4 Areas to Actively Seek out Feedback
One time as a consultant, I was trying to combine two databases by using a vertical lookup or vlookup function. One database had over 100,000 rows, and one data base had a few thousand rows. In this specific case, I needed to move a few fields from the larger database into the smaller database. I started by doing a standard vlookup on the larger data set. The issue was that each calculation took several minutes to perform, and sometimes caused excel to crash. I tried to google ways to solve this problem, then fortunately for me, a senior consultant walked over to my desk to check-in and instantly said, "have you tried to filter to only retain the necessary unique IDs first?" For those not familiar, a lookup function will scan the entire database until it finds a particular unique ID. So if we filter for unique IDs that exist in the smaller database, the lookup function will operate much more quickly because it can look through a few thousand as opposed to hundreds of thousands of rows.
This one piece of feedback from the senior consultant has been a learning point that has stayed with me through the years. Previously, I wrote about why we need to harvest more feedback. In short, every piece of feedback that we receive is another learning point and thereby accelerates our individual and organizational growth. Today, we will discuss the different areas that we can obtain more feedback. To truly maximize the feedback we are receiving, we need to actively seek out feedback from each area. We will break apart obtaining feedback into four areas: Received Comments, Overheard Comments, Introspection, and External Cues. These four types can be categorized by the feedback source, communicated feedback vs. inferred feedback, and by the target of the feedback, first person vs. third person.
The above diagram breaks out how these feedback types by the following parameters
First person: feedback that is directed at us
Third person: feedback that is directed at someone else
Communicated: feedback that was given - either spoken, written, or gestured
Inferred: feedback that we found through our own work
Received Comments (Communicated, 1st Person)
Received comments are the direct feedback and guidance that we receive from others. This feedback is the lowest hanging fruit in terms of course corrections, because it is directed at improving us. In the other three areas of feedback, we will need to do additional internal processing to see how we might apply the feedback. If the comments we receive are not clear enough or constructive enough, we should simply ask the individual giving us feedback to clarify what they mean. To give an example in the context of schools, received comments correlates to the annotations that a teacher writes on our essay.
Additional Examples: Managers gives directions to make a particular edit, Colleague asks us to speak more politely to them, Mentor teaches us how to perform a new task, Parents mentions eating vegetables is healthy
Overheard Comments (Communicated, 3rd Person)
In addition to paying attention to feedback directed towards us, we should also pay attention to the feedback directed towards others, which we will call "overheard comments". We should pay attention to overheard comments because if someone else is taking the time to coach, lecture, improve another individual around us, we should pick up this additional information and assess it for ourselves. If sound advice was shared, we should look to learn from the advice so that the individual giving the feedback does not need to give us the same feedback. Continuing the school comparison, overheard comments correlate to when a teacher is lecturing another student for a mistake, and we happen to listen in.
Additional Examples: Colleague is scolded for a mistake, Parents lecture sibling about bullying others
Introspection (Inferred, 1st Person)
Outside of feedback directed towards us or another individual, we also need to be able to actively seek out feedback from our own work. This means running trial and error on our problems to see what works, then introspecting and reflecting to learn from the process. Through introspection, we build more logical connections either through situational cases or through data. Over time, as our self-reflection and expertise in a particular area improves, this becomes the most reliable source of feedback, because the conclusions can be directly tied to our past experiences and understandings. Expanding on the school example, introspection correlates to the checking our essay before turning it in and then developing a better way to structure the argument.
Additional Examples: We analyzed data and figured out what works and what does not, We realized our existing process was leading to several errors, We realized our parents like to be called at least once a week, We learned that talking to people after eating durian could lead to upset nostrils
External Cues (Inferred, 3rd Person)
Whereas introspection is arguably the most reliable source of feedback, external cues are looser hypotheses, because they aim to understand the cause and effect relationship of someone else's decisions. We are trying to learn when someone else does X, Y happens. From this relationship, we can build a hypothesis, which can then be tested later on or accepted as potentially true until proven otherwise. To extend on our school example, if a classmate is suspended from school after showing up late habitually, we can infer that there may be a connection between these two events. Therefore, if we do not want to be suspended, we can now assume that we should show up to school on time. Note that using external cues do not give us the full picture, but a loose hypothesis that we can test.
Additional Examples: Some individuals are treated differently due to an identified reason, Another colleague with better connections was promoted even after doing a lack luster job
Closing Remarks
To maximize the amount of feedback we are receiving, we need to actively seek out and listen to feedback in these four areas: received comments, overheard comments, introspection, and external cues. These capture feedback that is directed at us, feedback that is directed towards others, feedback we get from reflecting on our own efforts, and feedback we get from building connections between other people's efforts. By actively seeking out and absorbing as much feedback as possible, we will accelerate our growth as individuals and as organizations.
