Feedback is a Gift Embrace It with Adelina Chalmers

When people ask for feedback, they usually mean, please don't hurt me, give me good feedback, tell me what I did well. When you get negative feedback, constructive feedback, whichever way you want to label it, it's always seen as a bad thing.

Should we just all follow the rule, take feedback in silence?

My suggestion is to actually respond, and you can automate this with tell me more.

Can it go wrong? Like, can praises become like a wishy-washy type of exercise?

Well, it's a very good question, right?

What do you think?

Are we allowed to swear on this podcast episode?

I'll mark some sometime. You go, I'll march it up, but we're gonna peep it down.

In actual communication, you know, talking is not communication. Writing is not communication. They are tools to communicate, but often they're not useful.

We should have done this live, Adelina. Welcome back everyone to another installment of Mastering Tech Growth. Today we have Adelina Chalmers, who's a founder of Geek Whisperer. She advises CTOs, head of engineering, and all the tech leadership. And, you know, she does improve the performance of the teams and other things, among other things. You know, she's very much respected within tech community here in UK. And also, she's a top voice on LinkedIn. Welcome, Adelina.

Thank you very much for having me.

I hope that introduction wasn't too bad.

Don't worry. I'm very impressed you did the silent L, Mike.

There you go. I tried your name a couple of times. So welcome, Adelina. Tell us who you are, how did you end up in tech, and effectively, you know, what are you currently doing?

Okay. I ended up in tech about 13 years ago after working in human rights for about 8 years, and I realized that I can improve the quality of life of people much more if I work with tech companies than if I work with the government and charities. And this is actually why I changed my career in my late 20s. And what I'm doing now is I'm on a mission to transform engineers and their leaders to make them more conscious leaders and make the engineers also more aware of what the business actually needs from them, you know, help them understand what their job is truly about, because I'd say 99% of engineers don't actually understand where they add value to their job.

That's a, that's a, that's a very strong shout. And I think I forgot to mention in our introduction what we're talking about today, which is the importance of the feedback, or the feedback culture in general towards the, you know, in the startups, in the big enterprises, doesn't matter the size, we know that Giving feedback and receiving feedback is effectively how we all grow. So to kick off, Adelina, why is feedback important?

Well, it's extremely important because without knowing how you're doing, you're not really sure if you're doing the right things. And also, you will be making mistakes that you don't even realize you're making. You know, it's what I like to call the unknown unknowns. And without feedback, you don't even know that you are not doing a great job or that you're doing a great job. You know, you could be unconsciously competent, which is you're good at your job, but you have no idea that you are. But the worst part is when you're unconsciously incompetent. And this is where feedback can be really useful. But unfortunately, many people take it as a personal attack.

That's a very strong statement, and it is very true. Somehow people are actually quite bad at receiving feedback.

Yes, and there's biological reasons for that. I can go into them if you like.

Yes, please.

Okay, so the biological reasons behind why most people get threatened by feedback is because they're usually didn't grow up in an environment where constructive feedback, especially everybody, you know, most people want to hear how great you are. Most people want to hear you did great, you did well, lovely. But actually, when people ask for feedback, they usually mean, please don't hurt me, give me good feedback, tell me what I did well. But biologically speaking, when you tell them what they didn't do well, that's seen as an attack. And there's two reasons for that. One is, the way they were raised, because perhaps in their family, in school, if you think about it, when you got negative feedback in school, usually was associated with a bad mark and it was considered a bad thing. You know, feedback, you think about it, when you get negative feedback, constructive feedback, whichever way you want to label it, it's always seen as a bad thing. So that's the kind of social connection to feedback that says it's bad and is negative. But also, and it's, it's a, it's an attack to me, but also biologically speaking, when you get something you don't like, like a negative feedback, and you are socially not conditioned to see it differently, as for example, an opportunity to learn and grow, which is how I like to see it, then you react with fight, flight, or freeze, which is an amygdala, emotional limbic system part of the brain that has automatic reactions. Just like it does when you're hungry and you're thirsty. It has these automatic reactions. Whilst instead of thinking about feedback with your neocortex, which is the logical part of the brain, people get very emotional about it. And this is my first clue. If you get, if you feel negative emotions about the feedback you just received, ask yourself, what was it about that feedback that made me feel these negative emotions? Because it's you. It's not actually the other person. Even if the other person was rude, it doesn't matter. It's how you take it inside as well.

Should we just all follow the rule, take feedback in silence?

Take big feedback in silence? Do you mean not to respond to negative feedback?

Well, just in general, I heard that and that was practiced on me. Just take feedback in silence. Like, I'm going to give you feedback. Don't try to defend yourself. Don't try to explain yourself. Just be silent. Let me give you that feedback and then take it and, you know, walk away, think about it.

Yeah, so there's a few layers I'd like to unpick in that statement, because I can see why someone would say that. But a level better than that would be to say, when you receive, when you're given feedback that you don't like to receive, because, you know, there's feedback that you like to receive as well, right? It's interesting, isn't it, how we're interpreting feedback as Feedback is a neutral term, but psychologically, we are these days conditioned to see feedback as negative, you know, and that in itself tells us something that when we talk about feedback, we don't talk about positive feedback. We talk about negative feedback. That's the sort of feedback you're talking about, isn't it? Because the good feedback, everybody goes, "Oh, thanks. That's great. Oh yeah. Awesome." You know, most people actually, I have met and I have worked with a few people who don't like positive feedback. And I can talk about that later and why that happens. But negative feedback, if someone gives you negative feedback, my suggestion is, the thing is that it depends the context of that feedback. If you are completely silent and you requested this feedback and this person, or this person went out of their way to help you to come forward and say, by the way, are you aware you're making this mistake? By you being silent, it almost sounds like a, feels like a rejection to the person delivering the feedback. And my suggestion is to actually respond, and you can automate this, with tell me more. If you have anger towards what's being said, if you have fear towards what's being said, if you feel like they're telling you rubbish at your job, and you feel, oh my God, imposter syndrome is overwhelming you, those three magic words tell me more have saved me in my career more than any other 3 words I can tell you about. I love you doesn't save me as much as tell me more.

