Full transcript
Hello and welcome to LEAD — Leadership Enablement and Development, a new initiative from Nirvedha. This is the show for leaders, all about leadership and its impact. On this episode: have you ever struggled choosing between feedforward and feedback? That's exactly what we are going to help you with on this week's show, where you will learn how and when to choose between feedback and feedforward. I'm your host Sudhakar, a certified executive coach.
The importance of feedback in running a successful business and shaping good business leaders cannot possibly be overstated. However, not much has been documented about the impact of feedforward and the changes it can bring to a leader's character. In fact, many leaders swear by the significance of feedforward in development and regard it to be more useful than feedback.
So what is feedforward? Very simply put: rather than providing positive or negative feedback, feedforward consists of providing future-oriented options or solutions.
Let us look at some examples. "Next time you perceive a curve in the road ahead, I suggest you slow down before the curve and accelerate when you are in the curve. Try that and see how it feels." Or: "For the next meetings, I suggest you agree to have Suresh pick you up on his way here. He always manages to arrive a few minutes early."
This feedforward type of comment can advantageously replace positive or negative feedback on the way a given person has managed past behaviour — such as, for the examples above, poorly handling curves while driving, or coming late to meetings.
In a large number of personal and professional situations, implementing a feedforward communication technique offers a number of obvious advantages.
Feedforward is solution-oriented, providing clear indications on how to solve a problem without offering positive or negative criticism. Feedforward is future-oriented, avoiding comments on past behaviours or results that indeed cannot be changed. Feedforward is behavioural — focused on precise actions rather than on general principles, such as in the above examples "you drive dangerously" or "you are always late". Feedforward is not judgemental. Feedforward is empowering, very simply offering optional avenues for improvement or for autonomous development. Feedforward is respectful and helps reinforce positive and partnering relationships. Feedforward is participative, as it allows all involved persons practical means to help solve potentially repetitious negative experiences. Feedforward helps resolve conflicts by positioning relationships in a positive and supportive dimension. And feedforward paves the way to prepare for future shadow coaching — as in the above situation: "Here is a curve coming now. Do you want to test how it feels to slow down before the curve and then accelerate out of the curve?"
Now let us look at how feedforward scores over feedback. While feedback asks people to take a step back and analyse the happenings of the past, feedforward encourages the person to look into the future and take an active view of things. Among the few other things that make feedforward a fantastic development mechanism is that anyone can offer you constructive feedforward, including people who do not know you or your activities. From the giver's point of view, feedforward can also be an excellent way to express his thoughts without sounding negative.
As a leader, this tool can help you to be constructive and not critical. While expressing your thoughts, an instance can be when — rather than telling your subordinate what was wrong with his performance in the last project — you can tell him about what he should do in his next project. In short, you can turn your feedback into positive guidelines for the future, in the form of feedforward.
Having looked at feedforward, now let us look at when feedback works. Feedback has a special characteristic: it can be extremely precise. Despite its significance, feedback remains an underused tool in business organisations. It usually works best in organisations where the executives seek feedback on their own, rather than being forced to take feedback. For a leader trying to get the best out of his subordinates, feedback serves as a great tool since it can groom the leaders of the future by pointing out where they went wrong and can improve. As long as you, as a receiver or provider of feedback, are taking it constructively, feedback can only give you a positive outcome.
Let me conclude by saying this. For many leaders, developing such a new communication habit can be quite a strain. Formulating future-oriented feedforward comments, requests or advice in the place of positive and negative feedback will almost feel like a mind-bender. This is the initial period when the mind seems to be struggling to wire new synapses. The effort to instil new thought processes and linguistic habits can be physically draining too.
Gradually, however, as these new mental routes are tested, used and developed, they will become more comfortable and start feeling like new habits. After a few weeks the new behaviours will start feeling natural. They will have become automatic responses — new habits. The change process generally takes a little over twenty-two days. This is a very natural learning process.
What may come as a surprise is that many people will respond very positively to the proposed feedforward requests, advice or options. Culturally, many of us have developed negative anticipations, or even fear, concerning possible reactions others may have to behaviour-oriented feedback. That is why we often avoid mentioning difficult issues altogether. When we change our communication process from offering feedback to offering feedforward, however, we still have remnants of this negative anticipation. It can be quite a surprise when people are thankful for new, future-oriented, positive, constructive options.
After practising feedforward skills with others for a few weeks, you may start feeling that your own general perspectives are changing. You may notice that gradually you look more for solutions than focus on problems; that you are more centred on future options than on past issues; that you are more centred on possible actions than on analysing what happened and what went wrong. In general, you may have shifted to look a little more forward than back. In this way you will have developed a little more of a coaching perspective in the way you live your relationships, and your personal and professional life.
Thank you all for tuning in.