The Joy and Challenge of Feedback
This week Sara brings on Rene, Founder of a product innovation firm with extensive training and experience in industrial design. They discuss the joys and challenges of giving and receiving feedback. It can be challenging not to look at feedback with an anxious eye. It’s important to have context and do the information gathering to make feedback impactful.
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Sara: Welcome to, Can I Offer You Some Feedback? My name is Sara, and this is the podcast for those who have a complicated relationship with feedback and are looking to hear from real people across levels and industries with their ideas, perspectives, and best practices on feedback. Before we dive in, I'd like to introduce our guest for the podcast today, Rene. He's a founder of a product innovation firm with extensive training and experience in industrial design. Welcome to the conversation.
Rene: Thanks for having me.
Sara: Absolutely. Well, let's kick things off with the main question of the podcast. When I ask the phrase, can I offer you some feedback, what is your gut reaction when you hear that?
Rene: If you say those exact words to me, my first reaction is you're about to give me some pushback, something negative, something that says, oh man, you really screwed something up. So this creates anxiety. I get instant anxiety and it's been that way ever since I was a kid. But the anxiety goes up or down depending on who's saying this and what the context is. Right? If the context is a situation that you're viewing me as an employee or my socks don't match, or you're saying the drawing I did is horrible, it changes my level of anxiety probably, and probably my level of defensiveness I bet.
Sara: Yeah. But the gut is still the same. Right.
Rene: For sure.
Sara: Yeah. And I think that's very real for a lot of people that initially the feel is one way, but depending on the relationship, depending on the situation, depending on the purpose of the conversation it can really change and affect how it goes from there.
Rene: For sure.
Sara: I'm curious, do you prefer to be the giver or the receiver of feedback?
Rene: Neither. To be honest, I don't like to be either based on a lot of reasons. And I think I've trained myself over all these years in so many situations to be able to take and give whatever this pushback is. And I guess I call it pushback. I look at it with that anxious eye of pushback. When I give feedback I tend to overthink a lot of times. Is my feedback going to be heard? Is this person's insecurity going to throw huge roadblocks and walls and defense mechanisms up as mine do? And how could I really get it out there, get the right information out there?
When I hear feedback, it's something that, and this is something I'll definitely want to talk about is going back to art school or design school where I really learned to train myself on receiving feedback. And that's a whole different thing. So there are so many parts of it. I overthink the giving and the receiving of feedback. So it's more challenging than one or the other. So I don't like giving or receiving for that matter. How's that?
Sara: And I think that's interesting. From a certain perspective, your work is constantly getting feedback from folks. How's this design work? How's this process? How's this way that we're going about thinking about innovation, right? It's all feedback. Part of the joy and the challenge of running your own practice is it's all feedback all the time. But I appreciate that you don't have a preference for either necessarily.
Rene: No, I don't. I don't.
Sara: When you're thinking about feedback, how do you define meaningful feedback?
Rene: There are so many different ways of defining it to me with all the personal words. And empathy is king. And everything in what we do as designers and what we do as researchers and learning about opportunities and really lending that ear and listening. I think when you truly listen, you truly want to understand what the situation is and really be sincere about this. It's huge. Because only then you can give constructive feedback. It's the context of the situation. It's the person.
So, as I say, when I overthink the situation, I think deeply about the person on the other side, whether giving or receiving. I think about the context, I think about if I know them, what their history is, what they're trying to do, want to do, and then I run all these things through my mind. Because, meaningful feedback I've messed up in the past by jumping on something too quickly, especially using my assumptions. And rather than doing that, it's taking the time to listen, taking the time to understand their situation to make it meaningful. So, they hear you.
