Deconstructive Feedback - An Interview

Joanne Wood: I have avoided feedback for as long as I can remember. Why are you focusing on feedback?

Tomáš Hančil: It’s such a hugely misunderstood and pervasive concept. Everybody talks about it many people avoid it like yourself. People are afraid that it will go wrong because with the way we understand feedback, it is likely to go wrong. Often the feedback giver is trying the best they can, and yet, it is not working very well. There are many reasons why, but the most serious one is that we are often giving feedback about something that the person already knows. Imagine you have been rude to a colleague. Then somebody tells you, “I’ve seen you being rude, you shouldn’t do that.” You are not getting any new information, are you?

People try to avoid the inherent problems of the traditional concept of feedback by inventing some rules. It doesn’t work. That’s why we want to think about it differently.

Jo: What do you think of the implications are of how people are traditionally giving feedback? What goes on?

The hidden assumption in feedback is that the one who is giving feedback knows better than the one who’s receiving it.

Tomáš: I think the typical understanding of feedback, particularly in organisations that have traditional hierarchical structures, often strengthen these hierarchical levels. The hidden assumption in feedback is that the one who is giving feedback knows better than the one who’s receiving it. Therefore this often feels absolutely unjust and inappropriate, because the person giving you feedback probably does not know more about the situation at hand. They only saw the behaviour but are not aware of the context or why it happened. Therefore the feedback-giver is actually just using the power to discipline which is not what feedback is about.

Jo: Can you give an example from your own feedback history?

Tomáš: One situation stands out for me. I was collaborating with somebody whos contribution I found lacking and I was not able to do my work as a result. I got frustrated in that situation even threatened as I appeared unable to do my work; we were working in different countries, cultural differences came in as well as the language barrier. I ended up shouting at the other person and they got upset. A third colleague from that organisation, gave me feedback which was delivered according to the rules of “constructive” feedback. We were in private settings, it was constructive, etc. But basically he said, “This is not the way to behave, this is the way you should have handled the situation”. If it happens again it will have consequences for you.”

Did I learn something? Of course not. I felt that he also knew that he was not telling me something new but he told me anyway. So on the surface, he was saying one thing, but it had some hidden meaning. At that point, we were both senior consultants in an HR consulting business that actually taught feedback.

Later, when I reflected on the situation, I realised that no possible rule can make feedback better and that we need a fundamental change in how we understand feedback. Several years later, with my colleague Matthew Rich-Tolsma, we started to think about feedback with different assumptions rather than trying to fix it with some cosmetic rules.

One of the damaging assumptions people hold about feedback without realising it is that the feedback-giver knows better. So the question we were trying to answer is, what would feedback look like, if we approached it without this assumption? Is it possible to give feedback and be open to learn from the other person about their situation? Are we able to explore how that situation might make sense for the other person, even though it’s different from how we might have handled the situation. We call that deconstructive feedback.

Jo: Where does the theory of deconstructive feedback come from?

Tomáš: It comes from Robert Kegan, in one of his older books from 2002 called How the Way We Talk Can Change the Way We Work: Seven Languages for Transformation. In this book he starts with how presumptuous it is to think that the feedback-giver knows better. He says we can make feedback constructive by following some rules, so that it is not destroying the other person. For example a move from saying “you’re a complete idiot”, to “hey, I think the way to handle this situation is…” The basic assumption in both of these cases is the same, “I know better than you do.” This assumption is something that we want to completely avoid in our feedback practice.

Aristotle noticed that everybody acts the best way they can think of, in every moment. Even people who do evil things do them because they think that they are good for them. So nobody does something ‘bad’. Therefore, when I’m seeing somebody doing something that I wouldn’t do, I have to ask, “Why is that?” How does it make sense for the person to do that? Is there something that I can do to help them to understand the situation differently?” That is the core of deconstructive feedback — I am respecting a person’s right to do whatever they choose, but at the same time I might suspect that they do what they do, because there is something in their meaning-making process that is not allowing them to see other options. This can be due to habits, omissions, past history, some errors in thinking, or access to information.

Deconstructive feedback is inherently social in nature — our views are formed in a dialogue with others in which we influence each other while the standard feedback focuses on individual expression only. But perhaps the most striking difference between constructive and deconstructive feedback is that deconstructive is focusing on the meaning-making, the way the person makes sense of the situation, whereas constructive is only focusing on the visible behaviour. If we try to change the visible behaviour without talking about how the person makes sense of the situation at hand, we are basically asking the person to go against their own thinking and that’s not going to have a long term impact.

Jo: Why do you think more people aren’t giving feedback in this deconstructive way?

