I was invited last week to be a part of a group to give group feedback to a learning process and it sparked some thoughts, some of which have been brewing for a long while.
In this meeting, I saw clearly the importance of clarifying whether the feedback that is solicited needs to be either constructive or experiential.
Most people that ask for feedback, whether in group contexts or not are asking for constructive feedback – feedback that is objective or helpful to a cause or mission. This was the intended purpose of the feedback meeting I was a part of – to get constructive feedback for the sake of improvement or other corrective purposes
As I watched my group enter into the process of giving feedback and thought of other experiences on both sides of the feedback process I realized that most people when they give feedback, are giving experiential feedback. This feedback is anchored in their experience and is often anchored in people’s personal feelings or reactions. Their purpose often is not constructive to an overall purpose or guiding direction, but rather it is a release of one’s personal experience related to whatever it is under discussion. Many take the invitation to give feedback as the invitation to uncritically vent all the things they don’t like without having given thought to what would benefit the process in moving forward as a whole.
Both are important components to feedback at times, but there are often significant misses because there is a lack of clarity as to the nature of a given feedback request or session. Is the purpose for constructive or experiential feedback? This lack of clarity begins to produce an expectation gap. One side expects the other to give rational and well thought through input while the other side expects that the other side will be empathetic, understanding, and even apologetic. I think a lot of feedback processes would go a little bit better if both sides of the feedback process were clear on whether the primary objective of the time is a better product (or team or business…) or if the primary objective is relational harmony, connection, and satisfaction. If the objectives are different for both sides, then neither side will probably have their objectives met. They’ll just be a whole lot of frustration. I suppose often one side does get their objectives met, but usually that means the other side is eating a lot of dirt.
I suppose one step towards this is just stating the obvious, a burden which should fall on the one initiating the feedback communication in the first place.
I’ll do a follow-up post to this given the emotional complexity of feedback. Constructive and experiential feedback are not always so easily separated and most feedback sessions probably end up moving back and forth to some degree. I aim to post some thoughts on what might help a leader in creating a feedback process that navigates this reality.
I’m in process on some of this, so your contributions are welcome to the discussion!
