Give & Receive Feedback
A collection of posts on exchanging feedback effectively.
Summary
Avoiding the Unintended Consequences of Casual Feedback
Leadership
Jeff Weiner, 2014
Oftentimes what I thought was a take-it-or-leave-it remark would create a massively disruptive fire drill. Up until that moment, I had no idea my opinion was being weighed so heavily.
Jeff Weiner, Executive Chairman of LinkedIn, shared his unique practice on giving informal feedback to his team. The system was designed to remove ambiguities in interpreting the comments and proven effective to communicate more effectively across all organization levels, especially with newer employees, yet to be calibrated to his feedback style or frequency. His secret recipe is to categorize the feedback in one of three categories below:
One Person’s Opinion: This is a subjective, anecdotal opinion where the input is to be treated as coming from just one user/customer/member of the team. It’s entirely up to the person responsible for the initiative regarding whether or not they act on the advice.
Strong Suggestion: Used when seeking to draw upon my experience, yet provide the team the space to take risks, make mistakes, hone their instincts, and ultimately scale how critical decisions are made. Successfully giving feedback this way requires you to trust the people you’ve empowered to have the final say.
Mandate: proactively prevent the damage from being done when there will come a time when the consequences of poor judgment might prove so harmful. When it makes sense, issuing mandates can pay huge dividends by enabling the company to avoid prohibitively costly mistakes. However, give them too often or without the right justification, and there is no faster way to signal your lack of trust and demotivate the team. Try to use this category sparingly (if at all).
- Weiner, J. (2014). Avoiding the Unintended Consequences of Casual Feedback. LinkedIn.