Qualitosis

feedback/ˈfiːdbak noun

Information about reactions to a product, a person’s performance of a task, etc. which is used as a basis for improvement.

In this blog we will look at the importance of trust in feedback, why we can’t trust our parents or even ourselves, why seeking feedback is like a trip to the dentist and what leprosy has to do with feedback.

The birth of Feedback

From our earliest days our performance has been developed with feedback. Instinctively our parents gave us feedback at every step, literally.

When we went to school, our teachers would mark our homework and exams, helping us measure and monitor our progress. Our classmates would react to our behaviour by shunning us or inviting us to play marbles or a birthday party. We also learned to pick up on subtler signals to better understand how we were being perceived and we would use those signals to adapt our behaviour, hopefully for the better.

The birth of Mistrust

In the early stages, we unfailingly trust the feedback of adults, especially parents and teachers. With time and experience however, we begin to understand that not all feedback is correct or can be trusted and as our pool of connections increases to those who do not have our best intentions at heart. We therefore become more sophisticated in our reception of feedback, filtering out opinions of those we have learned not to trust.

Should you trust your parents?

Trust takes time to develop. When developing trust, we calibrate that feedback against our own beliefs and against other trusted sources. Depending on the type and how important the feedback is, we select different sources to calibrate against and instinctively give them a weighting according to that level of trust. How many of us believed the ridiculous just because our parents told us it’s true?

Can we even trust ourselves?

Every minute of the day we are bombarded with feedback via our five senses. But can we even believe this?

I was 10 years old and was in the school play. The drama teacher recorded us on a tape machine as we read the lines and he later gathered us together to listen to the playback. This was obviously way before iPhones and even VHS machines so none of us had ever before heard how our voices sounded to others. When it came to my lines I was horrified. It was as if some awful, squeeky-voiced geek had recorded over my parts. It must be the machine I then thought, but then I realised that all the other kids sounded fine. It dawned upon me that the voice I had been hearing for a decade was not my voice at all – but I was wrong in that too.

Both perceptions are correct. I perceive my voice differently to others because I hear it transmitted through my internal bone structure. Only when I hear it on the tape recorder do I hear my voice as others hear it, though the ear.

This is an important point in feedback. We can only give feedback on what and how we perceive from our own standpoint. There is rarely a right or wrong.

It’s not just our faulty perception that may distort our feedback.

If you are serious about losing weight, would you trust your bathroom scales more than asking your best friend “do I look fat?”.

What we learn as we grow up is that humans distort their feedback to you based on their own interests or motives. This may be benign – a false positive, such as a friend not wanting hurt your feelings, or hostile for example through jealousy – a false negative.

We even deliberately distort the information we transmit to ourselves to avoid a painful truth. Tell me you don’t pull in your tummy when you catch sight yourself in a full-length mirror?

Truth can Hurt

There is a good reason that they are called painful truths. Getting honest feedback can feel like going to the dentist. But when you care for your teeth and get them checked regularly, you suffer less anxiety and need less painful interventions. Getting more regular feedback and constantly maintaining high levels of self-awareness leads to higher confidence and less trauma.

That’s great in theory, but in reality most of us go to great lengths to avoid pain. In terms of feedback, we seek opinions from those who agree with us or who flatter us.

Also, as soon as our brains have learned to filter out incorrect or untrustworthy feedback, we can use that same filter to deny painful feedback that has somehow penetrated our defences.

As we grow older, we use our freedom to take a comfortable path where we accept ourselves for who we are. We don’t resist change, we take steps and make choices to completely avoid it.

There’s a good reason it’s called “feedback” though. If it’s healthy “feed” or nourishment that comes “back” to us, it’s helps us grow. In a workplace environment, if we are not consistently seeking and receiving feedback from our managers, peers and subordinates we will, at best, stagnate and miss the opportunity to evolve and improve. At worst we will decline and become the rotten tooth in the organisation that leads to Qualitosis.

A sobering thought about Feedback

Pain is an essential warning mechanism. It’s a feedback system to warn us about a dangerous situation. The moment we shut ourselves off from feedback, we lose the ability to respond. Pain is good. It is warning us about something that, if we don’t react to it urgently, the consequences or resulting pain will be significantly more excruciating. If we react properly and go to the dentist when we have a toothache, we may end up with a filling. If we ignore or mask the pain with analgesics, when we finally do go to the dentist we may have the whole tooth removed. No pain, no teeth, as the saying should go.

Hansen’s disease, better known as leprosy, is a horrific affliction. However, the loss of extremities that characterises it is actually not a direct symptom but an indirect result of the nerve damage caused by the disease.

“This nerve damage may result in a lack of ability to feel pain, which can lead to the loss of parts of a person’s extremities from repeated injuries or infection due to unnoticed wounds.“

So seek out and welcome the feedback mini-alerts that allow you to incrementally adjust your path, to treat your blemishes and bruises before they become gangrenous. In particular, treat feedback from your colleagues as a gift that will help you remain part of a healthy workplace.

Feedback is the Gift that keeps Giving

Feedback is therefore essential for us to grow and to prevent stagnation in the workplace. Feedback is in fact a gift.

But just like any gift, it needs to be given thoughtfully and with consideration.

In future blogs we will explore further how and when to give this gift and how best to package it.