Psychological Safety & Giving Feedback

Providing constructive feedback is one powerful way you can help people excel, achieve their goals and be happier in their work. 

Done well, it can create psychological safety and help teams and organisations perform at their best. However, feedback can be delivered in such a way that it causes harm, intentionally or not. Delivering feedback badly is one of the quickest ways to destroy psychological safety and break down trust in a team. 

This week I’m exploring how and when feedback should be delivered, and even whether it should be delivered at all. We’ll touch on receiving feedback as well here, but we’ll dive more fully into that in another issue. 

How to deliver feedback and improve psychological safety

If we only remember one thing, we should make it the “Platinum Rule” – Treat others as they want to be treated. That means delivering feedback in a way that the recipient prefers, not the way we prefer to deliver it, or even the way we would prefer to receive it. To do this, we need to ask how they want to receive feedback. Of course, they may not yet feel psychologically safe enough to be honest with us, and may instead tell us what they think you want to hear. But nobody said that this was easy – we must first put the work in to create an environment of psychological safety!

Here are some suggestions for how to effectively deliver feedback that not only increases performance, but also minimises harm. Really well delivered feedback drives improvement, whilst poorly delivered feedback decreases performance and can cause real damage, sometimes lasting for years afterwards.

Elements of good feedback:

• Well intentioned
• Non-trivial 
• Truthful
• Consensual
• Actionable
• Timely 
• Specific
• Private 
• Delivered from your perspective, not that of others
• A two-way conversation 
• Focused
• About behaviours and performance, not personalities or style
• Combined with positive encouragement

Let’s dive into these one at a time:

Well intentioned

This feels like it should go without saying, but when we get the urge to give feedback, it’s important to check in with ourselves and make absolutely sure that our intentions are to help the person improve. Feedback should never be about punishing someone for making a mistake or making them feel bad so that they do it differently next time. It also shouldn’t be about making ourselves appear more knowledgeable or competent: check that it’s not your ego driving the conversation. 

Feedback that doesn’t come from a place of positive intent isn’t feedback, it’s bullying.

Truthful:

When delivering feedback, first recognise that what you think is not “the truth” – we are not an omniscient god 🙂 What happened is our perception, and it’s shaped by our own biases and experiences. We only experience the world through our own rather foggy lens. Before giving feedback, we may want to check in with others, to see whether their perspective aligns with ours. Show humility, and recognise that we could be wrong. Sometimes, recipients may prefer to have a chance to suggest their own improvements first – “How do you think that could have gone better?“. Be aware, however, that this can seem like a “tell me what I’m thinking” exercise, and create anxiety. And in some cases the recipient might not want to tell us an error they’re not sure that we’ve spotted – after all, why give someone a stick to beat you with?

Non-trivial

Whilst we might be detail-oriented and want to provide every opportunity for our team to improve, no matter how small, it’s important to recognise that frequent, trivial feedback can have a chilling effect on team members’ efforts. As a result of frequent and seemingly trivial feedback, they may begin to fear that everything they do will be critiqued, and nothing they do is “good enough”. The safest option for them may be to not try at all, or only carry out very low-risk, low-impact tasks where the risk and impact of critique is low. It can be demoralising if we try really hard at something, and still receive critique every time.

Consensual

Like sex, or tea, feedback should be consensual. We could ask things like:

• “Are you interested in my observations?”
• “Can I share with you something I noticed?”
• “Are you open to feedback at the moment?”
• “Can we chat about the things we’re both working on improving right now so we can share thoughts with each other about what we’re noticing?”
• “Can we discuss some ideas for improvement?”
• “How do you feel that went”

(Thanks Kate Arms, Damien Ryan, Piers Campbell, Chris Shambrook, David da Silva and Bjelkie Lansdown for the suggestions)

We’re not always ready for feedback. We might not be in the right mental state for it – we could be too tired, stressed, or distracted, or events in our lives outside of work may be taking up all our headspace.

If we know we didn’t perform as well as hoped on a task, we may be very well aware of any shortcomings and don’t need someone else kicking us when we’re down, however well intentioned that person is. I suspect many of us can think of times when we’ve known only too well that we’ve messed something up, and we already know exactly what to do differently next time. If we give feedback to someone who isn’t ready for it, doesn’t want it, or doesn’t need it, we risk causing more harm than good. 

By delivering feedback badly, or at the wrong time, we risk further damaging someone’s performance and confidence. In the worst cases, they may even simply quit.  Even positively-intended feedback can have the opposite result if delivered poorly. 

Actionable

Feedback must be actionable. It’s stressful to hear feedback if we don’t know how to act upon it. I remember for a while seeing red and green feedback cards at conferences for the audience to provide feedback on talks. The idea was to take a green or red card and place it in a box to be counted afterwards. I asked the organisers if they could remove the box for my talk and ask people for ideas for improvement instead, because:

• Even if there were loads of green cards, I knew I’d only see the red ones.
• What could I do with that information, other than beat myself up about it? 

