Giving and receiving effective feedback may mean giving up “Northwest Nice” to be present and authentic
I’m one of those people who can be a little smug about how awesome it is to live in the Northwest. We have gorgeous mountains, rivers, lakes, coastline, forests and great food. We place a premium on good relationships, which gives us strong communities. But just like everything has an upside, everything has a downside, too. Our preference for positive relationships can sometimes lead us to refraining from saying something to someone when we are disappointed, frustrated, hurt or angry; it can even lead us to pretending that we aren’t frustrated, disappointed, hurt or angry. We can be hesitant to say what we are thinking because we fear that saying something to someone may hurt their feelings or somehow damage the relationship. So, we don’t say what we are thinking, we refrain from giving the feedback and we remain “Northwest Nice.”
I’m sure you’ve seen the bumper sticker that says, “Keep Portland Weird.” I wonder if you have seen the bumper sticker that says, “Keep Portland Passive Aggressive?” Staying “Northwest Nice” in the workplace (and elsewhere), can lead to some passive aggressive behavior if we don’t confront the problems directly.
Since repressed feelings don’t actually go away and being in denial about them doesn’t solve the problem, what happens when we refrain from being direct is that we begin treating people differently. We may become a little peevish with them. We may avoid eye contact. We may give assignments to others at work because we have a better relationship with them. We may talk about them with others, building up our hurt feeling into a position, laminating the feeling with rumination, and buffing it to a high shine by focusing on their shortcomings.
When we harden our own mental perception of a person in this way, our thoughts become a construct of the person. We associate our hurt feeling or our frustration with this person. This person becomes the problem. They are no longer a human being with thoughts, feelings, sense of humor, eccentricities, foibles and their own unique personality, they are just a “slacker” or a “bully” or a “gossip” or a “mean girl.”
I had a case many years ago which crystalized the concept of “Northwest Nice” for me. A manager who originated from a big urban city on the east coast was managing a work group here in Oregon. He had a very direct, almost confrontational style, which was normal for him. If someone made a mistake or gave him work product he evaluated as less than what he expected, he told them — bluntly and directly. Sometimes in front of other people. In pretty short order, he offended some people. He viewed himself as “calling it like I see it.” Those who were offended viewed him as a bully. The workplace conflict had almost nothing to do with the substantive feedback and everything to do with the delivery. No one ever told him his communication style was a problem and he needed to adjust it to be effective with Northwesterners. No one helped him to see his style was unnecessarily confrontational in a way which made sense to him (i.e., putting it in a geographical context).
By the time I became involved, the person who was most offended viewed him as a bully who only cared about power and control and was willing to use intimidation to get it. The manager viewed this employee as a substandard performer who wasn’t willing to improve and was trying to use the legal system to get out of performing his job (there was a civil rights charge).
Who was right? Neither of them, and both of them. They were both human beings, worthy of respect and dignity and both of them had the other one reduced to a caricature of a human being with only negative traits. The manager was no longer a person with a sense of humor, broad experience and quick wit, he was “just a bully.” The employee was no longer a human being who had worked for this employer for quite a while but was “just an underperforming slacker.”
There were a number of factors contributing to this interpersonal problem. First, the failure to mentor this manager when he made a transition. He needed someone to help him understand local Oregon culture and how people communicate here. Second, if his bosses began to receive some indications there might be some concerns about his style, they could have given him some feedback and coaching about that style before the situation became polarized. Obviously, if he got the coaching, he would have to be coachable. Not everyone is. Some people will even accuse you of being abusive if you tell them they can’t abuse others. But in our example, the east coast manager’s boss never gave him the feedback he needed to be successful in the Oregon context.
If you are supervising others, one of your fundamental roles is to mentor and coach your team. This requires you to be willing to give another person some feedback so they can grow and develop. This requires the giver of feedback to do a few things:
1. Notice that there is a need for the feedback
I call this “responding to the bubbles.” Imagine you are lying on a float on the water. Everything seems calm on the surface. Then, a trail of bubbles pops the surface. Most of us would become a little more alert, wondering what was swimming under us. As a manager of others, pay attention to those bubbles. They are the small indications that not all is as smooth as it could be. Sometimes the bubbles are subtle — because those giving us the indications don’t want to come right out and say it. If we are disinclined to confront problems because we are conflict averse, we’ll “pretend” we didn’t see it or hear it. We can’t afford to pretend we didn’t see the bubbles.
2. Get curious
It is important to find out what is going on in an open and non-judgmental way. Too many managers rush in looking for the best candidate to scapegoat, using blame fixing as their primary management technique. This will not solve the problem. The scapegoat may go, but the problem resurfaces soon in a slightly different form. Then the organization looks for the new object of blame.
Instead of looking for the person to blame, we need to understand that people operate logically within systems. This means if something is going wrong, look at the whole system to figure out what is going wrong, instead of attacking a symptom. If people are doing something you view as wrong, find out why these things are happening.
