Hasta La Gadget!

Leaders have to give feedback and performance appraisals have to be made. This is a given. Yet, there are many times when feedforward is preferable to feedback in day-to-day interactions. Feedforward is a group exercise, the purpose of which is to provide individuals with suggestions for the future and to help them achieve a positive change in the behaviors as selected by them. Aside from its effectiveness and efficiency, feedforward can make life a lot more enjoyable. (For a more detailed description of the Feedforward, please see the Marshall Goldsmith Thinkers50 Video entitled Feedforward: Coaching for Behavioral Change, week 17.)

Here are 10 reasons participants in my classes see feedforward as fun and helpful as opposed to painful, embarrassing, or uncomfortable. These descriptions provide a great explanation of why feedforward can often be more useful than feedback as a developmental tool.

1. We can change the future. We can’t change the past. Feedforward helps people envision and focus on a positive future, not a failed past. By giving people ideas on how they can be even more successful (as opposed to visualizing a failed past), we can increase their chances of achieving this success in the future.
2. It can be more productive to help people learn to be “right,” than prove they were “wrong.” Negative feedback often becomes an exercise in “let me prove you were wrong.” Feedforward, on the other hand, is almost always seen as positive because it focuses on solutions – not problems.
3. Feedforward is especially suited to successful people. Successful people like getting ideas that are aimed at helping them achieve their goals. They tend to resist negative judgment. I have observed many successful executives respond to (and even enjoy) feedforward. I am not sure that these same people would have had such a positive reaction to feedback.
4. Feedforward can come from anyone who knows about the task. It does not require personal experience with the individual. One very common positive reaction to the previously described exercise is that participants are amazed by how much they can learn from people that they don’t know!
5. People do not take feedforward as personally as feedback. In theory, constructive feedback is supposed to “focus on the performance, not the person”. In practice, almost all feedback is taken personally (no matter how it is delivered). Feedforward cannot involve a personal critique, since it is discussing something that has not yet happened!
6. Feedback can reinforce personal stereotyping and negative self-fulfilling prophecies. Feedforward can reinforce the possibility of change. Feedback can reinforce the feeling of failure. Negative feedback can be used to reinforce the message, “this is just the way you are”. Feedforward is based on the assumption that the receiver of suggestions can make positive changes in the future.
7. Face it! Most of us hate getting negative feedback, and we don’t like to give it. I have reviewed summary 360 feedback reports from many companies. The items “provides developmental feedback in a timely manner” and “encourages and accepts constructive criticism” always score near the bottom on co-worker satisfaction with leaders. It’s clear that leaders are not very good at giving or receiving negative feedback. It is unlikely that this will change in the near future.
8. Feedforward tends to be much faster and more efficient than feedback. An excellent technique for giving ideas to successful people is to say, “Here are four ideas for the future. Please accept these in the positive spirit that they are given and ignore what doesn’t make sense for you.” With this approach almost no time gets wasted on judging the quality of the ideas or “proving that the ideas are wrong”.
9. Feedforward can be a useful tool to apply with managers, peers, and team members. Rightly or wrongly, feedback is associated with judgment. This can lead to very negative – or even career-limiting – unintended consequences when applied to managers or peers. Feedforward does not imply superiority of judgment. As such it can be easier to hear from a person who is not in a position of power or authority.

And, finally, reason #10 why feedforward can work better than feedback is…

10. People tend to listen more attentively to feedforward than feedback. One participant in the feedforward exercise noted, “I think that I listened more effectively in this exercise than I ever do at work!” When asked why, he responded, “Normally, when others are speaking, I am so busy composing a reply that will make sure that I sound smart – that I am not fully listening to what the other person is saying I am just composing my response. In feedforward the only reply that I am allowed to make is ‘thank you’. Since I don’t have to worry about composing a clever reply – I can focus all of my energy on listening to the other person!”

Quality communication–between and among people at all levels and every department and division–is the glue that holds organizations together. By using feedforward–and by encouraging others to use it–leaders can dramatically improve the quality of communication in their organizations, ensuring that the right message is conveyed, and that those who receive it are receptive to its content. The result is a much more dynamic, much more open organization–one whose employees focus on the promise of the future rather than dwelling on the mistakes of the past. Try it for yourself and see!

