On feedback
A few months ago we came across a blog post that had been doing the rounds: “Stop serving the compliment sandwich,” by management psychology professor and self help author Adam Grant. Since we spend a lot of time thinking about giving and receiving feedback, this was the ultimate clickbait headline for us.
More popularly known as the shit sandwich, the compliment sandwich describes the process of couching critical feedback between two slices of complimentary bread. In his post, Grant describes how, as a 25 year old consultant, his attempts at delivering feedback via a shit sandwich didn’t go down well with the 50 year old CEO he was attempting to coach. Seems obvious to us, but hey, we don’t have the brain of a 25 year old management consultant.
To be honest, we were ready to rebel before even reading the post. For better or worse, we’ve always considered ourselves as appreciators of the shit sandwich — just give us a little treat before getting to the hard stuff! Our job involves getting a lot of feedback, constant feedback. We write things or come up with ideas, and clients tell us what they think of them and what we need to change. Writing for a client is an iterative process, and getting clear direction and feedback helps make the end project as good as possible. For whatever reason, though, diving directly into “‘what needs to change” can be hard.
Grant’s first main point — that the shit sandwich is often received as two obligatory complements surrounding a chunk of life-ruining criticism — is obviously true. Getting a compliment from a boss or colleague shouldn’t have you cringing and waiting for the bad news to drop. Grant’s suggestion for a shit sandwich alternative, though, struck us as equally objectionable. His advice includes taking yourself off a pedestal by saying something like “I’ve been studying great managers, and I’ve noticed that they spend a lot of time giving feedback. I’m working on doing more of that.” This would go down like a lead balloon around here. As we said, it’s our job to receive feedback. We don’t need an explanation of why we’re receiving feedback.
In thinking about what we do want from feedback, we realized we’re not actually after a shit sandwich. We’re after something like a feedback funnel. Here’s what we mean by that.
The Feedback Funnel
As consultants, we’re not usually around long enough to receive a whole lot of coaching or professional development from our clients. The classic shit sandwich comes from a superior whose job it is to tell you how to do your job better.
In our case, we’re usually receiving constructive feedback about a project and a specific deliverable, rather than personal critique of our interaction style or work habits. So, it stands that the process of giving feedback would be different from a standard workplace professional development session.
The top layer: context and compliments
The feedback funnel, like the classic inverted triangle of news journalism, goes from a high level at the top down to more detailed info at the bottom. Specifically, the feedback funnel goes from broad contextual information at the top (the beginning of the conversation), down to narrow nitty-gritty at the bottom (at the end).
First up, we like to hear how clients are feeling about the project broadly speaking, and whether they think the document draft, let’s say, is heading in the right direction. Does the structure work for you overall? Did we get the tone right? Or is it sitting weirdly for some reason, or not aligned with what you were imagining? This lets us start with a high level view, taking a look at the work overall and assessing whether we’re on track. At this point, feel free to throw in a complement. Did you love the intro? Do you think we nailed the tone? This isn’t just to make us feel good — it lets us know what you liked and what we should do more of, even if you hated everything else.
The middle layer: details
This is the shit in the classic shit sandwich. In our case, though, it isn’t shit — it’s just details. This is where you tell us the specifics of what you’d like us to change, what we need to add, what details need finessing, or what you want more of. We don’t consider this as criticism at all, or at least not in the bad ego-damaging way. It’s critical information that lets us do the job you hired us for.
It took us a while to get to this relatively zen place around feedback. Mostly, we had to learn to disconnect our ego from the thing we made. It’s just a draft! It’s a thing that exists in the world, and we’re putting it on the table so everyone can look at it and talk about how to make it better. It’s not a reflection of us as people. Oh, final thing — if you can help it, don’t dive into line edits at this point. If it’s a semi-final draft, send us an email with your markups. If it’s an early draft, everything is subject to change and typos will likely come out in the wash, so give us structure notes and style notes but don’t waste your time with word-level edits.
The bottom layer: needs and next steps
The pointy end of the funnel, and also the last bit of the conversation (or email) is where we get down to brass tacks. At this point, we discuss the specifics of what’s next and what’s needed. What are the next steps? Does anyone else need to give feedback or can we get to work making changes to the draft? Do we need to get more information from you in order to move forward, or is there a background document you’ll send us to help fill some gaps? Then, there’s maybe time for a bit of chit chat (does your cat need to be fed? Are you excited for lunch?). And then, at last, we take our marching orders and all go on our way.
There you have it. Move over shit sandwich, there’s a new tortured metaphor in town!
Want to give us feedback? You can send us an email with your thoughts, or hire us to work on your next project. We’re open for new collaborations from mid-May 2024 onward.