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Pluses & Deltas – The Art of Feedback
☆ I help you & your business overcome challenges & unlock potential ☆ Award winning Coach Mentor Trainer Facilitator Mediator & Consultant
Alex Clapson - 03rd December 2017
How often have you sensitively offered someone your observations, or
feedback, ensuring that you offer a balanced “what worked well” & “what didn’t work well” appraisal of their actions, only for them to fixate on where they went wrong? Temporarily (we hope) they may be in a worse place than
before we offered them feedback – even if they asked us for our ‘warts & all’ observations. What therefore goes wrong? Our intentions are honourable –
we have their best interests at heart & offer our feedback to help them identify what needs to change in order for them to improve. But what if they don’t recognise your observations of their behaviours, or are unable to process the
feedback?
Maybe you’ve been the recipient of feedback in the past – you invited a manager, supervisor or colleague to give you ‘the gift of feedback’ & asked
them for ‘the good, the bad & the ugly’ as you prefer straight talk. You solicited the feedback; you felt that you were in a position of strength to be able to handle whatever came your way, & to sift out the ‘wheat from the
chaff’. Maybe it worked for you & helped you to improve. But what if you are in a Supervisory or Management position where there is a power imbalance
between you & the person you’re sharing your feedback with? Might there be risks in you applying a similar approach in such situations?
Elite athletes rely upon coaches utilising diagnostics to focus upon tiny details, such as the limb angle & position throughout a 100 metre sprint. The athlete is
looking for any wasted energy so that they can maximise their forward thrust, thereby shaving off another 10th of a second. They’re motivated to win & will
go to extraordinary lengths to achieve their goals – they crave feedback. Most of us aren’t top-flight sportspersons (despite my outward appearance &
racing snake physique)…! So, if many mere mortals find ‘balanced’ feedback unhelpful, or even debilitating, (especially if it’s unwanted, due to our tendency
as human beings to zone-in on the negatives whilst putting to one side the positives), what can we do about it?
As Managers, Supervisors & Mentors, we are required to provide our observations, & feedback on a daily basis. It may be the giving of feedback to
a direct report in your team to help them improve their performance, or with a peer, or colleague whose performance is falling below minimum standards –
they must change their ways, or suffer serious consequences (such as dismissal). Feedback is often described as being ‘strengths based’; however, well intentioned feedback isn’t always received by the recipient in the manner
in which it was intended. I would like to offer you a tried & tested alternative approach, which only requires a minor tweak to our current practice.
When offering a ‘balanced diet’ of positives & negatives, the recipient often gorges themselves on the negatives, leaving them in a rather unhealthy state.
It’s easy for the feedback provider to transfer responsibility over to the recipient: “well if you choose not to listen to everything I said” blah, blah, blah
to justify their well-intentioned advice, but is there a better way? Let us consider reframing our approach. Instead of hiding the negatives in a feedback sandwich Positives – Negatives – Positives where the recipient
only tastes the filling, try this: take a sheet of paper, & divide it down the middle into two columns. Head one column +’s (Pluses = what they did well) & the other column Δ’s (Deltas = what they might do differently next time). NB
we are no longer capturing positives & negatives, but pluses & deltas. Now
populate the +’s column with all that they did well (be specific). For the Δ’s column, identify what they might do differently next time (be specific). This can
also be used as a self-reflection tool to increase their buy-in & ownership – ask them to identify their own pluses & deltas. You can also compare their self-assessment with your feedback to identify gaps in perceptions /
understanding / evidence etc.
This subtle shift in wording requires of us as the provider of the feedback, what they might (or what we’d like them to) do to achieve a different result. For as Albert Einstein famously stated: “If you always do what you always did,
you will always get what you always got”.
Our feedback has now provided a steer & offered the recipient a way forward. Now ask them to choose one area (to begin with) for an improvement that
they believe is achievable (with support) – guide them through the choices if they require prompts. Devise a plan with them to achieve the stated goal – you could use a robust planning tool such as SMART or similar to structure
the specific & detailed steps required to bring about the required change.
This reframing of our feedback helps recipients to move away from wallowing in what they did wrong, feeling swamped by the weight of negativity (after a
point, information becomes noise). Deltas offer a clear way forward which we can support, monitor & evaluate. As a result, we will hopefully be celebrating their achievements with them & enjoying improved working relationships too.
