Managers in modern organisations are encouraged to praise and constructively criticise everything their employees do to help them grow and excel. This practice is based on three assumptions.
First, other people are more aware of your weaknesses than you are. Therefore, letting others tell you is the better way to see them. It’s called the theory of the source of truth. Second, the theory of learning assumes that learning is like filling an empty container, and feedback is necessary for people to learn new skills. The third is that great performance is universal, transferable, and can be clearly defined and described. The problem with all three assumptions is that they are all self-centred. They presuppose that we, as feedback givers, are better than others and that our ways are the absolute and only correct behaviours.
According to Buckingham M and Goodall A. (2019), researchers have revealed that none of the theories are true.
The Idiosyncratic Rater Effect reveals that raters don’t often hold objective assessments of others. Their views are based on their own characters and beliefs; therefore, feedback is more distorted than truth. Despite the training on receiving feedback, it’s hard for the receivers to identify the truth and reconcile with it. Even though feedback is often not the absolute truth about the receiver because of the idiosyncratic rater effect, it is truth regardless. It is the truth about where the receiver stands with the raters; it’s the truth through the lens of the receiver’s environment.
Learning resembles building more than filling an empty container. Connecting dots and building on the existing knowledge latticework is the key to effective learning. It strengthens what you already know and integrates new notes into your knowledge network. Research proves that when focused only on our shortcomings and gaps, our brains go into the survival model and suppress everything else. Foraying out of our comfort zone too much will not make us learn new things; it only stops us from paying attention to anything but surviving.
Excellence is idiosyncratic and personal. Everyone’s standards and view of success are shaped by their unique experiences and individuality. Excellence is not the opposite of failure. If you only study failure, you’ll learn much about failure but nothing about achieving excellence. Excellence has its own trajectories. The biggest issue is that, often, excellence and failure have a lot in common. There is no universal and prescribed path to it. It’s a misguidance to tell a leader to lose his or her ego because someone else failed because they are egotistical. Studies show that many successful leaders have big egos. Studying failure doesn’t reveal the path to success.
Then, how do we help people excel?
The number of wrong ways to do something is infinite, the number of right ways, for any particular person, is not.
- Tom Landry, Dallas Cowboys Coach
If you see someone doing something that works, stop her and dissect it. Explore the nature of excellence and encourage them to do it again. If someone fails, focus on what can help them to succeed instead of why he failed.
The bottom line is that humans don’t do well when someone tells us we must fix ourselves. We only excel when someone cares and understands us, tells us what they experience and feel, and, particularly, when they see something in us that is wonderful and worthy.
References
- Buckingham, M. and Goodall, A. (2019). Why Feedback Rarely Does What It’s Meant To. [online] Harvard Business Review. Available at: https://hbr.org/2019/03/the-feedback-fallacy.