Okay. I get it. So it's just you inviting conversation, right? You're inviting the person to continue digging deeper maybe in what they want to feedback to you. And it doesn't matter what you feel. You still go, tell me more.

Yes, I have two examples. One of them very recent that I can give you if you like when this happened to me.

Yep, of course.

Okay. So you might be aware that recently I launched some courses online, one on Udemy, you know, called How to Transition from Engineer to CTO in Under 3 Years, one for CTOs, which was about how to get engineering budget from the board. The one about CTOs in particular. I got a CTO that I've known for many years, absolutely delightful guy. But he, I heard through the grapevine saying that he was open to giving me some feedback about it. So when he said that, I knew feedback meant negative feedback. So I jumped at the opportunity and messaged this guy and said, hey, would you, I heard that you have some feedback for me, I'd really love to hear it. I knew it wasn't going to be good, right? Because He said, I have some feedback through the grapevine. Otherwise, you don't just message me. He has my phone number. And we had a phone conversation. And I asked him, tell me, tell you. And he said, oh, you know, I think your video is pointless. Nobody's ever going to buy it. I don't think it's, you know, it gives any value. I think you should just put it for free on LinkedIn. Why are you trying to sell on LinkedIn and on YouTube? Why are you trying to sell it? You know, this is never going to work. I don't know what you're trying to achieve with it, but it's not going to work. And there was a lot of, it's not gonna work, it's not gonna work. Keep in mind, actually, at this point, I had already sold hundreds of pounds worth of this video within about a week of launching it. So I became curious and asked a bit more about what was it about the video that's not gonna work? I understand you think that, which is fine, but what is it about it? And I got some amazing feedback about, and this is why the wording on my, on that video sales page is very different now than it was when he gave me feedback, because he started telling me more about, well, how is this helping me? You know, is this gonna fix my problems? Why, why shouldn't I just get it for free? Everything else is for free. And those questions helped me dig deeper and understand that I hadn't actually spelled out on the sales page why this is not uploaded for free on YouTube. And it's magic like that, that I would have never gotten had I not leaned into the negative feedback. You know, I'm not going to say initially I felt like, where is he coming from? You know, this feed, I don't understand what he wants from me with these questions. You know, initially I couldn't get it, but actually the more I asked him deeper and deeper questions about these things, and sometimes I didn't even know what to ask. I just said, can you tell me more about this is not going to add me any value? You know, tell more about that. How come? And that was magic. Like now my description on my website has changed and I have to tell you, I get even more sales than before.

So it's very similar to what you would do with the product launch. You want to just lean and talk with your potential customers and your existing customers and effectively proactively seek out that feedback and just go like, what did you like? What didn't you like? How can I make this more valuable to you? So leaning in that feedback, and that applies as well at work, right? So if you hear people talking, maybe someone mentioned something. Effectively, what we advocating is go out if you hear things like that and just seek that feedback out. I heard you said something. Can you give me more? Tell me more.

Exactly. And you know, most of the time people are too emotional, to be honest. To ask constructive questions. This is the problem. You know, the moment you start giving me negative feedback, my limbic system kicks in and goes, attack, attack, attack. So they start deflecting, they start, you know, asking all sorts of questions, or, you know, like the typical when you're pulled over by a police officer, and the officer says, you know, oh, you know, you're, you're over the limit with your drinking or whatever. And they go, yeah, but what about these other guys much more over the limit than I am, you know, things like that. That's just deflection, right? So My, the magic was that tell me more, you can automate, you can automate to say that it's not very hard to remember. And, but it takes for you to observe yourself in the moment, the emotions you have, rather than going with a natural tendency of defending yourself or arguing back or fighting back.

Yeah.

Or indeed staying silent, which is freeze, by the way. This is why I'm saying that staying silent can work for a while to an extent, but really, if you want value out of the conversation, and also frankly, this is a piece that is not talked about enough. The person who's giving you constructive/negative feedback, most of them are genuine people because it's uncomfortable for them too. And they are worried about your reaction. And this is the thing that a lot of people don't appreciate, that thanking someone for giving negative feedback, not as a cynical thing, but genuinely thanking them because actually it's exhausting for someone to give you negative feedback. You know, there are occasions where obviously keyboard warriors and all that, but really, if you're in a meeting with someone online, it's a different kind of story, to be honest. But face to face with someone or an email that you receive at work or something like that, take the time to thank the person for raising the issue to your attention and then discuss it deeper rather than being angry with the messenger because they might just be a light in a tunnel for you.

Yep. I love that. I mean, it absolutely requires courage to have these difficult conversations and give that feedback. So if you are in a leadership position and you're giving a constructive or course-correcting feedback, you will need an amount of courage to actually sit down in that conversation and give that. And, you know, people who did that know exactly what I'm saying. And on the receiving end, yes, you absolutely, you know, you are afraid of how that will impact that person. You know, the intent is not to diminish, not to cause, you know, any other negative impact, right? But it might land like this. So you are very aware of that. And how you're delivering. So on receiving ends, emotionally speaking, I love how you said just catch the emotions, you know, lead with the tell me more and then go think about what that actually means. Like, why did you respond emotionally to this? Like, what's the lesson in that? Like, there's a reason why you, you know, went and became emotional to that feedback, you know, and that's where the lesson is. So if we flip this and then we go like, What about positive one? You know, that's much easier to give, like, you know, you know, hey, you're doing great. You know, hey, that project, that was awesome. You know, you did this thing that was amazing. That feels like easy to give. But I've been part of teams which positive feedback or praises were very, very low. Like no one was just complimenting each other. How do you sort of get the team into a habit to give, you know, each other positive praises?

