All Good

We use feedback to help us grow, understand what’s going well and think about areas we might be able to improve. Sometimes it feels like we’re only getting positive feedback. We get told we’re doing a great job, but there’s not much actually actionable in the content.

There’s a few different types of “All Good” feedback, and there are couple of different techniques you can use to grab some value from it. So if you feel like you’re just getting positive vibes, but are struggling a bit to progress your goals, dive in and figure out which types of feedback you are working with to let you take it to the next level.

“Good Job”

Super frustrating when you reflect on it. It’s usually an attempt at continuous feedback that doesn’t quite hit the mark. “The presentation was great”, but what about it specifically? What was a real strength, and was there anything that could have been made even stronger.

This type of feedback is real vanity metric stuff. It makes you feel good in the moment, but it doesn’t tell you any specific about what’s really going well. Lean into this opening and ask some valuable coaching questions. “What about it was great?”. “I felt that slide 7 was a bit wordy, what’s your view on that section?”. “How do you feel it landed with the Marketing team?”.

Don’t let these opportunities slip by. Even if the area is a strength you will get better faster with more targeted guidance. Otherwise it’s just like hitting golf balls blindfolded and listening for the applause.

“The quiet parts”

A real problem when you look at feedback coming from more junior people or peers you have to work with often. Even when trust is high, people will still tend to default to positive feedback, rather than leading with areas of opportunity.

If you’ve got three key areas that are important in your role and one is totally missing from your feedback, maybe reflect on why. Imagine you are great at coaching and supporting people but there’s nothing about setting strategy. That quiet part should be a concern, something to follow-up on.

Sometimes you also get some very light criticism flowing through the positive words. If you are reading just the good stuff, this can be easy to miss or gloss over. Instead, try pretending that the softness is a really hard and stark statement. Dial it up to 11 and then figure out if it’s something you want to change or do differently in future. Turn “Makes lots of contributions and suggestions” to “Stifles thoughts of others and takes all the space in the room” and see how that could drive different behaviour.

“Missing people”

A classic end of year performance problem. You’ve only got good feedback because only the people who wanted to share positive stories have decided to.

This can be because you’ve asked a sensible set of people from your stakeholder map, but as it’s easier to share the good stuff, you’ve missed out on all the people who didn’t want to do the work to share growth opportunities.

In which case, try leaning on second order feedback. Ask some trusted colleagues for their thoughts on what the missing people might be saying. Be careful to avoid straying into gossip if you do this, consider starting off by working with your manager (as they are someone who is likely to already be getting some more actionable from these missing voices), and go from there.

Consider as well the benefits of anonymous feedback. Some people will be much more likely to share something useful if it’s not directly attached to their name, especially if mediated through a standard 360 or similar process.

Alternatively, you might have missed some of those less positive stakeholders. Reflect on that map of people who are important to your now and next roles, look at where you’ve not even asked for any thoughts and go and seek them out. Maybe you’ll learn something important through taking the time to extend the reach of your search for feedback.

With any of these approaches you might suddenly get a tranche of new feedback that doesn’t meet your previous expectations. Don’t discount it because it’s different or unexpected, but make sure to take time to reflect on it, seek the useful and good from and use it to learn and grow.

“The Irrelevant”

A sneaky tactic I’ve seen used to deliver “constructive” feedback is to put the positive sounding comments in terms of what you do, but the more difficult sections in terms of what we do or what the organisation does.

If you discard the second part then you are risking doing yourself a massive disservice. “You laid out the options well, but we are not great at making decisions so haven’t moved forwards”. A quick reading is that you did a great job and someone else didn’t.

Try flipping it to “You laid out the options well but it didn’t lead to a decision being made”. How would that make you feel? Does it still feel positive, or does it suggest there’s something to try doing differently in future?

“The Last Job”

Look at the feedback you are getting, and think about the level that it reflects. Is it activities focused towards your next role, or is it all around the expectations of your current job? Even weaker, is it all about your last job?

It’s a painful problem that’s most common amongst people who’ve just been promoted. It’s all too easy to slip back into the comfortable parts of your previous job, and then get positive feedback on doing easy tasks well.

This is the hardest type of positive feedback to fix as it’s not going to get better by seeking out more feedback. Here you need to look at what you are doing, what you should be doing, the gap between the two and how you need to move from one to the other.

Similarly if you want to be promoted, positive feedback on your current role is baseline table stakes, instead work to understand the expectations of the next job, and start doing the work to be in those rooms and get feedback about those activities instead.

If it’s All Good it’s No Good

If all you are getting is positive feedback then it’s going to be really limiting to you in the long term.

Reflect on your situation and the information you’ve gathered and see which of these buckets you fall into. It might be more than one!

Put together an action plan and go out and fix it.

If you aren’t learning you are falling behind, so don’t sit overconfidently on the good stuff. Seek out opportunities as they won’t be handed to you!