By actionable, we mean something we can deliberately do, change, practise, or improve upon. One way is to try providing actions in the form of experiments, such as “Next time, maybe you could try doing X instead of Y, and see what happens.” By making everything an experiment, the risk of “failing” is significantly reduced.

Timely

The further we are in time from an event, the less accurately we remember it, so the best time to learn from something is usually as soon as possible after the event. That said, there are exceptions to this rule. After a particularly emotive or traumatic event we may need time to recover before we can process feedback.

Specific and Precise.

Unspecific or imprecise feedback causes anxiety. For someone on a driving lesson, hearing “You need to start indicating a few seconds earlier.” is far more useful than “You need to get better at indicating.” Both may be true, but only the former is really useful, while the latter just makes us feel bad and wonder what we’re doing wrong.

Private

Unless we’ve previously agreed to provide feedback in public, all constructive criticism should be private. This makes it easier for the recipient to take in and ask clarifying questions without appearing defensive. Public feedback can also damage psychological safety and create misunderstandings for other team members who may not be aware of the context. 

Delivered from your perspective

In general, we should not speak for others in delivering feedback. Saying “Bob’s not happy with this project, and says you need to rewrite the presentation deck.” will make the recipient doubt if that’s really what Bob said and wonder why Bob didn’t say so himself. It also shuts down any opportunity for clarification or conversation.

A two-way conversation

When giving feedback, make sure there’s time to discuss it in an unhurried way. Ensure the recipient can ask for clarification, or even disagree and reject it. 

When delivering feedback, expect to hear some in return. This may be about the manner in which we provided feedback, or about something else entirely. All the above points still apply of course – it should be actionable, you may ask for clarification, or you may reject it if you feel it’s not true or appropriate, but ensure you’re open to receive feedback in return. Even better, ask for feedback on how you’ve delivered feedback!

Focused

Keep feedback to just one or two key points. It can be hard to absorb feedback, especially if there are multiple messages to take in. Once we’re beyond two points, it’s likely we’re going to forget any more, or simply feel overwhelmed and inadequate, hindering our performance further. 

Not about personality or style

This is sometimes difficult to discern. Where does personality end and behaviour begin? We can offer practical feedback on technical or operational tasks, but when it comes to how people communicate and interact, it can be harder. We may feel that someone isn’t communicating well, when in fact it’s simply that we have different personalities, styles, or cultures. We can offer to help someone improve their communication, but we must not try to change who they are.

Combined with positive encouragement

I sincerely believe that nobody should come away from a feedback conversation feeling dejected. Every feedback conversation should be positive and forward looking, leaving the recipient feeling optimistic and energised. This isn’t easy, but it is important. Imagine if we could get excited about every opportunity to improve ourselves. Imagine if we could consider every feedback conversation with our manager or leader as a chance to get a little upgrade. That’s what feedback should be – an exciting opportunity to do something even better than we did last time.

An extra note for managers:

If you’re a manager, be aware that almost every comment you make can be perceived as “feedback” by your team members, even if you don’t intend it as such. What we intend as throwaway comments can have a big impact on people who look up and/or report up to us.
 

When to refrain from giving feedback

Bear in mind that sometimes no feedback might be the better option – if someone needs encouragement, is finding life or work challenging or has recently experienced trauma, the best thing to do may be to simply say “Well done, keep going.” Feedback can wait until they’re in a better place to receive it. This is another reason why it’s critical to check in with the recipient before providing feedback.
 

Receiving feedback

As challenging as it can be to give feedback, receiving it can be just as difficult. 

In these cases, remember that since all feedback is based on opinion and perception, not all feedback is helpful or accurate. Just because someone has given you feedback, it doesn’t mean you need to act upon it. Their perspective may be skewed, or in the worst cases, their intention may not be positive. So when you’re receiving feedback, consider:

• Is this feedback truthful?
• Is this feedback specific and actionable?
• Is there positive intent behind it?
• Is the person delivering it doing so with care and concern for me?
• Is the person delivering this feedback experienced or qualified to do so?
• Is this the right time and space for me to receive this feedback?

If the answer to any of those questions is no, then you have a right to question or even disregard the feedback. I was once told by a manager to “Be less English”. I am English, and I rejected that feedback because I can’t, and I don’t want to, be less English.

However, we should also try to resist our natural temptation to defensiveness. Even if some of the answers to the above questions are “no”, there is probably something you can take from the feedback in order to improve or reflect in some way. 

Great feedback can enhance an already high performing, psychologically safe team, but poorly delivered feedback can destroy psychological safety. Be careful, empathetic and mindful when delivering it. Contracting with people about not just how, but when and if, they’d like to receive feedback is powerful, and kind.

