Directors and staff members, and midway during the day it hit me that the storytelling method was the perfect thing to bring into the group to close off our day. Otesha, since its inception in 2002, has been a fascinating organization – one that tries to incorporate consensus models and a youth-run framework into a vision for Canada-wide change.

Particularly at this point in its history, the stories of how Otesha might go forward are unwritten. The Board and staff referred often to their five year plan, but even within that framework saw wide possibilities for meeting Otesha’s mission: to bring sustainable consumption into the mainstream of Canadian culture. As the organization goes through a major transition – both co-founders have transitioned out of their director roles and now serve on the Board, full-time staff have reorganized their structure from semi-hierarchical to a flat, non-hierarchical structure, and all remain committed to a consensus model even as staff transition in and out of the organization – there is a beautiful diversity of complementary visions for meeting Otesha’s goals in the years to come.

Recognizing the diversity in the room, and the diversity of options available, I pulled in the story creation from the scenario planning module I had attended. In our last two hours, after a day discussing organizational SWOTS, key questions around HR, finances, and programming, and some intense brainstorm/visioning sessions, we gathered in a circle. Following the character creation method used in the module I’d attended, we each selected the numbers and characteristics that made up our future character. Then we mentally fastforwarded ourselves into the lives of these imaginary people – who were they, where did they live? And in the year 2011 (when Otesha’s current five year plan comes to completion), how would these characters have been touched by Otesha?

What followed was one of the most intense half hours I’ve seen a group embrace. For 30-40 minutes, everyone spread out throughout different rooms, curled up with notebooks, and started writing their stories of who their character was and how Otesha had reached into his/her life. People were gripping their pens and pencils furiously, filling up pages rapidly, pausing to reread, examine, rewrite, staring into space as they gathered their thoughts. The rooms were silent save for the sounds of our pens on paper; for thirty minutes, everyone travelled forward in time and imagined the future they could create together.

The greatest gift that comes from this method is the sharing of stories with each other. As we gathered for our last hour together, each member of the group shared their stories. More than one story made us laugh, more than one story brought tears to our eyes. Every single story offered possibility, and painted for us all a picture of Otesha’s future, and a picture of Canada’s future. I think that this hope and possibility is what each attendee is taking with them as they head back into their regular workweeks, and as a facilitator it’s a hope and possibility that have made me feel reconnected to my work.

Feedforward

Enough about feedback! Marshall Goldsmith, an executive coach, leadership author, and the “TM” behind the Goldsmith Coaching Process (TM) (and, coincidentally, someone my dad learned from back in his management consulting days – I grew up listening to theory from Marshall), writes that it’s not all about the feedback, it’s about the feedforward.

His article, “Try feedforward instead of feedback”, can be downloaded here. In this article, he argues that the fundamental problem with all feedback is that it focuses on the past. Feedforward focuses on the future, and therefore can be “expansive and dynamic”, rather than “limited and static”.

The article outlines a sample exercise to try feedforward. Two participants engage with each other. The first describes one behaviour that they would like to change, and asks the listener for feedforward: “two suggestions for the future that might help them achieve a positive change in their selected behaviour.” Rules: no comments about the past (feedback) can be made. No critique of suggestions given is offered. Listen, take notes, process, and thank your listener for their suggestions.

After this round, roles are reversed, and then the exercise can be repeated with another partner(s) until everyone ends up with a library of feedforward suggestions for making their desired change.

See the article for a more detailed description, as well as the “Eleven Reasons to Try FeedForward” section.

What I like about this model is: 1) the feedforward recipient has a lot of control over identifying what she/he knows will make a difference in her/his life, and what she/he has the motivation to work on. 2) Suggestions are helpful. They open up doors of possibility. Negative feedback from the past, on the other hand, can just bog people down. 3) After gathering suggestions from multiple people, the feedforward recipient has the autonomy to pick and choose the ones that she/he knows will work best for her/him.