Brilliant question. One of the things that I think a lot of leaders underestimate is the fact that the rest of the team copies them. So I would invite you to look at the leaders of that team or department you are talking about. How much proactive feedback were they giving people when they were doing well? How outspoken were they about the good stuff that the team were doing or their managers were doing? And that's the thing that everybody copies the boss. And when you're a CTO or a head of engineering, or even an engineering manager, you're the one who sets the tone for that, that feedback. Is it happening? Is it not happening? And I'm going to stop there because you're welcome to ask me, this could go in lots of different directions afterwards.

I love the lead by example, you know, and you 100% Right, that you setting the tone of how things should be done. I love when people, you know, have understanding that you don't need to have the title to, you know, express leadership capabilities and go like, you know what, maybe my leader doesn't do praises or give feedback. I will, you know, like, I seen someone doing well. I know what, you know, that positive praise will be good. And accept it positively. So I'll go ahead and do that. I love when people think like this, as, you know, maybe senior developers or within the team in general. But yes, if leadership doesn't do that, I feel like people may be thinking that it's just not how things should be.

It's not acceptable here.

Exactly.

And the other thing that every person who leads a team, it could be an engineering manager, it could be even a team lead, if they're, you know, the kind of the strongest technical there, it could be a director of engineering, a head of engineering, it doesn't matter. They create their own subculture unconsciously most of the time. And that's the thing, even if your boss doesn't do it, you can do it with your team. And you can get that subculture that's positive. And sometimes people see the difference in your team and they want to copy it. And that's how that culture spreads from the bottom up. But it's very, Rare because most people copy their bosses naturally.

Yep, I do agree. So talking about praises, I love, I think the book is called How to Win People and Influence, no, How to Make Friends and Influence People, right? Yeah. So it talks about a lot about giving praise and being specific when you give a praise. How specific is specific when it comes to giving praise, you know, from your perspective?

Oh, brilliant. I wrote a post about this about 6 years ago, I think.

Okay, let's dig into that.

Yeah, it's really important, right? So for example, if you say to someone, George, well done on that project, brilliant job, George will assume he knows what this boss let's call her Mary, is praising him about. But he doesn't actually know if Mary thinks that well done for that job was because he delivered the code perfectly or because he did it on time or because there weren't too many bugs or because there weren't too many customer complaints. He has no idea. So that kind of praise is pretty useless, to be honest. It's not very helpful at all other than, oh, well done, kudos, whatever. The next level of praise is to say, well done on X, well done for finishing that on time, well done for delivering that code with so few bugs, well done for testing it properly before you sent it out. That's the next level, which is better, but not perfect either, because then they know what the good stuff is about, right? But the third level of feedback, which is the gold standard, as I like to call it, is to say, George, well done for testing the product or testing the code thoroughly before you sent it out. Because compared to the other features that we released in the past, this time we, we didn't, we had 5 times more customer retention than we did last time with this feature release, or 5 times less complaints, or 5 times more people messaging back saying this is really helpful. Give it talking about the impact of the good thing they've done. So what they've done well, the impact of what they've done well, not just well done, you've done something, but what's, what's good about it.

So effectively, well done for testing the product out. And as a result of that, we had zero incidents, you know, after it went live or something like that. So, so effectively, exactly what he did. And the impact it actually had.

That's right.

Okay.

But most of the time, people don't follow that entire chain. Managers don't follow that chain. They don't communicate with the other departments to be able to give that kind of answer to the engineers. Because the problem is that from an engineering-only standpoint, you can't figure that entire chain out. You need to speak to customer success. You need to speak to customer acquisition to understand how was this compared to the other releases we made.

I love that. Okay, that's a golden standard. So we're setting a golden standard that we have. Be specific. That's how, you know, what exactly they did and the impact they had. Think about that when you're giving the praise. Can, can it go wrong? Like, can, can praises become, you know, like a wishy-washy type of exercise? Like, can you overdo it? And it, and, you know, it's almost they become counterproductive?

Well, it's a very good question, right? So to me, it's all about meaning and context. So for example, if you keep telling people, well done, George, regardless of how well George did or not, if George doesn't get negative feedback, constructive negative feedback, when he messes up, the good praise doesn't mean anything because there's no opposition, you know, there's no difference. He can't correlate the good feedback with the stuff he's doing.

There's no counterbalance. Oh, sorry, I didn't—

counterbalance is yin and yang. There's no counterbalance. If you can't relate the good feedback you get with the, with the negative feedback that you get, then you become complacent and think everything is fine. Why do we need to bother more?

Yeah. I'm doing everything okay. I'm just getting praises all the time.

Like, yeah.

What's the problem, right?

Exactly. This is what concerns me. You know, when I ask my customers, if all of them tell me I'm great all the time, I always worry because I know this. There must be— I can't be perfect. There must be something that I'm doing wrong sometimes.

And as well, if you don't get that constructive one, you don't even know where to actually improve yourself. It's like, you know, like, am I already at the top of the Everest? Like, I'm the best of the best and the best I can be, which is probably not true. Like, at any given point in time, we have plenty of things we could improve. So that constructive feedback is the balance you want to seek out if you're not getting by default.

100%.

Okay. Can you overdo it? I mean, which one is more important? Like, I mean, we sort of said that it has to be a balance, but yeah, can you— should you be leaning more towards constructive criticism? So you, so you want to know what, you know, how to grow. So that should be, let's say, ratio of 6 to 4, something like that? Or should you be getting more praises and less constructive criticism so you don't, you know, feel diminished in any way? Or is it just like 50-50?

