The Art and Importance of Giving and Receiving Negative Feedback

Posted on Published by Eugene Eric Kim

My senior year of high school, I became the editor-in-chief of our school newspaper. For a variety of reasons, I had a huge chip on my shoulder about it. Most of the founders of the paper had graduated, and very few of my classmates were active participants, leaving me with an inexperienced staff. Furthermore, the previous editor-in-chief had publicly declared that he did not think we would be successful.

Unfortunately, for the first few months of my tenure, I was proving him right. I was a horrible manager, and that chip on my shoulder made me ten times worse. No one was living up to my expectations, and I made that brutally clear to everyone. I knew that people didn’t like hearing from me, but I didn’t care, because I felt justified in how I was feeling.

One day, a classmate contributed an article that I didn’t like. I can’t remember exactly what I said to him, but it was something along the lines of, “This article sucks,” only meaner and less constructive.

My friend — who had never dealt with me in this context before — blew up at me. He said, “If you want people to contribute to the paper, you can’t treat people that way.” Then he stormed out of the room.

This all happened over 20 years ago, and I still remember it like it was yesterday. It was a defining moment for me, because I realized that I was being a total asshole, that being an asshole was not a measure of good leadership, and that I generally did not like the feeling of being an asshole.

I apologized to a lot of people that day, starting with that friend. If I could do it all over again, I also would have thanked him. Without his clear and specific feedback, I would not have had the self-awareness to turn things around. It put me on a path to becoming a better leader.

It also made me empathetic toward people who behaved like I had. People who behave like assholes might not realize it or might not be doing it on purpose, and they might appreciate getting that feedback so that they can work on correcting it. I’ve met a lot of leaders who are honestly surprised to receive this kind of feedback, because no one has ever offered it to them before.

It’s risky to be on the other side of that, because it’s safer to assume that someone behaving like an asshole already realizes it and doesn’t particularly care either way. If that’s the case, then offering that feedback might have negative consequences. But if you stay silent, then no one wins. No one has any chance of improving, and the situation will likely perpetuate itself.

A friend of mine who works in tech recently related a story where she felt slighted by another member of her team. It’s possible that it was unintentional, and it’s also possible that it reflected a pervasive culture of sexism. Regardless, I encouraged her to have a conversation with that teammate and to explain how his actions made her feel. I encouraged her to be specific and non-accusational (e.g. “Your action made me feel slighted because of this”). I explained that if I were in the position of her teammate, that I would want that kind of feedback.

I also understand that offering that feedback puts her at risk. Her teammate might not care, or worse, might ridicule her. It might affect their long-term working relationship.

Not saying anything only guarantees that the working relationship will remain damaged, and it increases the likelihood that these incidents will happen again. Furthermore, this particular friend is both strong and relational. I know she’ll find a way to communicate this clearly and compassionately.

That said, it’s easy for me to offer this advice to someone else. It’s a lot harder to do. It requires a lot of courage.

As a leader (especially one who can be intimidating to others), how do you make it safe for your teammates to give you this kind of feedback?

First, make it an explicit team norm. Whenever I form a new team, I make time to discuss how we want to work together and to come up with a set of shared groundrules. If the team makes it a shared goal to give this kind of feedback to each other, it becomes about enforcing shared norms rather than being some kind of personal beef.

Second, invite feedback. If you’re not constantly asking for feedback and making it clear that you welcome it, don’t expect to get it.

My recent forays into photography have really underlined this point for me. Before, when I would share pictures, most of the feedback I got was superficial — “great photos!” or perhaps a like on Facebook. Now, I make it clear that I’m trying to get better and that I want feedback, especially critical. When I get positive feedback, I also ask people to get specific, so that they’re not just telling me they like something, they’re telling me why they like something.

It’s been an incredible process. I’ve gotten feedback I never would have gotten otherwise, which has made me a better photographer. I’ve discovered that most of my friends are actually quite sophisticated in evaluating pictures. And, some of my friends have discovered the same thing about themselves, which has been a cool revelation for them! I’ve had friends say to me, “I’ve never really talked about photography in that way before… and I like it!”

Third, model giving and receiving constructive feedback. This is always the hardest thing to do. I’m pretty good at choosing my words carefully, so that I’m describing what I’m seeing and feeling as opposed to projecting. I’m not good at managing my emotions through my body language. If I’m frustrated or angry, I may use safe language, but my body language often sends a different message. It requires a tremendous amount of self-awareness and centering practice to master those emotions so that you can communicate more effectively.

As for receiving feedback, here’s how I see it. I know that I am sexist, racist, and prejudiced in a thousand other ways. We all are, even if that’s not our intention. I work hard to treat people fairly, but I am not going to be successful all the time. So the best I can do is to be clear about my aspirations, recognize that I will make mistakes, be accountable and compassionate when I make them, and try my best to improve.