* * *

Please view the Marshall Goldsmith Thinkers50 Video Blog. The next short video in the series Coaching for Behavioral Change: Feedforward accompanies this article. I’ll post these blogs once a week for the next 50 weeks. The series will incorporate learnings from my 38 years of experience with top executives, as well as material from my previous research, articles and books, including What Got You Here Won’t Get You There, MOJO, Coaching for Leadership, and Succession: Are You Ready? The blogs will also include material from my exciting new research on engagement and my upcoming book Triggers (to be published by Crown in 2015).

Photo Credit: Carrie Schechter

Darcie Chan is the famed author of the eBook breakaway sensation The Mill River Recluse and the sequel, The Mill River Redemption. Set in the fictional sleepy town of Mill River, Vermont both novels portray the deep complexities of its small town characters and their bigger than life problems. I read both books back to back, and quite frankly, I was glad to have waited to read Recluse until right before I was given an ARC of The Mill River Redemption because I don’t know how fans waited for the sequel! Darcie was kind enough to put her author pen down for a few moments to answer some of my have-to-know question.

HH: What do you think is the real reason there is a trend of attorneys who become successful authors?

DC: Probably the main reasons that lots of attorneys become authors are that attorneys are required to do a huge amount of writing, and that people inclined to pursue a career in law (as opposed to a career in the sciences) are more likely to enjoy it. Some lawyers do more writing than others, of course, but when I was working as an attorney, my job was primarily to draft environmental and natural resource legislation. Writing was something I did about 90 percent of each work day, and I really loved that part of my job.

That said, legal writing is very different than writing fiction. Both require creativity (which is something that many people might find surprising, given how “dry” and rigid legal language can be), but writing fiction is far more freeing and fun for the imagination. At least, that’s how it was for me, and that’s the reason I started working on a novel once I’d settled into my legal job. I wanted to spend more time with a different kind of creative outlet, one that I’d always enjoyed.

HH: Father O’Brien…a priest with a penchant for pilfering silver spoons? How did that concept come to you?

DC: Strangely, I remember the exact moment I thought of it. I was in the process of thinking through my concept for a first novel, working out the plot and naming characters. I liked the idea of an older priest being involved, since he would be an ideal person to know what was going on with lots of people in a small town, but I wanted him to be quirky. I’d just eaten a yogurt, and I was staring at the spoon in my hand while I pondered what quirk the priest should have. The “spoon problem” suddenly seemed so obvious and funny, particularly because a spoon is such a mundane object to most people, but to Father O’Brien, it would be simultaneously precious and a source of shame.

HH: The Mill River Recluse was one of the unusual breakaway Indie hits. Has your approach changed with both writing and marketing The Mill River Redemption via Ballantine?

DC: In terms of writing the first draft, it wasn’t all the different, except that Redemption flowed onto the page in about six months (versus the 2.5 years it took me to finish a first draft of Recluse). I was working under a contract deadline for Redemption, but the story took shape and came out so much easier, which I attribute to having been through the process of writing a novel once before. The editing, though, was much improved for Redemption. (It was basically nonexistent for Recluse, which wasn’t professionally edited until Ballantine picked up the rights to it and reissued it.) I could see how my editor’s suggestions really improved my writing and the story. For that and other reasons, I truly believe Redemption is a stronger book than my first.

The marketing of The Mill River Redemption is being handled largely by Ballantine, which is a great relief, because I’m no marketing expert! The marketing that I did for The Mill River Recluse as a self-published e-book was basically a series of cheap trial-and-error features and online ads that I designed myself. I had no idea what would be effective, if anything. This time around, I have a wonderful marketing manager assigned by my publisher who is coordinating a whole campaign for my books. I appreciate her so much, as well as everyone else at Ballantine who has worked to introduce my second novel to the world!

I should also add that I’m still heavily involved in doing publicity for my books. I’m finding that now, though, my publicist is able to access many more review sources and media outlets than I could have as a self-published author. She’s also taken charge of arranging and coordinating appearances and interviews. The happy result is that I’ve had more time to focus on writing and more time for my family. I truly couldn’t be more thrilled with the supportive and collaborative team I have at Ballantine!

HH: There are mixed reviews, so to speak, about Kirkus Reviews, who were instrumental in helping The Mill River Recluse gain recognition. What advice do you have for authors about approaching them for their own reviews?