Let’s look at an example: A busy hospital emergency department is short staffed working overtime in stressful conditions for months. Despite the manager’s pleas, the manager cannot get anyone above her in the chain of command to help with staff support or temporary help. Not surprisingly, there is a lot of attrition, exacerbating the staffing situation. Also, those who do stay vent their stress on each other and the manager. There are a number of employee relations fires. When this happens, the manager’s chain of command blames the manager for not being able to effectively manage the work group (of course, the manager has been working 70-80 hours per week for over eight months). Even if they fire the manager for being “ineffective” they will have the same problem within six months because they don’t understand that their own actions actually created this situation and will create it again. Yes, the beatings will continue until morale improves!
Does this mean that there is no such thing as bad behavior? Of course not. It happens all the time and needs to be addressed promptly and appropriately. I’m just advocating for people to let go of the blame shame game and look at the context in an objective way. Is it really just that you have a bad actor? Or is there more going on?
3. Check in with reality
Checking in with reality requires you to drop your preconceptions, perceptions and biases and objectively check in with others. Many times, we approach our conversations with others without really seeing them. We jump to negative assumptions without even realizing we are doing so. Consider this: You are driving, you are cut off. What words rise to your lips? Did you assume the other person was stupid, unthinking, reckless, or idiotic? Or, did you assume the other person might just not have seen you? Or perhaps he was rushing to the hospital after learning about his son’s accident? Of course not. We almost always assume the worst. Try this: Assume positive intentions.
I’ve been an employment lawyer for almost 25 years and a mediator for almost 20. I’ve participated in a lot of employment situations, conflicts, problems and lawsuits. In my experience, the vast majority of people are actually trying to do the right thing. They may be misguided. They may not have all the information. They may employ unskillful means. Sometimes, the means are so unskillful that they can no longer remain with the organization. But most of them (us) are trying to do the right thing (I’m not saying that there is no such thing as discrimination and bad behavior because there is, but there are also a lot of good intentions coupled with unskillful delivery or means).
Despite this, the way we handle problems is to assume they had bad intent and blame them. If it is true most people are trying to do the right thing, then assuming positive intentions plays those odds and give you a better statistical chance of being right.
Also, checking in with reality means realizing your own assumptions or biases. This means you have to have enough insight and emotional awareness to notice what you may be thinking. Otherwise, you go into the conversation with the other person assuming the worst about them — which they realize right away. If someone approached you assuming you intended bad outcomes and wanted things to go poorly, wouldn’t you feel misunderstood and a little defensive?
The best method for checking in with reality is a mindfulness practice. Mindfulness not only builds concentration, it helps you objectively perceive what you are thinking, including the (often wrong and sometimes ludicrous) thoughts which you should be disregarding. Many of us think things which are simply not true but because we don’t realize it, we act as if those thoughts are real and true and forge ahead, just like the fish who can’t see the water. A mindfulness practice can help us become the perceiving observer of our own experience.
Back to our manager from the East Coast — was he just a bully? No, he thought he was problem solving in a manner that made sense to him in the context he grew up in. His intentions were good, but his skill needed some development to play to a Northwestern audience.
4. Enter the conversation being present and aware
Many people fail to have real conversations with other people. Instead, what they do is download information, as though the person is a computer program and they can download, press a button and go on their way. If you have a substantive goal in the conversation, that’s fine. However, there is a primary goal for your professional relationships, which consists of seeing the other person as a human being and respecting them fully. People feel things on an instinctive level. If you don’t fully respect them, see them, aren’t open to them, they will see that. How do you feel around someone who holds you at arm’s length, looking for faults? I’m guessing not so great.
Being an employment lawyer, I’m a huge advocate of having appropriate professional boundaries. But having appropriate professional boundaries doesn’t stop you from seeing the other as a human being who is doing his or her best. And if you see them as a human being who is doing his or her best, how will that affect your presence and delivery? Do you think you might be more relaxed and positive during the conversation? You will — you can’t fake this. Within your appropriate and professional boundaries, you can slow down, listen, understand, be curious, understand the other’s point of view and engage in clarifying dialogue. What is the alternative? If instead you impose, control and dominate, you aren’t getting the information you need to make the best decisions. This makes you less effective than you could be.
Giving feedback to another person isn’t mean and doesn’t threaten the relationship. Rather, it gives them valuable information to help them be successful. We can give feedback and actually strengthen our relationships — something we prize here in the Northwest. There is no formula for the perfect feedback interaction and my suggestions aren’t intended to be a rigid rule for anyone. You have to use your own judgement. However, if you can check in with your own thoughts and feelings mindfully, developing the “perceiving observer” of your own experience, you have a better shot at staying present in interpersonal interactions and making authentic and professional connections with others. Giving feedback isn’t a zero sum game, it’s an ongoing conversation and part of the fabric of your relationships with others.
JUL