Having Each Other’s Back

Posted on Published by Eugene Eric Kim

Lawrence Taylor and Bill Parcells

When I’m leading new teams, I start by having a conversation about ground rules. I want my teammates to be explicit about what they need to be successful and how they want to work together. One of the ground rules I always introduce is to “have each other’s back.” It’s a sports aphorism for protecting your teammate’s backside, so that others can’t stab it while your teammate isn’t looking.

It’s one of the things I look for when I’m assessing the health of a team, and it’s a quality I seek when recruiting my own teammates. It’s an individual trait, but it’s also very much about team culture, about whether or not each individual feels accountable for group success, not just his or her own. I’ve seen the same person act very differently on different teams.

The other thing I try to encourage my teammates to do is to speak up, especially when they disagree. For my more conflict-averse colleagues, this can be challenging, and so I often have to be extra sensitive about how to encourage it. Furthermore, striking the balance between speaking up while also having your teammate’s back is challenging when you don’t actually agree with what your teammate is doing.

How do you have someone’s back when you forcefully disagree with that person?

First, you have to be very honest with yourself. You have to ask yourself whether it’s possible to go along with a decision or a certain type of behavior given your strong feelings. If your answer is no, you need to opt-out.

Second, once you make the decision to stay in, you have to do everything in your power to contribute to success. You are as accountable as everyone else to the team. If things go south, take responsibility, don’t just blame the other person. If you can’t do this, you will subtly undermine the team, whether or not that is your intention.

Hall of Fame coach, Bill Parcells, was widely known for his ability to turn around the culture of any football team he inherited. Here’s a story he recently shared about the greatest player who ever played for him (and there were many), Hall of Fame linebacker, Lawrence Taylor:

Here’s the best thing about Lawrence. And this goes for that team too. I could be not talking to that son of a bitch for three weeks. You know, we would have those times where… contentiousness was not the right word to describe it. It was worse. But no matter how bad it was, no matter how pissed I was at him, no matter how pissed he was at me: Sunday, 1 o’clock, he’s standing right next to me when they’re playing that anthem before the game. Every single time. And you know what that meant? Well, “You might be an a–hole, but I’m with you right now.” That’s really what it meant. I loved him. He was a special kid.

AP Photo / Ray Stubblebine

Structures that Support Good Habits

Posted on Published by Eugene Eric Kim

Last week, Seb Paquet and I completed the third of our four-week experiment around regular conversations, including our regular “jazz hands moments” video (above). My “jazz hands moment” was the importance of self-care and how it applied to things as simple as determining whether or not to participate in a phone call.

However, upon reflecting on it some more this weekend, I wanted to highlight a different aside that came up in our conversation. At the beginning of our call, Seb complimented me for having our meeting notes prepared once again and said, “I’ve never met anyone as consistent about it as you.” It sounds like a little thing, but it was not only a nice acknowledgement, it was validation for the work I’ve put in around developing structures for supporting good habits.

One of the most important precepts of my work is good information hygiene. This is a concept coined by my friend and Blue Oxen cofounder, Chris Dent, almost a decade ago. I have long preached its importance, but in truth, I have not always been the best practitioner.

That is, until I started working with the team three years ago that would eventually evolve into Groupaya (which just celebrated its second anniversary yesterday). We agreed as a team on the importance of good information hygiene, some of our specific practices, and the basic roles that each of us would play. This included another principle to which I hold near and dear: Everybody works the line.

We developed a set of practices around project and meeting documentation, and we held each other accountable. I feel like we achieved about 80 percent of what I wanted us to be achieving, which was light years ahead of what I’ve seen anyone else — in our business or otherwise — do.

And, it was only the third best team I’ve been on when it comes to group information hygiene. Those distinctions go to my HyperScope team (seven years ago) and to my work with Chris (ten years ago). Both those teams had a higher overall literacy around information hygiene, which enabled us to distribute the roles more effectively.

However, what was different about the Groupaya experience was that I was much more intentional around building these practices into habits, and I walked away more disciplined about some of these practices than I ever had been before.

In addition to intention, the other key to my success in this case was my role as group “teacher.” In previous instances, we were all peers, equally committed and skilled. In the case of my Groupaya team, I played more of a “teacher” role, which gave me a heightened sense of accountability. I felt more pressure to model good practices.

I’m glad that I continue to model these practices, even after almost a year away from my old team. Information hygiene is a critical part of being a high-performance team, and I hope to continue to model these practices with every group with whom I work, regardless of the specific role I play.

Leadership Lessons from Notre Dame’s Brian Kelly

Posted on Published by Eugene Eric Kim

Notre Dame has a proud football tradition, but for the past two decades, it’s been a tradition of futility. It last won a national championship in 1988, and it hasn’t been in the running for one since Lou Holtz retired. That finally changed this year under coach Brian Kelly, as Notre Dame will be duking it out against Alabama next week for the title.