Well, I think it depends on the performance of the person, to be honest. For me, it's about honesty and authenticity. You know, like you have to, it has to be reflective of the reality of their performance. But I would say, you know, I have had situations actually recently where, you know, I did a joint project with someone, they didn't perform very well. I had some, some negative feedback about their performance. They were, this person was, was part of my project, they was delivering something for me. And I didn't actually tell this person about the negative feedback he received. I told him only about the good feedback that he received. And the reason for that is because I knew he'd be crushed if he saw that negative feedback. And I know exactly why he had that negative feedback being given to him. And therefore, sometimes as a manager, as a leader, you have to know and know your people and understand if this is the right time to give them that feedback. So I only gave him the positive feedback and that made him want to go out of his comfort zone and do the stuff again. But next time we did it, I actually just gave him some tips that would fix— would have fixed the issues that came up in the previous without him ever knowing 5 different people complained about it. Because what's the damage on this person? I knew he would be crushed if I told him that, and he wouldn't have tried to get out of his comfort zone again. And that's the difference. You know, as a leader, this is what— this is what separates leaders from managers. Frankly, if you are a true leader, you not only just kind of churn out what you're told, you put it through a filter, you analyze the situation, and then you decide, is this the right time or is this the best way to deal with this problem? And that's, that's not being disingenuous. You're still helping the person because you're giving them gently some guidance on it and how to do it differently next time. And if they, for example, think, 'No, it doesn't matter. I'm not going to change that.' Then you can kind of gently start kind of introducing and saying, 'Well, actually, it can come across like that sometimes, but, you know, but most of the time you don't need to get there. You don't need to tell them I didn't tell you this,' which is what I used to get, by the way. I would insist that people explain to me what's the evidence for this, to the point that my managers would have to tell me 5 people said that you are not good at this. And then I feel paranoid because she didn't tell me that. Right. But this is, this is the, this is what you have to understand the person. I welcome feedback. She was scared of giving me feedback, but I welcome it. But maybe this person, other people don't, other people are scared of it. Other people feel humiliated by negative feedback. I don't, I quite welcome it because I can look at it as something to build upon rather than let it tear me down.

Is it the maturity piece to welcome constructive feedback? I'd like— if I think about myself, I know that in the beginning I was not accepting it as a champion, let's say like this, where eventually becoming myself a leader of people and learning a theory of leadership, I recognize the value of such feedbacks where Now I seek out and I welcome it. But in the beginning, I'm like, who is this guy telling me that stuff? Like, I don't like that, right? Is that like a maturity piece? Should we expect people to grow into accepting constructive feedback? Or is it more like a mindset, like a growth mindset situation?

Well, I'm not sure I can tell a difference between maturity and growth mindset. Because the difference between someone who's mature, or has a growth mindset than someone who doesn't is essentially they're able to look at, let's say, the context of feedback, they're able to look at that feedback and analyze it for what it is. For example, sometimes feedback is rubbish. I've been given, I mean, the amount of times I've been told by a few very senior CTOs that, you know, launching, for example, that video will never sell to anyone at all. Their opinion was, I'm going to get £0, $0 for that video, because absolutely worthless. And yet, you know, I've sold over £1,000 worth of stuff, you know, of that video in the last, I don't know, 6 weeks, 2 months it's been on. So, you know, you have to take feedback with a pinch of salt. But this is where leadership and maturity and a strategic mindset, you know, and this kind of growth mindset comes in. You take the feedback, you analyze it, You take the value out of it and then you discard all the other stuff that actually there's no value to it. You know, not all feedback is valuable, but actually not all feedback is valuable, but there is value in every piece of feedback because if nothing else, it tells you about the limitations of that person. That's the thing. And if you let that person influence you and tell you, don't do this, it's not going to work before you even tested it out. Most people don't step out of their comfort zone to do the things that experienced people told them is not going to work because they, they're scared of being proven wrong. Everybody wants to be right all the time. Having the growth mindset means that you don't mind being wrong sometimes.

Yep.

You don't see it as a failure. You don't see it as you being less of a person. When we make mistakes, we're not less of a person. We're just a person who made a mistake.

Hmm. And there's a lesson in every mistake. I can't remember exactly which book, when it comes to growth, talks about the fact that you should proactively seek making mistakes. Like, if you're not making mistakes, you're probably not pushing yourself in, you know, outside of your comfort zones, or you're not pushing yourself into the zones where you don't know everything. Because by default, if you think about growing, you have to fail. Like, you have to make mistakes, learn from it, get feedback, and do better. So it's like, if it's always, always good, then, you know, you're probably sitting in your bubble to some extent.

Yes. And as a— this is a message for all engineers out there, especially the alpha geek engineers, the ones that see themselves as the best engineer in this room or this company or this department. This message is for you. If you're listening to this, and you never accept or receive negative feedback, you are missing out. People are not telling you, but there'll be plenty of stuff they want to tell you, but you're not listening to it and they're scared of your reaction.

And when you talk about this, I have at least 3 people in my head. Everybody does.

Everybody has 3 people at least in their head like that.

Yeah. All right. So in this modern world we are right now in, which is heavily remote, is there a difference of how you do feedback. What I'm thinking is, you know, in normal situations, I want to do face-to-face. I want to see people's reactions. I want to see how they feel. You know, I want to be in that situation with them. In remote, it's often Slack message and email, and it's just sort of like a fire-and-forget, right? Now, just I'm sending out, it's there. Like, there's no feedback loop in that conversation. Is there a way you do feedback in, in like remote settings?