Sara: Mm-hmm. Yeah. And I love that you're bringing up how context, getting more context about the person, about the situation, that information gathering, means you can do a better job of responding to it. Because in absent of context, I don't know. Right? Like, I don't know enough to make sure it's impactful. I could still give the feedback, right? Like, let's say you've made a piece of art, I can give feedback knowing nothing. But if I don't have an appreciation of the time in which it was created, the medium that was used, the intentionality, that person's background, what the movement was that was going on around. Like all of that changes with the art pieces or how the work is being interpreted. I know tying it back to the art in this way, but whatever our product of work is. That context provides a lot of extra meaning.
Rene: Yeah. Tying it back to art as you say too is, I think it's relevant to everything we all do. So, if I refer to art, I'd say something that you created. So we'll look at it that way. So whatever it is you created, whether you're writing something, whether you're presenting, you're speaking, you're creating a deck or a PowerPoint at work. This is your work. This is your art. This is your creation. So whenever you get to the point where that creation is part of you, that's where things get personal and that's why that defense goes up no matter what. So, I say calling any of this stuff art is just your personal creation. It's still going to be something that's going to be hard to receive feedback on.
Sara: Mm-hmm. Right. Because it's something that's a reflection of you.
Rene: For sure.
Sara: I'm wondering if you can share an example or an experience when you saw that meaningful feedback delivered.
Rene: Going back to art school again too is, let's move forward to today where I have an innovation consulting business where we have clients who come to us and it's something where we will go to them and do the research and find out that maybe you have to say their baby's ugly. You put millions and millions of dollars into something but you're not solving the problem or you didn't identify a problem that the consumer has and now it's on us to explain that to them and how we can help make it better. But it's really hard to do.
I think my approach to all this goes back to art school. For instance, there was a teacher, it was a drawing class and you would have an assignment. Everyone would hang their drawings on the wall. And this guy was well known for ripping your stuff off the wall. Like this is work you created. And he would take your stuff and rip it off the wall. It was like hard knocks of, here's this beautiful thing that I created and someone is knocking it down. So, it really did help me get to the point where it's a little easier to tell someone that their $20 million baby is ugly.
Sara: I love that you're bringing in the peer element here, right? Because again, the example you're sharing is an art school, but in any context, when we work on a product, when we work on a process, when we design or develop something tangible or intangible, we need feedback from other people on, is it working? Is it effective? Is our baby ugly? You know, to use your terms.
But if we haven't taken the time to have relationships with that folks, right? You mentioned your classmates. If you're a jerk to the rest of the class, you're not going to get any kind of good feedback. Right? It's just going to become, how do I stick it to you rather than how do I make sure this was actually helpful? You kind of touched on that relationship aspect of what do I get out of this conversation and I get what I've given? And probably the first person to go sets the tone for the rest of the class.
Rene: That's true.
Sara: "Oh yeah, you said that about mine. You just wait three pieces from now. I'm going to tell you what I think." But that's true in work as well, supporting each other's projects, supporting each other's initiatives. That could be seen as well.
Rene: Yeah, it's true because when you think about working with your associates back in school, you're all in competition with one another. Say in design school, we're all trying to get that hot new design job. We want to be the best in class and land the gig. So, you learn how to be creative competitors. You learn how to be collaborators sometimes. And so, all right, here's some honest feedback. I'm hoping you're going to give me some honest feedback without being punitive, making it a personal situation, you know, me versus you. And that's how it moves into the workplace is I think there are these 360 reviews.
There's a buddy of mine, he has these reviews that he gets people above him, below him, on the same level to all provide input for them. So talk about feedback. We were talking about that last night and it was very interesting to hear how they go about doing all that.
Sara: Yeah, absolutely. Let's say I'm in the business of handing out wishes. If I could grant you a wish for people to do one thing better regarding feedback, what would it be?
Rene: I go back to empathy. I go back to understanding, taking that deep breath, maybe asking more questions. Feedback/what someone calls advice I hate that, right? Advice is, that's tricky. Who's really able to give you advice if they're not in your shoes? So, feedback is something that if you build that empathy, ask the questions, understand the context, understand all the pieces of the puzzle, then and only then I feel like you're really in a position to provide good feedback for the person that's going to be relevant and that they'll hear and maybe not be defensive about.