Kelly had two mediocre years before turning things around this year. ESPN.com had a nice article about what led to the turnaround. One of his problems was that he was not spending enough time communicating with his players, building trust. After a bad loss to USC late last year, he challenged his players, but they did not react well. He took responsibility for that.

“They didn’t know me well enough,” Kelly said. “Not their fault. My fault. You’d want a response to my comments [like], ‘That’s Coach. He has high expectations. He’s demanding this.’ No, it was the other way. ‘Coach doesn’t trust us. He didn’t recruit us.’ That made it clear to me I was not doing a very good job with our players.”

He decided he needed to spend more time with his players, so he made a number of changes this past year to create that time.

Last winter, when he might have been driving to Chicago or Detroit for an alumni meeting, he held Monday meetings with his team. No assistant coaches, no support staff, just a head coach and his players.

“It kind of gave us a chance to get to know him a little better, and for him to get to know us,” offensive tackle Zack Martin said. “[Before the meetings,] I don’t think it was something that I thought, ‘Oh, I wish I had this.’ After he started it, people realized: Oh yeah, it’s nice to get to know your head coach on a more personal level, not just on the football field.”

Kelly no longer works his quarterbacks the way a position coach would. His assistants sing from the hymnal he wrote. It is a slight exaggeration to say that this is the first season in which Kelly didn’t need name tags for the guys on defense.

“He’s there as a more familiar face,” safety Zeke Motta said. “It’s great for the team because you not only have one focus but you have a focus on the entire team itself. That lends itself to a team that plays together and plays for each other.”

Kelly hops from meeting to meeting, drill to drill, watching, listening, reinforcing.

“I could be the guy who wasn’t jumping on them because they didn’t run the route the right way,” Kelly said. “I could be the guy who said, ‘Hey, look, if you step with your outside foot on that. That’s what Coach is trying to tell you.'”

It’s a new way of coaching for Kelly.

David Chang on Integrity

Posted on Published by Eugene Eric Kim

I’ve never met David Chang, the hotshot chef/owner of the Momofuku restaurants in New York, nor have I ever tasted his food. From the various profiles I’ve read of the dude, he seems like the kind of guy I’d either be best friends with or wouldn’t be able to stand.

My all-time favorite story about him comes from this 2008 New Yorker profile:

At Noodle Bar, a junior line cook had been cooking chicken for family meal—lunch for the staff—and although he had to cook something like seventy-five chicken pieces and the stoves were mostly empty, he’d been cooking them in only two pans, which meant that he was wasting time he could have spent helping to prep for dinner. Also, he was cooking with tongs, which was bad technique, it ripped the food apart, it was how you cooked at T.G.I. Friday’s—he should have been using a spoon or a spatula. Cooking with tongs showed disrespect for the chicken, disrespect for family meal, and, by extension, disrespect for the entire restaurant. But the guy cooking family meal was just the beginning of it. Walking down the line, Chang had spotted another cook cutting fish cake into slices that were totally uneven and looked like hell. Someone else was handling ice-cream cones with her bare hands, touching the end that wasn’t covered in paper. None of these mistakes was egregious in itself, but all of them together made Chang feel that Noodle Bar’s kitchen was degenerating into decadence and anarchy. He had screamed and yelled until a friend showed up and dragged him out of the restaurant, and his head still hurt nearly twenty-four hours later.

The following afternoon, Chang called an emergency meeting for the staff. Something was rotten in Noodle Bar, and he meant to cut it out and destroy it before it was too late.

“I haven’t been spending that much time in this restaurant because of all the shit that’s been going on,” he began, “but the past two days I’ve had aneurisms because I’ve been so upset at the kitchen. On the cooks’ end, I question your integrity. Are you willing to fucking sacrifice yourself for the food? Yesterday, we had an incident with fish cakes: they weren’t properly cut. Does it really matter in the bowl of ramen? No. But for personal integrity as a cook, this is what we do, and I don’t think you guys fucking care enough. It takes those little things, the properly cut scallions, to set us apart from Uno’s and McDonald’s. If we don’t step up our game, we’re headed toward the middle, and I don’t want to fucking work there.

“We’re not the best cooks, we’re not the best restaurant—if you were a really good cook you wouldn’t be working here, because really good cooks are assholes. But we’re gonna try our best, and that’s as a team. Recently, over at Ssäm Bar, a sous-chef closed improperly, there were a lot of mistakes, and I was livid and I let this guy have it. About a week later, I found out that it wasn’t him, he wasn’t even at the restaurant that night. But what he said was ‘I’m sorry, it will never happen again.’ And you know what? I felt like an asshole for yelling at him, but, more important, I felt like, Wow, this is what we want to build our company around: guys that have this level of integrity. Just because we’re not Per Se, just because we’re not Daniel, just because we’re not a four-star restaurant, why can’t we have the same fucking standards? If we start being accountable not only for our own actions but for everyone else’s actions, we’re gonna do some awesome shit.”

Fuck yeah. Fires me up every time I read it.