Yes. So there's a lot of things actually I'd like to say about this because if we're talking about negative feedback specifically, because you know, when we say feedback, I want to clarify the kind of feedback, right? Because the hardest one, right? The hardest one is the negative/instructive one, right? First of all, the person receiving it has to trust that you have their good— you have good intentions, you have their interest at heart. They have to trust that you're not there to sabotage them with your negative feedback. Now, in order to build that, you do need some kind of physical contact, or lots and lots and lots of chats online, um, seeing each other, not seeing each other, but you need lots of contact. Ideally, some, you know, like one of the companies that I, that I work with, you know, they meet remotely. They're a remote company, fully 100% remote, but they meet once a month around Europe, in Spain, in Germany, in France, in Italy, in Bulgaria, whatever. And this makes the team like, wow, this is really cool. You know, we're visiting various European cities. Awesome. It's a European company, but they also get to experience things each other with, with each other. And it's much harder to be a keyboard warrior or speak behind people's backs when you know them face to face, you know, because one of the problems with feedback is that often it goes underground. What people are actually thinking is underground, is not told to your face. But if you, let's say, are the manager and you have some negative feedback to give to this person, my key tip to you would be, build a relationship of trust with this person first. And you build that by having lots of contact with them, getting to understand them, and literally having the conversation. How do you normally react when you receive negative constructive feedback? What's your initial reaction about that? And that's before, you know, as part of your introduction, when you first meet them as a person. So learn to talk to people, to help them observe themselves. Don't just talk to people about, oh yeah, you're doing this and you're doing that, you're doing the other, you know, get to know the person. And help them observe themselves. You know, if they complain to you about someone else, help them, query them with, tell me more. Why do you think he made you feel like that? Why do you think he came out and talked to you like this? Why is he like this? Why is he like that? Why, why, why? Till you get to the bottom of, because he made me feel humiliated. Why did he make you feel humiliated? You know, and kind of literally almost unpicking someone and their perspective and the sort of things they see as humiliation. Because what you see as humiliation, I don't see as humiliation.

Okay. So you still need to build a little bit of relationship, uh, or much better build a lot of relationship before you go into that feedback.

And also this kind of feedback matters, you know, like, like I said earlier, do you really need to give them negative feedback or is there another way of helping them correct that behavior? Because, you know, right now the cat just died or something. You see what I mean? Take, take that negative feedback into context. Don't just throw it at people. It's all over the screen. I can just shut it off afterwards. It doesn't matter. There is a real human being behind that screen and it will have an impact and they will see you differently after you give them negative feedback for the first time, for sure.

Okay. So that's in a way like how we nurture the psychological safety, right? Because we're going to build out the relationship. We'll have some trust. We'll talk about that process before the process actually happens.

Yes.

And then we'll take the person into that process. Okay. That makes perfect sense. Is there like a framework potentially used? And when I say framework, the only one which comes to my mind is what is known as feedback sandwich.

Oh yeah.

You go like good, bad, good. Like, is there any— Yeah.

Like, yes. Am I allowed to swear on this podcast episode?

I'll mark some time. You go, I'll mark some time, but we're gonna beep it out.

Right. Okay. I won't swear. So I wrote an article, I think it's public on Medium called The Alternative to the Shh Sandwich. And because, you know, so many engineers call it the shh sandwich.

Yep.

And I wrote that alternative, which gives you a framework of explaining things whilst being authentic, and not having this kind of good, bad, good, you know, because then people are expecting it, they know what to expect. But if you start with the bad, you know, like, let's say you've decided this is the right time to give them the feedback. You've decided the only way to correct that behavior is through feedback, because there's other ways to correct the behavior as well, by the way, not just through feedback or correct performance, whatever it is, you know, there's many other tools you have at your disposal. And let's say that's the right thing to do. If you start with, "Oh, well done, George, you know, you've been a great engineer so far." blah, blah, blah. George is now discarding mentally everything you've just said that's positive.

Yeah, they shut down.

Because you're wasting it for impact. Right?

Yep.

So, you know, like, I used to love when— I've done lots of these things now. So I know what the engineers are thinking, you know, the engineers go, oh, come on, what do you actually want to tell me? You know, like, skip to the important part, right? So how I give people feedback is I skip straight to the important part. I go, you know me, I'm straightforward. I'm not never gonna give you hot air. I'm never gonna lie to you. I'm never gonna treat you like a child. This is what, this is what I, um, this is what you did. This is how it impacted other people. This is how it came across. This is what had been helpful for you to do. But that's my perspective. Can you, can we discuss this and unpick it a little bit more? What made you want to do it like that? Or, you know, sometimes you can just go, tell me more about why you did this like this. You know, that's a softer version of the feedback, but sometimes you get to the end, you know, you get to a point where you're like, I don't know what else to try with this person. And that's the formula. When I have, I don't know what else to try with this person, that's the formula I use. Like, bam, straight to the heart of the matter. This is what you did. This is how it impacted. This is what we'd have liked you to do. What stopped you from doing that? Bam. And then there's no kind of like surprise, you know, you kind of, they're not waiting for anything. The waiting has happened straight ahead. You know, you go, hi, you know, how are you? And give them heads up. You are going to talk about this as well. Don't blindside people. This is the thing that people hate when they are in face-to-face feedback. If you don't tell, I want to talk to you about something. Well, it makes me worry the entire time they're going to talk to me about something. Tell me what that something is in advance. And if you like, you can even say to them, would you like me to tell you what I'm planning to say, and then we can discuss it when we're face to face? So then they know exactly what it's about. You're not shocked at all. You're not using shock at all in that meeting.

I personally like— not like, I love— in advance or agenda setting. So like, someone goes like, we're gonna go one to one. I'm like, Give me a bullet list where you want to talk about, because I want to come prepared. I want to be participating in and giving you values because sometimes you're going to give me something and the only thing I can answer is like, thank you for this. I'll need to think about it. So I'll come back to you, which prolongs the whole span of the situation.