DC: I used a Kirkus review because, for indie authors, very few professional review services exist. Yes, there are lots of great and popular blogs that review self-published books, but I was looking for a review of the same caliber as a traditionally published book might receive. Kirkus uses the same standards and reviewers for both traditionally published and self-published books. I was also interested in using pull-quotes from my review (if it turned out to be positive, which was not guaranteed) for marketing purposes, because Kirkus has a highly recognizable and respected name in the book world.

I think a Kirkus review can be very useful for authors, both in the credibility it gives a story and in the industry-wide exposure it provides. I don’t have data to quantify how many additional sales of The Mill River Recluse might have been attributable to having the review, but I do believe that the review provided some measure of reassurance to readers who might not otherwise have taken a chance on a first novel by an unknown author.

HH: I appreciated your approach to The Mill River Redemption as a sequel in that it didn’t streamline where Recluse left off. Instead, Redemption weaves over, under, around, backwards and forwards in a very well-crafted manner. What advice do you have for authors who are working on a series?

DC: I’m glad you liked the structure of Redemption! I crafted it that way because I wanted to tell a new story while imparting the “feel” of Mill River from my first book. I also wanted to involve several of the town’s residents in this new novel. I thought the best way to do both of those things was to write a new story that partially overlapped, and was interwoven, with the one in my first novel.

Since I’ve only written two books and the first draft of a third, I’m not sure I have solid advice for a series just yet, but I’m very concerned with character progression and consistency. I’d like for my characters — if they’re featured in more than one book — to learn and grow as people from one story to the next, but it’s also important that their personalities are consistent, without any dramatic or unexplained shifts in their thoughts or behavior.

The other aspect I tried to focus on was storytelling. I tried to build a fresh, new, emotion-filled story around strong characters — both new ones and the holdovers from Recluse. As a reader, I find that compelling, interesting stories, coupled with characters and a setting I love, keep me returning to books in a series. As a writer, I’m hoping with everything in me that readers find my Mill River books to have those same characteristics.

Thank you, Darcie!
Read my review of The Mill River Redemption on the New York Journal of Books.

Recently, I saw a list educating incoming college freshmen about what to take with them to college and which embarrassing items to leave at home because they are too “high school.”

You know me, I love a good, informative list of rules, so it got me thinking. Adolpha moved to kindergarten this year from preschool, and before school started she let me know exactly what was too babyish for her to take to kindergarten.

Ditch any backpack or lunch box with Dora the Explorer, Kai-lan, etc. Adolpha has never been into either of these characters, but she let me know that these two girls were O-U-T in the elementary school lunch room.

Take Disney princesses. Adolpha is sure Ariel and her girlfriends have staying power. I’m guessing it’s only for about one more year. I haven’t seen many Cinderella backpacks amongst the first graders in the pickup line.

Ditch Velcro tennis shoes. Big girls can tie their shoes and Velcro implies they don’t have that skill mastered. Adolpha has since decided Velcro isn’t so bad and she can work with Velcro shoes. Especially when she’s in a hurry in the morning and no one will tie her shoes for her. Shoes must be a big deal in kindergarten, because the only time Gomer has ever complained about anything we made him wear to school was over shoes. He had shoes that lit up when he walked. They were ultra-cool in preschool, and when he got to kindergarten he got teased and told they were for babies. Now he will only be seen in Reeboks or Nikes.

Take funky knee socks. Adolpha started wearing these in preschool, but she feels like she was a trendsetter and a bit ahead of her time. She’s carrying them over into kindergarten and waiting for them to catch on with her friends. And if they don’t, she really doesn’t give a sh*t, because she likes to rock them.

All the cool girls are wearing knee socks. OK, actually just Adolpha does.

Ditch wooden blocks. Blocks were barely appropriate for preschool, they’re so babyish.

Take Legos. They’re MUCH cooler… uhh… blocks.

Shhh… don’t tell Adolpha we’re blocks too!

Ditch teddy bears.

Take giant-eyed stuffed animals. I don’t know what these stuffed animals are called. I think they’re made by Ty (the Beanie Baby people, of course), and she’s drawn to them every single time. Apparently the big eyes are what make this stuffed animal acceptable, versus an ordinary teddy bear.

Ditch any article of clothing with the preschool name on it. Ewww… Adolpha can’t think of anything more embarrassing than being seen in a “Little Hearts Preschool” or “Helping Hands Preschool” T-shirt!

Get spirit wear for the new school. You’re in elementary school now, it’s time to show your Super Puppy Pride. (Adolpha wishes her school had a Super Puppy mascot!)