Thanks to Jade Garratt for the feedback, tireless proof reading, editing, and turning my rambles into somewhat coherent language!

Psychological Safety in the Workplace

“Have some grace with people, including yourself.” I love this piece from James Hollingshead, the “Misanthropic Developer” titled “You Can’t Force Psychological Safety”. Just a really insightful, passioned, actionable piece of writing whether you’re a software developer or not. Really worth a read.

It’s great to see psychological safety featured in the FT again! This piece by Michael Skapinker examines the causes of recent crises such as SVB, the BBC debacle with Gary Lineker, and JP Morgan. This quote from Amy Edmondson nails just one way in which leaders in these organisations could have attempted to see off the crises, by asking: “OK, let’s just say we’re wrong about this and it goes badly awry, what would have explained it?“. If you want to try out a practice for this in your teams, check out the Liberating Structure “Triz”.

Here’s a great “unpopular opinion” that points out that a lot of potentially bad software engineering and architectural decisions remain unchallenged because of a fear of looking dumb if we speak up. 

This is so amazing, a great sketchnote by @thepaedsnurse drawing on the episode of The Leadership Log where I talked with Becky about psychological safety.

In the UK recently, we had the awful news that headteacher Ruth Perry took her own life after an Ofsted report (the UK school inspection service) graded the management of the school as “inadequate”. This is a tragedy, and an example of how grading systems like this can cause intolerable anxiety. Ofsted reports result in “one word judgements” for schools, which don’t reflect the complex environments that schools operate in. Many in teaching are now calling for a radical reform of the inspection system. It doesn’t help that last November, the teacher wellbeing index reported that 78% of all staff experienced at least one behavioural, psychological or physical symptom linked to their work. In the UK, and in many other places, teaching is in crisis. If you’re a teacher reading this, please know that you have our support and we sincerely hope that this is the catalyst for systemic change.

And relevant to that is this article from UKG, showing that Managers Impact Our Mental Health More Than Doctors, Therapists — and the Same as Spouses.

Here’s a great episode of No Woman Left Behind, with our very own community member Stephanie Fleming, on psychological safety in the workplace. 

Thanks so much to Matt Ballantine of Equal Experts for inviting me to one of their “brown bag” sessions, to discuss psychological safety, with a particular focus on technology and DevOps teams. There are some fab other sessions too, including discussions on Trust, Digital Mindset, and Kindness – check them out on YouTube 🙂 

This is an incredible resource created by Sheril Mathews, all about the power of framing in creating psychological safety. Framing, or reframing, is one of the single most powerful ways to foster psychological safety and performance in teams – by changing the lens in which we view challenges and problems. It’s a great piece, well worth a read, and I’ll just highlight this part: Given the importance of framing, what can leaders do to get better at it? Below are some basic strategies to get better at framing:

1. Learn to uncover and identify frames
2. Become familiar with common opposing frames
3. Learn to leverage language forms
4. Learn how to change the frame aka reframing
5. Understand the role of context in leadership

Things to do and try:

I’ve been working on this mind map of connecting psychological safety to various related fields and domains. It’s a work in progress, and I thought it’d nice to crowd-source and crowd-share it! So take a look if you’re interested. I’ve made this Miro Board publicly editable, which is either going to result in a fantastic collaborative work, or absolute disaster 😀 Feel free to add fields and topics, domains, join things together, and make notes on the board for other suggestions. And please make use of it for your own research, workshops and talks 🙂

This week’s poem:

Worm Moon, by Mary Oliver

I.
In March the earth remembers its own name.
Everywhere the plates of snow are cracking.
The rivers begin to sing. In the sky
the winter stars are sliding away; new stars
appear as, later, small blades of grain
will shine in the dark fields.

And the name of every place
is joyful.

II.
The season of curiosity is everlasting
and the hour for adventure never ends,
but tonight
even the men who walked upon the moon
are lying content
by open windows
where the winds are sweeping over the fields,
over water,
over the naked earth,
into villages, and lonely country houses, and the vast cities

III.
because it is spring;
because once more the moon and the earth are eloping –
a love match that will bring forth fantastic children
who will learn to stand, walk, and finally run
    over the surface of earth;
who will believe, for years,
that everything is possible.

IV.
Born of clay,
how shall a man be holy;
born of water,
how shall a man visit the stars;
born of the seasons,
how shall a man live forever?

V.
Soon
the child of the red-spotted newt, the eft,
will enter his life from the tiny egg.
On his delicate legs
he will run through the valleys of moss
down to the leaf mold by the streams,
where lately white snow lay upon the earth
like a deep and lustrous blanket
of moon-fire,

VI.
and probably
everything
is possible.


From Mary Oliver’s book “Twelve Moons“