Yeah, exactly. And this is the thing, we operate, different people operate differently, but most of the time it's much better to tell someone what this is about. And, you know, write it out for them and say, this is what happened. This is how we perceive. I want to discuss how we can do this better in the future. And then, you know, and kind of say, have a think, take some time to think about this. But here's the thing. This all has to be accompanied by the culture, by that psychological safety, by that relationship of trust. How do you set things up normally? You know, do you tell someone when you start working with them, This is how I normally do things. Do you want it like that? Or how do you want it? And giving them the option because some people don't want to receive the email. They just want to know, oh, let's have a catch-up. That's all they want. And they just want to be blindsided. Some people prefer that because it means they're not worrying the entire time. Some people prefer to have it in writing ahead of time so they can think about it and, you know, process it. And then they can actually have a proper response and not feel fight, flight, or freeze attacked in a meeting because you already know what it's about.

Yep. I love that.

Again, learning what does this person want? Talking to them about it. So few managers, when they start working with someone, they don't ask them, how do you like to do things? When, when, if I have bad news, how would you like me to give it to you? By email in advance or tell you in a meeting straight out? Have these conversations because I bet you'll be the first manager who asks them that. And they'll actually, this will be, this is a self-awareness question, by the way, because you know yourself what you prefer. Like you just, that you have self-awareness in that area. I have seen it, by the way, the way you send me the agenda and the invitation, everything is hyper-organized, hyper-structured. I think you're an architect, aren't you? A software architect.

Used to be.

Used to be. I can see that. Brilliant. I love it. And for me, I mean, it made my life very easy, but 9 out of 10 podcasts I do, I don't get an agenda at all. I'm just told we're gonna talk about some leadership stuff.

Come join. I mean, this is fun as well, cuz it's a, you know, a box of surprises, isn't it?

Yes.

Yeah.

But I thrive on being put on the spot. Other people don't. Other people much prefer to get an agenda like you sent out, which I think is very calming to a lot of people. Very reassuring. To people who don't want to be put on the spot. I love being put on the spot.

We should have done this live, Edeline. But you were talking about all these great things of how to give, you know, the feedback effectively, make sure it sticks, right? You know, understanding your audience in a way. It's in a way, it's the same as giving presentation, understanding who you're going to be talking with, you know, make sure you deliver it in a way they can absorb as much. But often that's not done. And often on the receiving end of a feedback, you get this like vague feedback and you don't even like, is this good? Is this bad? Like what's going on? You know, it's like you don't even know what's the message behind the feedback. And I was on the receiving end like this couple of times. What's your suggestion if a person receiving feedback and goes like, I don't know what you mean. Is that like, tell me more, explain what you mean? Just simple as that?

Yeah. Can you, are you able to, can you think back at an example so I can give you specifics of how I would, I would, what I would say in response to that?

So I was getting a feedback, which I believe, well, not believe, but now I know it was about how I talk and the fact that I swear too much in the meetings. Right. And I'm coming from a country which is called Lithuania. English was a second language to me and I never thought about saying the words which I cannot say right now, but that was just the way I talked, right? And it just didn't rub well to some of the execs and they were like, do you talk like this with clients? And the feedback I got was like, I didn't understand this, like what are you saying? I swear too much or is this a bad style? It's a style who doesn't sell or am I diminishing people? You know, what are you saying to me, right? And I walked out of this room and I was like, I don't really know what happened over here. So I circled back, you know, after a couple of days, I was like, this is how I understood. And I sort of listed back and they were like, no, that's not really what I meant. And yeah, what I listed back is how I received the situation. And after that, that was my like main learning about the fact that there's a saying is that the worst thing, no, what's the saying? It's about communication is I think the biggest misunderstanding is that the communication took place.

Yes.

And it's something along these lines where people, two people talk and they both think that they communicated something and they walk away and it's not like one thing's another than what another wanted to say. And that's exactly what my session was about. And that's affected the context behind feedback is like, how do you actually know that you understood the feedback in the same way the person was giving to you?

Yeah, brilliant question. I actually wrote a post about this 7 years ago as well, which is on LinkedIn, I think, as well. It was a bit of a communication protocol, I called it, but it's exactly what you just said now. You go back to them and say, what I understood was this, is that what you meant? And I will tell you, was this in Britain? Was this in England?

No, it was in Britain. Yeah. And I was like 2 years in. So the English was still like shaky for me.

In the British culture, we are very soft about feedback. We are very roundabout. We go very much in a roundabout way with feedback. And most people, unless they're British, and sometimes even British people, if they are sometimes on the spectrum, like I, like I am, don't understand what on earth was that about. And this is why clear communication, like you did, going back and saying, this is what I understood. Is that what you meant? And they go, oh no. Then that's, you know, and that literally made a little communication protocol. You know, when you answer, when you send, you know, send the who is and you have a command prompt answer, it's the same sort of thing. But in actual communication, you know, talking is not communication. Writing is not communication. They are tools to communicate, but often they're not used properly. And this is something that a lot of people think, well, I've been talking for 45 years. I know how to communicate. You know how you talk, you know how to produce noises and sounds, but it doesn't mean your message got across. It doesn't mean the other person will be able to pass on what you said accurately. That's why you get Chinese whispers.

Yep. So if I'm giving a feedback, should I go like, can you tell me how you understood my feedback?

Yes. Can you tell me what did you understand from what I've just said? I ask this question all the time. Okay. What did you understand from what I just said? What struck you?

We've got two great things. Tell me more and tell me back.

Yes.

How you understood. Love it.

Tell me more and tell me back. Absolutely nailed it. Very, very good tools when you give or receive feedback.

