No wishy-washy feedback here
In working on my new book, Strategic Sales Presentations, I’ve shared the manuscript with some colleagues and friends for their perspective. Their feedback has been almost uniformly complimentary, and they’ve further inflated my own opinion of the value of the book, its content, and its writing.
BUT, I just received comments from a more objective reviewer who does not have personal ties to me. His comments back to me initially echoed some of the same praise I’ve grown accustomed to receiving, but then he launched into what he saw as the shortcomings. Let me tell you, it was painful to read—yet it was exactly what I needed to hear.
He made three suggestions which make a tremendous amount of sense and which in retrospect seem obvious. They were not obvious to me, probably because I was too close to it. I suspect they were obvious to previous readers, though, and if I shared the latest reviewer’s comments with them, they would probably say they agree as well. Yet, they never said anything to me. Maybe they were trying to be tactful and spare my feelings, or maybe they did not want to feel uncomfortable themselves.
Sometimes compliments are the easy way out. We don’t want to put ourselves in the uncomfortable position of making someone else uncomfortable, so we choose the path of least resistance, in which case we’re making it as much about ourselves as we are about the other person.
It reminds me of a lesson I learned early in my sales training career. I was facilitating some role plays and one of the participants did a very poor job. Not wanting to hurt his self-confidence, I performed all kinds of verbal gymnastics trying to find something good to say about his performance. Immediately one of the other participants called me out on it; he rightly pointed out that my feedback was worse than useless, and that I was not doing the job I was being paid for.
I was trying too hard to apply a feedback sandwich, in which you sandwich your improvement suggestions between two positives. This is designed to preserve the self-esteem of the one being corrected. Yet, maybe sparing someone’s feelings is exactly the wrong approach. Of course, you don’t want to be brutal or gratuitously harsh, but by trying to soften the emotional impact are you not harming the learning process? Touching a warm stove may or may not teach you a lesson, but touch a hot one stove, and you’ll never forget the lesson.
Second, how often do we strive so hard to be “constructive” that we lose clarity, directness and honesty?
Third, the sandwich approach may also backfire, because our natural confirmation bias disposes us to hear only what we want to hear and disregard the rest.
So, if you really want to be a friend, if you really want to help, give them something useful and be direct. Of course, if you don’t care that much, you can always take the approach that my friend Gary Connor did. He was at a conference and listened to an excruciatingly bad presentation. Immediately afterwards, the speaker asked him what he thought. Gary’s reply: “Of all the presentations I heard today, yours was definitely the most recent.” The speaker beamed and thanked him for the feedback!
Don’t put those away just yet
My daughter graduated last week from Wake Forest University, and even though no one asked me to give a commencement speech, here’s a message I would like to send to her and all the other 1.8 million students who have reached that proud milestone this year.
It’s just one simple message: don’t get out of the learning habit.
After four years of hard work and intensive study, it can be very tempting to put the books and tests away for good, kick back and decompress a little, and focus on the mechanics of your job (assuming you’re one of the fortunate ones who has one). But that would be a mistake.
Right now your capacity for learning is as high as it’s ever been, but that is an asset that can quickly be wasted. You have developed the habit of learning from your four years in school, and that’s a habit you don’t want to break. It’s kind of like physical conditioning; you know how hard it can be to get back into shape after you’ve let yourself go. It’s the same with learning. You know from experience that after summer vacation you need to kick-start your brain a little to get into peak mental condition for learning.
You and I both know people who brag that they never read books. Your own commencement speaker cited the statistic that 42% of college graduates never read a book after they get their diploma .As Mark Twain said, “the man who does not read has no advantage over the man who cannot read.”
What was important in Twain’s time is exponentially more important today. You need that capacity to learn because the reality is that you will probably work for a significant portion of your life in a profession that doesn’t even exist yet, probably in competition with smart people from countries whose names you would barely recognize.
Knowledge snowballs. There is a compounding effect to knowledge—the more you know, the easier it is to learn more, because you have a much more extensive network of ideas and associations that incoming information can stick to. That’s why time works in your favor; the more you learn at an early age, the faster you will learn and the more you will know as time goes on.
One of the world’s top experts on experts, K. Anders Ericcson, tells us that the majority of people in any occupation or professional field quickly reach a level of competence and then stop. Only a small percentage continue to keep learning year after year, and those gradually open a significant gap between themselves and others. Be one of those people. Never stop learning; never stop reading.
To keep the habit, set aside some time for reading and for study. Get interested in the world and read the paper. But don’t forget that you can also learn a lot from your work and daily life: pay attention, don’t be afraid to ask stupid questions, listen more than you talk, and don’t try to be the smartest person in the room. Keep a journal.
Besides the practical considerations, the drive to learn, to understand and to master, can be one of your greatest sources of satisfaction and personal motivation in the years to come. It will keep you young: Henry Ford said, “Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty.” Stay curious; don’t let what you know stand in the way of all there is to learn and appreciate.
In the late 70s I was friends with James and Jonathan, twin brothers who were, to put it charitably, unconventional thinkers. One had been a lawyer but they both gave up what they were doing and moved to Fort Lauderdale in their mid-20s to become lifeguards and pursue their dream of becoming world class swimmers. Since they began their careers older than most world-class swimmers who had already retired, they quickly realized that their passion was not enough to make them successful. Then they had the brilliant idea that they would swim the English Channel —doing the butterfly!
Anyone who has ever tried to swim butterfly knows that it is by far the most grueling stroke; but that was the essence of their genius: no one was crazy enough to try it, so just about any time they got in the water they broke a world record. As one who accompanied them (on a paddleboard) for a 10-mile swim along Fort Lauderdale Beach, I can attest that they were two of the most passionate and determined guys I’ve ever met. But for some reason history has forgotten them.
I’m reminded of these guys when I see yet another article or tweet that tells us the key to life is following your passion.
A clear goal won’t help right now
By now, it’s no secret that mastery in any field requires thousands of hours of hard work and deliberate practice. We know that there are no shortcuts, and that we have to work hard all the time. Yet, it’s possible to work harder than anyone and still go nowhere. It’s equally important to identify and focus on the right things to improve. As Anders Ericsson says, “the critical variable for performance improvement is identifying areas of desired goals of achievement (my italics) and engaging in effective training and practice to attain the associated improvement.”[1]
I was inspired to write this post by three stories I’ve read recently:
The first is the most recent. It comes from last week’s Sports Illustrated story on Tiger Woods. “Last Saturday night, less than 24 hours before he won on the PGA tour for the first time in 30 months, Woods was the only golfer on the Bay Hill range.” That sentence says a lot. His opponents no doubt wanted to win just as much as Woods did, but he was the only one out there on a Saturday night. What’s even more instructive is the reason he was out there: his third round had ended badly, and he and his swing coach had identified the problem: too much weight on his left foot. “Woods hit balls until dark, stopping only to change clubs and sip on a Diet Coke. The more balls he hit, the more the fog from the late-round mistakes lifted.”
