How to make sure feedback is balanced
At the end of one week of coaching work after seeing multiple clients each day, I realized that I had repeated the same advice and asked similar questions to more than one person. It was very unlikely that they all had the exact same issue. When I thought about the advice, I realized the message was actually quite pertinent to me and the issues I was dealing with at that time whilst juggling the multiple demands of a ‘portfolio’ career.
It is worth reflecting on these realizations because if we are trying to solve our own issues whilst working with our clients, we are unlikely to be listening to them enough or working with them as they find outcomes which are really meaningful and useful to them.
Seeing our own issues in the lives of others is a way of avoiding the anxiety involved in dealing with them directly. The process is known as projection in psychodynamic literature. As an unconscious process, it is obviously hard to notice and it is only one of the factors that can distort feedback and reduce its effectiveness.
What helps
Remembering when you give feedback to others, it often says more about you than it does about the recipient
If you are working with relatively ‘heavy’ annual processes, spend time preparing detailed, considered and thoughtful commentary so that you are taking into account a whole year’s work and not just the last few weeks.
Focus largely on what went well, the strengths you have seen in use throughout the year and the potential you see for the following year
Be clear about what the aims of feedback are firstly to yourself and then to the recipient
Resources
Irvin D. Yalom, ‘The Gift of Therapy’ Piatkus Books, 2001.
Yalom provides some tips for using feedback on the ‘here and now’ in therapeutic relationships. I find many are useful for the less intense relationships at work.
Kilburg, R.R. Executive Coaching, Developing managerial Wisdom in a World of Chaos, American Psychological Association, (2002).
Kilburg’s book applys a somewhat academic lens on coaching in organizations. On page 193 is a very useful summary of major psychological defenses. Projection is described as: ‘Taking parts of external reality, experience, thoughts, feelings, wishes, or needs that are unacceptable to the self and rejecting them and attributing or projecting them to or onto other people.’