Okay. So, so we're getting better at this feedback now, right? So let's say we are leaders, you know, we just learned all of these things we are applying. How do we measure these unmeasurable positive impacts our feedback sessions are actually giving to the team? It's like, how do you quantify the effect of feedback, positive and constructive, within the team? How can you go back to stakeholders and go like, this initiative I'm driving now around everyone's giving feedback everywhere is yielding that result?

Well, I mean, one of the tools that a lot of companies use, you know, is employee engagement, like, you know, like Vymetrics or a piece of software like that where you can actually see, do we have different numbers You know, when we ask the same questions about how, for example, if your employee engagement survey asks how often or do you feel able to give feedback to your boss or to your peers? Before, 30% said yes. Now 60% say yes. Or, but also another way you can measure it is, I mean, you look yourself in your team. Have they been bringing up issues more often? With each other and worked through them, which means that they delivered something faster, or they avoided a big disaster, or they avoided a big, you know, kind of rewrite or whatever. It's kind of looking at the chain reaction. It has, you know, do we have— does Mary now challenge John when he talks over her, or she still keeps quiet? Or does anyone else challenge John when he talks over Mary, or does everyone else still keep quiet? Is this kind of, again, as a leader, you're observing from above, you know, you're looking and trying to, to see the patterns. Okay.

I love that. An engagement survey is likely the tool where, you know, the only way you can measure things is by surveys, 360s, and just asking people around. There's no real tool you can put in place. Engagement survey is a good one. I do love a simple approach, which I think it was Spotify who shared it in their blog post like 10 years ago or something, which is called a Squad Health assessment module, which is as simple as, you know, every sprint or maybe once a month you have just, you know, a team coming together. They have like a voting from 1 to 5 and they have different topics like healthiness of a codebase, collaboration, teamwork, processes, support, and things like that. And you just vote on these and feedback culture or just exchanging feedback could be one of these things. And you have this like a pulse as a team leader or as a leader you can get. So, that worked quite well when I deployed it. So, just a shout to that health assessment module. So, Okay, so we're measuring now, so we know that really works. And can we overdo it? You know, Adeline, can we actually go from maybe giving feedback like once a week to start giving feedback, you know, more often? And we're actually causing distraction in a way. You know, it's like if we're giving constructive course correction feedback, we're giving too often and people, you know, they go right and then they go left and now they're back to center. And then, you know, and it's just like becomes a little bit like a ping pong. Is it possible to give feedback too often?

Well, absolutely it is. I mean, this is why I was saying earlier to use your discretion as a leader, even if you're an engineering manager, there's a difference between behaving as a leader and behaving as a manager. Use your discretion as a leader to look at almost the ratio of cost-benefit, the cost-benefit ratio for feedback is, if I give this person negative feedback again this week, is that the best way to get the result I'm after? Because you have to focus on the result you're after, not just on the output of just constantly giving them feedback. What is the result you're trying to achieve by giving someone constantly feedback on this? And this is the, this is the point I'm trying to make that it's not about the process, you know, do it every Monday, do it every time they make a mistake. Coach them every time they make a mistake. And if the coaching doesn't work, then you can move a gear up to feedback. Don't just give people feedback constantly because actually you might be making also— when we decide to give someone feedback, we make a judgment call on what's happening, but we sometimes don't have the full picture. You know, for example, when I said to you earlier that I received feedback saying this is never going to work. This person didn't know because they don't have access to my sales track. You know, like it was just, it's, you see what I mean? So it's, it's sometimes the feedback is misinformed. You haven't got the full picture.

So there's an element of subjectivity.

100%.

And we want to be as objective as we can.

Yes. And nobody's 100% objective, right? We all see reality through our filters. However, jumping straight to feedback, I think, is quite a blunt people management tool.

Okay.

Definitely not a people leadership tool. Leaders coach, you don't give feedback that much in that sense, in the traditional sense. I'm sitting you down, I'm telling you how to do it better.

That's parenting. Sorry, I jumped in because the moment you said, you know, I sit you down and tell you what to do, I'm like me with my kids, it's like, don't do this.

I mean, without sounding patronizing, to be honest, there's a lot of areas of crossover, let's say, between parenting and management. It's different between parenting and leadership. And that's another conversation we can have just about that.

Yeah, I do agree. I mean, I don't know why, but with the kids, you could coach them as well. I mean, maybe they're too young, too small. I don't know why. But as a parent, you feel like, I'm just going to tell you how to do things. And then it's just a bad mindset in general. You do want to approach that in a coaching manner and just ask the questions and allow the person to reach those conclusions by themselves. Whereas a parent, sometimes you're just like tired, annoyed, and you just go like, just do this. Just, just like, it's just that, like, just go ahead and do that. And sometimes you bring that to work as well. So 100%.

I mean, you've just, you've just proven my point that yep. You know, feedback is a very blunt tool for managing people and helping them, you know, it's a, so coaching them and this is the thing though. Coaching also requires the other person to have a certain level of knowledge and development to be able to do something with said coaching. You can't really coach, I think, a 3-year-old. I don't, I don't have children. I've never had children. I'm never going to have children because of my health conditions. But I, I can tell that when I see, you know, my friends' children after a certain age, you can ask them questions to make them think for themselves. And in fact, it's encouraged. But you can't, you can't coach a 1-year-old, a 2-year-old, a 3-year-old, you know, and it's the same with some people at work. Some people at work, sometimes in some contexts, you initially have to tell them what to do. And you have to start with the sharp blade first. And then in time, you help them, you coach them. Again, customized to the people you are managing and the culture you're in.