There are some people that are known to be the wrong person to ask guy. You know, don't ask Timmy because that guy is always negative about everything and suddenly they don't get asked. And then many people don't provide for them. So it's building those relationships and understanding.
Sara: Mm-hmm. And it's a shame if no one ever tells Timmy that their delivery is the issue. Right? Because I'm sure Timmy, picking on Timmy, I'm sure Timmy's got great insight, but how they're going about doing it.
Rene: Yeah. There was someone with whom I worked in the past, and this is why I overthink, no matter how I approach feedback, this person would be very upset with me. Always defensive. I could be the pal, I could be the coworker, I could be the employer, I could be all of these things. And no matter what it was, if the feedback wasn't what the person wanted to hear, they just wouldn't hear me. And it's not constructive that way. No matter how I tried to construct the constructive feedback, it just wasn't heard.
Sara: Right. And there's a point at which I'm sure maybe you realize that nothing about how I deliver this is going to make it work. Right. They don't want to hear the feedback. Right. You know. I can wrap it in a bow, I can bring cookies with it, you know, it's not me. Right. There's something else going on that's preventing this person from being intentionally or otherwise, you know.
Rene: Yeah. No matter how much frosting and sprinkles I put on this cake, they're not going to want to eat their cake.
Sara: Because they know what kind of cake it is. Right?
Rene: Right.
Sara: Well, Rene, for the last question of our time together, can I offer you some feedback?
Rene: Can you offer me some feedback? Well, you're great because you have offered me some feedback on some of our calls in the past. Well, one thing I would say, how can you help me get this Weather Head group back together again on a regular basis? There's some feedback I can use. But in this group, I think one of the things that you've been great with is asking me questions that were probing questions that challenge my assumptions based on like running a business, that kind of thing, right? If you recall.
So, you've asked me, and this is great. I feel like the way you did it was great because I didn't feel defensive. I thought, oh man, this is a great question and I never really thought about it and I did not have a good answer for you. So, I have been thinking about the question for a long time. So, yeah. But I'd say, give me some feedback on how I can help get the band back together. How's that? You know.
Sara: I can certainly kind of focus it around that as well. What I've found so helpful throughout the many months, years at this point that we've been connecting, I have so valued your openness, your patience with process, and what you touched on a little bit earlier, the sincerity with which you're connecting, you're curious, you're asking questions and you know, to the feedback that you offered me. I don't always ask folks probing questions. I have to feel like they want to hear it.
Sara: There's a little bit of genuine curiosity on my part to ask the... Like, I have the question, but whether or not I'm asking you indicates that I think you might be receptive to it. And I think for me I've really appreciated and felt like you have a very kind of calming space and openness that you offer folks regardless of where they are kind of on their business journey or on the management path or what it is that they're doing. I'm sure your team is also appreciative of it and the folks that you work with.
You know, maybe specifically to our group, maybe thinking about how other folks feel like they've got a space to be open, they've got a space to be a little more curious. I know our original conversations had a lot more structure and maybe that's helpful for folks.
Sara: Or had some specific questions to think about. You know, perhaps it's something to explore, but I know that you're someone who has that openness to say, "You know what? Let's try it." Right? I'm willing to get ready to go. I'm willing to try.
Rene: It's building trust and building those relationships and that's something .That's how you build a meaningful feedback for sure.
Sara: ...in our working together over the past. I can't believe it's few years. But it is few years at this point. Well, right, right.
Rene: It is for sure.
Sara: Yeah. Right. Well, Rene, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me. And thanks to you for joining us in another episode of Can I Offer You Some Feedback? You can reach me at [email protected]. We would love to hear from you on your thoughts on feedback, or any other perspectives you'd like to hear from next. And as always, give us a quick rating on your platform of choice and share this podcast with a friend. And I'm hoping that tomorrow you take a chance and offer some feedback when it's needed most.
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