Adolpha can’t be the only one with such strong opinions — so what about your kids?

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Republicans are increasingly optimistic about the midterms, but not as much as they were in 2010. The electoral landscape continues to look pretty much stagnant. And support for airstrikes in Iraq continues to grow. This is HuffPollster for Tuesday, August 26, 2014.

‘EXPECTATIONS GAP’ BETWEEN REPUBLICANS AND DEMOCRATS GROWS CONSIDERABLY – Pew: “With just over two months before the midterm elections, Republican voters are widening the ‘expectations gap’ with the Democrats. About six-in-ten (61%) Republican and GOP-leaning registered voters think their party will do better than in recent elections — roughly double the share of Democrats (32%) who feel similarly about their party’s chances. This gap has not reached the same levels of the GOP’s margin before their large 2010 gains or the Democrats’ expectations in their 2006 sweep of both houses of Congress. Last December, the expectations gap was narrower; 55% of Republicans and Republican-leaning registered voters said the party would do better than recent elections, compared with 43% of Democrats…The public’s congressional vote preference remains fairly even. Among registered voters, 47% would vote for the Democratic candidate today or lean Democratic and 42% would vote or lean Republican (11% volunteer ‘other’ or don’t know). In surveys going back to last October, neither party has opened up a large lead in the generic ballot.” [Pew]

LITTLE CHANGE IN MIDTERM ENVIRONMENT – HuffPollster: “Americans are pessimistic and broadly anti-incumbent, President Barack Obama’s ratings are mediocre, and neither party is exactly surging ahead. In short, the situation looks pretty much the same as it did in January. Voter sentiment in the year’s most closely watched Senate races has barely budged since spring. In the 17 Senate races polled often enough to track, the margin between candidates over the past three months has shifted by an average of about 1.7 percentage points.….Opinions of the president also seem to have settled, along starkly partisan lines: The vast majority of Democrats continue to approve of him, while nearly all Republicans disapprove, and independents hang somewhere in the middle. His approval rating remains about as low as it has ever been during his tenure as president. The occasional headlines proclaiming Obama at an all-time low (usually meaning his numbers have dropped a point or two) obscure the fact that his overall job approval has been mired for months in the mid-to-low 40s….Numbers on which party Americans would prefer to send to Congress often vary significantly from pollster to pollster, but the average result has also moved relatively little this year. By this point in 2010, Republicans were already beginning to significantly widen their lead, with an end-of-August Gallup poll giving them a record 10-point advantage. This year’s polling, however, has rarely showed one party with an advantage of more than a few points.” [HuffPost]

AMERICAN SUPPORT FOR AIRSTRIKES IN IRAQ CONTINUES TO GROW – Emily Swanson: “American support for U.S. airstrikes in Iraq has solidified in recent weeks, a new HuffPost/YouGov poll shows. But the survey shows continued wariness about additional involvement to quell the insurgency there. According to the poll, 66 percent of Americans now favor the decision to conduct airstrikes in Iraq, while only 20 percent oppose it. In a HuffPost/YouGov poll conducted earlier in August, just after President Barack Obama announced that the U.S. would begin conducting airstrikes, 58 percent of respondents said they favored it and 24 percent said they opposed that action…But Americans continue to oppose sending ground troops to Iraq, by a 56 percent to 20 percent margin. Sixty-three percent of Democrats, 59 percent of independents and a 41 percent to 31 percent plurality of Republicans said they oppose sending ground troops. [HuffPost]

IN DEFENSE OF THE UNH/WMUR POLL SHOWING A CLOSE RACE IN NEW HAMPSHIRE – Sean Trende: “The New Hampshire Senate race poll released last Thursday night caused quite a stir. It showed Sen. Jeanne Shaheen’s lead over former Sen. Scott Brown collapsing to two points….The poll might be an outlier….But there are good reasons to suspect that the movement in the polls reflects actual movement of the electorate. The University of New Hampshire’s Dante Scala points out that the poll specifically shows tightening among Republican respondents….WMUR/UNH’s ‘bounciness’ should be a source of comfort, not skepticism. I’ve seen various commenters suggesting that this tendency to fluctuate substantially from poll to poll is a reason to doubt the poll. For my money, nothing could be further from the truth. Remember, these polls are supposed to move around the ‘true’ value and to do so randomly. Given that we have two points around which they are supposed to move, we should actually expect to see quite a lot of movement in the spread.” [RCP]