Yeah. When you were saying this, I remember in one of the startups we had, a lot of like new graduates which we took in. We had this agreement with the, I think it was London Imperial College where we would get like interns for like 3 to 6 months. And there was a year or so where we rotated a lot of them and some of them were very coachable where they would come in and they would come in with this mindset like I'm coming here to learn things. So, you know, so I'll ask the questions, I'll take the feedback, I'll go improve. And some were just like Don't tell me what to do, man. It's like, you know, so it's like, that's where you, you need to think about people, how they receive things, you know, why they're here. Are they coachable? I just approach it almost in a unique sense. Okay. So we have this question, Adeline, which is in the spirit of the show, and it goes like this. What is one most important factor for any tech venture growth?

Oh, crikey. But do you mean, okay, if I'm gonna be blunt, the most important factor in tech venture growth is actually market timing.

Okay.

I know it's a bit outside of people's control and people want, but if you look at the research, the timing of when you started, what you started, how important is the problem you're solving is seen. That is actually a very, very big factor to growth. This is why every time a CTO says to me, how do I convince my board to give me more money for engineering to hire more engineers? Or a CEO says, how do I get my investors to give more money? My question is, why do you need more money now? Why don't you need more money in 3 years' time? What's the, what are the signs that right now is the time to be riding that pony and grow?

Okay. I love that market timing. How do you recognize a good timing?

When, for example, let's say, I mean, let's say you are in, I'm gonna give you an old example because everyone will be able to understand this one. I was thinking of giving a newer one, but it's not quite as defined. So think about YouTube when they started, not everyone had broadband, you know, not everyone had good strong computers, strong internet to to be able to play videos. But by the time they had started uploading videos, and they started having lots of people uploading, contributing things, more and more people had— more and more people had broadband, more and more people had mobile phones and smartphones that they could record themselves easily and upload it easily, and sometimes not even need to upload it from mobile to computer. But they could upload directly from their phone straight onto YouTube because there's an app now. All of these elements together, they were signs. For example, if your customer doesn't have the bandwidth, the internet bandwidth, or there's 5 different steps to be able to upload their video onto your platform, probably the market is not ready yet. Look at the customer experience, customer journey. Is everybody talking about it? Is everybody doing it? You know, and also, is there a historical pattern to people wanting to be on video? You know, because if you think about it, before, not many people were on video and the ones who were, were paying for it as a special occasion, like a wedding or a birthday or a christening or whatever. But once this is accessible, will people want to do it more? And the answer was yes. You know, people wanted to. So this is, it's kind of all these signs that tell you even historically that these kinds of actions are people that actions take. And if it's even easier for them to take these actions, they will do it. At scale. Okay, all these signs.

Let's try to apply this to AI right now.

Yes, that's what I was going to give the example of AI, right?

So yeah, yeah, yeah, go.

Yeah, I mean, if you look at it, you know, so I, I was talking to John Cricket yesterday. He was working for an AI company 12 years ago. Why was that not as fervent as it is now and as well known by everyone outside of tech? Because ChatGPT didn't exist and regular people, even your grandmother, wasn't able to use ChatGPT. Even your grandmother, if she has an iPad or a laptop or whatever, she can go on ChatGPT and ask a question and get an answer. That's why AI is much more important now than it was 12 years ago, because a regular person can start doing it easily.

Right. So it's just at the fingertips for the common person. yeah, to utilize, which means any product spin-out is accessible. Okay, so, so we're saying effectively market timing is to some extent is accessibility at scale for whatever you're building?

Yes, pretty much. And also, for example, market timing, like, um, if you think about it, if something happens, you know, like there's a new legislation coming in or a terrorist attack comes in and facial recognition in queues all of a sudden is really important. You know, it's looking at events happening around, frankly, in the world, in the media, in your industry, and spotting that opportunity as the wave grows. You know, it's a thing. Facebook wasn't the first kind of platform like that, but it was the one that caught the right wave at the right time. And to be honest, there's a huge element of luck. Involved, convincing the right people at the right time to spread the word about you. That's crucial too.

I love that. That's a soul of entrepreneurship, isn't it? Just be within the trends, follow the news, you know, have your channels and just spot when the wave is coming and then just ride the wave.

100%.

Hopefully. Okay.

This is— can I say something actually about tech strategy and how it's linked to this?

Yep.

A lot of CTOs struggle to build tech strategy, and they think it's some magical thing that they need to figure out, and they feel really blocked about it. The thing about tech strategy is that if you've done, if you worked on the business strategy with the rest of the C-suite and the board, Tech strategy is a breeze because the hard part is to look at the industry you're in, to look at the environment you're in, and make a business strategy that makes sense. How do you get from where you are now to that vision that you have? That's the strategy. So once you have a business strategy, the business strategy tells you what you need to do with the tech strategy because the tech strategy is, well, considering where we are with the software right now, How does it need to go? How does it need to change to be able to hit those goals that the business just set up in the business strategy? It's as simple as that. It's not as complicated as people imagine it to be.

Yeah, simplicity is genius, or genius is in simplicity. How is the saying going? Simplicity—

there's genius in simplicity.

Genius in simplicity, is it? Yeah. So if the things are complicated and you're actually struggling to explain to someone else what you're doing, it's probably not the best way of going about things. It should be very simple to explain strategy as well. It's like, here's, here's what we're going for, here's what, how we're gonna get there. Quite simple. Not as simple actually to make it happen though.

That's another story.

Exactly. That's, that's another big topic, isn't it? You know, the execution itself. Okay, well, um I don't have any more questions, Heather, when it comes to feedback. I just want to thank you for coming, you know, sharing your wisdom. And, you know, before we part ways, is there anything you would love to leave our listeners with?

I would say that keeping in mind the topic of the session of this particular episode, If someone gives you negative feedback and especially reached out to you to give it to you, look at their motives, but don't jump to conclusions they're trying to harm you. Look at what's the value in what they've given you, because it could be a beautiful present.

That's very lovely said. Thank you, Adeline. Thank you for coming.

Thank you so much for having me, Mike. Brilliant having you. Excellent questions.

Cheers.