Брене Браун - Daring Greatly

For the best guidance on how to give feedback that moves people and processes forward, I turn to my social work roots. In my experience the heart of valuable feedback is taking the “strengths perspective.” According to social work educator Dennis Saleebey, viewing performance from the strengths perspective offers us the opportunity to examine our struggles in light of our capacities, talents, competencies, possibilities, visions, values, and hopes. This perspective doesn’t dismiss the serious nature of our struggles; however, it does require us to consider our positive qualities as potential resources. Dr. Saleebey proposes, “It is as wrong to deny the possible as it is to deny the problem.”

One effective method for understanding our strengths is to examine the relationship between strengths and limitations. If we look at what we do best as well as what we want to change the most, we will often find that the two are varying degrees of the same core behavior. Most of us can go through the majority of our “faults” or “limitations” and find strengths lurking within.

For example, I can beat myself up for being too controlling and micromanaging, or I can recognize that I’m very responsible, dependable, and committed to quality work. The micromanaging issues don’t go away, but by viewing them from a strengths perspective, I have the confidence to look at myself and assess the behaviors I’d like to change.

I want to emphasize that the strengths perspective is not a tool to simply allow us to put a positive spin on a problem and consider it solved. But by first enabling us to inventory our strengths, it suggests ways we can use those strengths to address the related challenges. One way I teach this perspective to students is by requiring them to give and receive feedback on their classroom presentations. When a student presents, s/he receives feedback from every one of his or her classmates. The students in the audience have to identify three observable strengths and one opportunity for growth. The trick is that they have to use their assessment of the strengths to make a suggestion on how the individual might address the specified opportunity. For example:

Strengths

You captured my interest right away with your emotional personal story.

You used examples that are relevant to my life.

You concluded with actionable strategies that tied in with our learning in the class.

Opportunity

Your stories and examples made me feel connected to you and what you were saying, but I sometimes struggled to read the PowerPoint and listen to you at the same time. I didn’t want to miss anything you were saying, but I worried about not following the slides. You might experiment with fewer words on the slides—or maybe even no slides. You had me without them.

The research has made this clear: Vulnerability is at the heart of the feedback process.This is true whether we give, receive, or solicit feedback. And the vulnerability doesn’t go away even if we’re trained and experienced in offering and getting feedback. Experience does, however, give us the advantage of knowing that we can survive the exposure and uncertainty, and that it’s worth the risk.

One of the greatest mistakes that I see people make in the feedback process is “armoring up.” To protect ourselves from the vulnerability of giving or receiving feedback, we get ready to rumble (cue Jock Jams ). It’s easy to assume that the feedback process only feels vulnerable for the person receiving the feedback, but that’s not true. Honest engagement around expectations and behavior is always fraught with uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure for everyone involved. Here’s an example. Susan, the principal of a large high school, has to talk to one of her teachers about several parent complaints. The parents have voiced concerns about the teacher’s cursing during class and making personal calls on her cell phone while she allows her students to leave the class, goof off, and make their own calls. In this situation “armoring up” can take several forms.

One is that Susan can fill out the probation form and have it sitting on her desk when the teacher comes in. She’ll simply say, “Here’s the complaint. I’ve written you up for the following offenses. Sign here and don’t let it happen again.” She’s knocked out the meeting in three minutes flat. There’s no feedback, no growth, no learning, but it’s over. The odds of the teacher changing her behaviors are slim.

Another way we armor up is by convincing ourselves that the other person deserves to be hurt or put down. Like most of us, Susan is more comfortable with anger than vulnerability, so she ratchets up her confidence with a little self-righteousness. “I’m so sick of this. If these teachers respected me, they’d never do stuff like this. I’ve had it. She’s been a problem since the first day I met her. You want to jack around in class—go for it. I’ll show you exactly how this works. ” The opportunity for constructive feedback and relationship building turns into a smackdown. Again, it’s over but there is no feedback, no growth, no learning and, more than likely, no change.

I’ll admit that I’ve got a lot of “bring it on” in me. I’m scrappy, I think fast on my feet, and I like my emotions with a little agency. I’m good at anger and only so-so at vulnerability, so armoring up before a vulnerable experience is attractive to me. Luckily, this work has taught me that when I feel self-righteous, it means I’m afraid. It’s a way to puff up and protect myself when I’m afraid of being wrong, making someone angry, or getting blamed.

SITTING ON THE SAME SIDE OF THE TABLE

In my social work training, a lot of attention was paid to how we talk to people, even down to where and how we sit. For example, I would never talk to a client across a desk; I would walk around my desk and sit in a chair across from the client so there was nothing big and bulky between us. I remember the first time I went in to see one of my social work professors about a grade. She got up from behind her desk and asked me to take a seat at a small round table she had in her office. She pulled up a chair and sat next to me.

In armoring up for that conversation, I had pictured her sitting behind her big metal desk and me defiantly sliding my paper across it and demanding an explanation for my grade. After she sat down next to me, I put the paper on the table. As she said, “I’m so glad that you came in to talk to me about your paper. You did a great job on this; I loved your conclusion,” and patted me on the back, I awkwardly realized that we were on the same side of the table.

Totally discombobulated, I blurted, “Thank you. I worked really hard on it.”

She nodded and said, “I can tell. Thank you. I took some points off for your APA formatting. I’d like for you to focus on that and get it cleaned up. You could submit this for publication, and I don’t want the reference formatting to hold you back.”

I was still confused. She thinks it’s publishable? She liked it?

“Do you need some help with the APA formatting? It’s tricky and it took me years to get it down,” she asked. (A great example of normalizing . )

I told her that I’d fix the references and I asked her if she’d look at my revisions. She happily agreed and gave me a few tips on the process. I thanked her for her time and left, grateful for my grade and for a teacher who cared as much as she did.

Today, “Sitting on the same side of the table” is my metaphor for feedback. I used it to create my Engaged Feedback Checklist:

I know I’m ready to give feedback when:

I’m ready to sit next to you rather than across from you;