LOW RESPONSE RATES ARE ALSO AFFECTING OUR ABILITY TO MEASURE UNEMPLOYMENT – David Leonhardt: “A new academic paper suggests that the unemployment rate appears to have become less accurate over the last two decades, in part because of this rise in nonresponse. In particular, there seems to have been an increase in the number of people who once would have qualified as officially unemployed and today are considered out of the labor force, neither working nor looking for work….The declining response rate to surveys of almost all kinds is among the biggest problems in the social sciences. It’s complicating our ability to understand how people live and what they believe. ‘It’s a huge issue,’ says Alan Krueger, a Princeton economist and one of the new paper’s three authors….The response rate of the Labor Department’s monthly jobs survey is far higher (about 89 percent) than that of a political poll, but it has also fallen (from 96 percent in the 1980s). Not surprisingly, the people who do not respond have different experiences in the job market than those who do.” [NYT]

AAPOR ANNOUNCES NEW INITIATIVE – From the American Association for Public Opinion Research: “Today’s practitioners and consumers of survey data are exposed to a wide array of methodologies, each with its own challenges — increased cost, under-coverage, low participation, mixing of modes, uncertainty in the links between theory and practical application, etc. This environment has produced a range of reactions, from those who are developing and testing new techniques and innovative methods to address many of these issues, to those who have grown skeptical of contemporary survey methods, whether new approaches or traditional methods….Last week, AAPOR Council approved the formation of a special task force to reassess the current state of survey methods (both new and traditional) and provide guidance on the types of information survey practitioners and end users need to help assess the data quality of all forms of surveys.” [AAPOR release]

Earlier this month, AAPOR issued a statement criticizing the New York Times and CBS News for its decision to publish results from a “non-probability, opt-in survey” produced by YouGov (which also conducts surveys in partnership with the Huffington Post). HuffPollster notes that the new task force is led by Reg Baker, a market researcher and active AAPOR member who criticized the organization for its Times/CBS statement (“AAPOR Gets It Wrong“). It also includes several individuals who use or produce non-probability surveys, such as CBS News Elections Director Anthony Salvanto and NPD Group President George Terhanian. “We are very pleased and energized to have such a great group of people participating in this special task force,” AAPOR President Michael Link tells HuffPollster via email. “They represent a broad mix of experts who are involved in the research, the practice, and the end user side of survey research.”

-Online survey researcher SurveyMonkey also announces a new advisory committee. [SurveyMonkey]

HUFFPOLLSTER VIA EMAIL! – You can receive this daily update every weekday via email! Just click here, enter your email address, and and click “sign up.” That’s all there is to it (and you can unsubscribe anytime).

TUESDAY’S ‘OUTLIERS’ – Links to the best of news at the intersection of polling, politics and political data:

-Samantha Lachman has a rundown of Tuesday’s primary elections. [HuffPost]

-Larry J. Sabato, Kyle Kondik and Geoffrey Skelley see waning chances for a massive GOP wave. [Politico]

-The Upshot’s Senate model now gives Republicans a “moderate edge,” rather than a “slight edge,” of winning the Senate. [NYT]

-Scott Clement discusses the dangers of Obama’s unpopularity for Democrats in tight Senate races. [WashPost]

-Sam Wang sees a chance that an independent candidate in Kansas could swing control of the Senate. [New Yorker]

-Quinnipiac finds racial divides in views of New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio. [Quinnipiac]

-Glen Bolger breaks down Americans’ views on protesting. [WSJ]

-Gallup looks at health care differences between LGBT and non-LGBT Americans. [Gallup]

-The Honolulu Civil Beat’s pollsters break down how their primary polling did, race by race. [Honolulu Civil Beat]

-Americans think it’s unfair to criticize the president for playing golf, but make something of an exception for President Obama. [YouGov]

-Micah Roberts (R) ponders how simpler opinion research can produce insights on complicated policy research. [POS]

-Wilson Perkins Allen (R) sees no dominant issue grabbing the public’s attention in 2014. [WPA]

-A study finds that three-quarters of whites don’t have close non-white friends. [WashPost]

-Ben Casselman finds Ferguson’s demographics are remarkably…unremarkable. [538]

-“GOP Maintains Solid Hold On Youth That Already Look Like Old Men” [The Onion]