What are blind spots?

Just like the blind spot in a car’s side view mirror, we also have areas in our behavior that others perceive, while we ourselves do not – those are our personal blind spots. As long as nobody draws our attention to them, we are unable to develop or improve in relation to these behaviors. Feedback helps to reduce these blind spots.

Apart from the awareness that feedback is important and how it can contribute, it is also important to use effective feedback techniques. I regret to say, however, that I am experiencing much too frequently that feedback is still given unsolicited and in unqualified ways. Supervisors straight out tell their employees what they are thinking, often with a negative connotation, by simply blurting out what they don’t like in the end. Oftentimes, this leads to an instinctive stress reaction in the recipient. When people are criticized and experience this as rejection, the same areas in the brain are activated as when physical pain is inflicted on someone. Such a stress reaction often triggers an automatic fight, flight or freeze reflex. In concrete terms, it manifests itself in justification, withdrawal, or a lack of commitment, and work to rule – mental resignation from the job.

Therefore, if you want to achieve the desired effect with your feedback, that is an improvement of the situation or a change of behavior, you should make sure not to trigger a stress reaction, even and especially if the feedback contains criticism, but to achieve openness, willingness to dialogue, and change. Your feedback should therefore be brain-friendly.

What is brain-friendly feedback?

Brain-friendly feedback offers feedback in a way that individuals can embrace it and are grateful, even if it contains critical elements. Specifically, this means always starting out with giving feedback on positive aspects first, on strengths that you recognize, on things that you perceive to be positive. Examples include positive feedback on specific aspects of a presentation. Make sure to stick to observable behavior and facts and avoid interpretation and evaluation at that point. Then make recommendations for more effectiveness by saying, for example: “To be even more effective with your presentations, I recommend that you take a break of a few seconds after each important statement.” Or: “I recommend that you reduce the number of slides and the content and density of information on each slide.” Such feedback, which consists of positive feedback and recommendations, certainly contains criticism. However, it is packaged in such a way that the other person does not perceive it as a threat and therefore does not react with stress, but considers it a forward-looking, solution-oriented, and helpful recommendation, which is usually gratefully accepted.

Depending on the context and your role and to whom you give this type of feedback, you are of course free to express wishes or expectations instead of recommendations. What is important is that the whole process is geared towards the future and formulated in a solution-oriented way.

Offering feedback or asking for it?

There is still a small but subtle difference when it comes to the positive effect of a feedback culture in organizations. Namely, whether it is a culture in which feedback is freely given to each other or a culture where feedback is regularly requested from each other.

The willingness to receive feedback and to listen openly is crucial for feedback to achieve the intended effect. If you give someone unsolicited feedback and perhaps even declare it as such, for example by saying, “May I briefly give you some feedback on your presentation?,” then the mere fact that you are using the term feedback and do so unsolicited may already trigger internal resistance.

It is therefore important to make sure that your counterpart is open to your observations. For example, you may ask, “I have observed a few things in your presentation today and would like to talk to you about them. Are you interested and when would be a good time to do so?” This ensures that the person for whom the feedback is intended has control over when and whether they want to receive the feedback. In a corporate culture where it is standard practice to ask each other for feedback instead of actively approaching each other to give feedback, the question of openness to listen does not arise. Because when I approach you and ask for feedback, I inevitably bring this openness with me automatically.

So, as a leader, if you want to promote a feedback culture and thus mutual support in your company’s development, then the biggest lever you have is to set an example yourself: “What can I do in our collaboration to make it even better and more effective? What do you value about me as a leader and what can I do even better in the future?” While this may look like a weakness to many, it demonstrates authenticity and strength, which in turn increases credibility, acceptance, and trust. In addition, you are inviting others to do the same and thus have a significant impact on the culture in your company.