Tomáš: I think there are two inherent difficulties with this kind of feedback. One relates to the level of awareness and confidence of the feedback giver. If I am giving deconstructive feedback, I need to be open to the possibility that I am wrong, that I can learn something.

I think there are two inherent difficulties with this kind of feedback. One relates to the level of awareness and confidence of the feedback giver. If I am giving deconstructive feedback, I need to be open to the possibility that I am wrong, that I can learn something.

Not that many people are comfortable with holding the tensions of these differing opinions at the same time, because humans seek clarity and certainty. A lot of feedback-givers will not be open to the possibility of being challenged or having to explain their own behaviour and thinking back. Traditional feedback is much easier as it rides on assuming authority of social rules: “Hey, I know how it is. Everybody knows that is how we should do things.” The traditional feedback-giver is hiding behind some kind of social norm, for example, it is not good to shout at people. With deconstructive feedback, we are going beyond this dependence on social norms and engaging in a discussion with the other person. This is something that is not possible for everybody — it is part of the adult development path and for some it still lies ahead of them.

Jo: What does deconstructive feedback look like in reality?

Tomáš: The way we ask questions in deconstructive feedback is different. For example, “What contributed to your decision to do it this way?” You are actually not questioning what happened, but you are focusing on something that is behind the behaviour. It’s a very different kind of questioning than people are used to. People usually only ask questions about facts. “What happened? What did he say? How did you react?” That’s not good enough. In deconstructive feedback, you have to go deeper. For example, “So you heard him saying this? Now, how did you make sense of that? How have you interpreted it? What did it stir up in you? Why did you understand it as a threat?” This type of questions is something that is rather difficult to learn and requires practice.

Jo: I also imagine that even though your intentions, when you’re asking the questions like that might be with genuine curiosity and wanting to hear the answer, people can sometimes receive it as a judgement.

Tomáš: This does not happen when you ask those questions from a place of genuine curiosity about the person. If in your own mind, you are clearly trying to understand, without judgement, why the other person has done something and then the other person knows that you are not judging them. If the person feels like they are being judged? Well, they are right. You are judging them!

I think there is an important feature in deconstructive feedback. You are required to be transparent about how you see the situation. You are not putting your opinion aside, you are just holding it lightly. You need to put on the table how you differ in assessment of the situation, saying, for example, “I have seen you shout at that person. I don’t feel this is a good way to handle the situation. At the same time, I understand there was a reason why you did it. What happened that you felt this is the best way forward in this situation? I’m curious.”

So I am not hiding the way I would like to handle the situation. And at the same time, I am very transparent about the fact that I don’t have all the data so I cannot understand why they chose a different behaviour.

Jo: How do you find it when you’re when you’re teaching deconstructive feedback? How do people find it?

Tomáš: A few people find it mind blowing and say “Wow, I’ve been waiting for this for a long time, this is wonderful.” About half say, “Wow, this is this is radical. And, we have no clue how to do this.” I must admit there is as well a quite big portion of people who say, “Why? Why would I do that? That person is wrong, he needs to be told off”. They are actually finding a lot of reasons why the constructive feedback is the way to go. With that group, it’s very difficult to go forward.

Jo: Let’s talk about the middle group.

Tomáš: What we have discovered is that the understanding builds in phases. The first thing that we do with them is sensitise their own emotional response to feedback, both as feedback givers and feedback receivers. Together we practice a different kind of sensitivity to feeling: being able to include the other person’s feelings as well as my own feelings in the feedback process. This is a necessary precursor to a deeper understanding. Feedback needs to be dialogical in nature and necessarily includes our emotions.

Only then do we ask them to practice the different kind of questioning in non-feedback situations. For example, when somebody is telling a story, I can ask about what happened next, or what the other person said. Or I can ask a different kind of question, “How did you perceive what the other person said? Why do you think the other person sounded defensive?” I am inquiring about the way the person makes sense of the situation. So you can start practising these questions that target the meaning making process of the other person in a non-feedback situation which is easier.

We found this to be a necessary middle step, before we start working with actual feedback, because feedback is emotionally charged. So when people are able to ask questions about meaning-making process of the other person (and not only about facts), they can move into feedback and use that skill to figure out the difference between how they see the situation.

Jo: From the learning call you ran on this topic, people were saying they wished they had a worksheet or some kind of guidance sheet. Do you use anything? Or you do try and get people to just work from the change in assumptions and how the questions change from that point?

Tomáš: I think the request for a worksheet will disappear if you manage to completely change the assumption that the feedback-giver knows better. There will still be an emotional charge to it and reluctance to go in the feedback because it is difficult to do that. But I think the process of deconstructive feedback is very simple: start openly with describing the difference in your opinions and ask how the other person makes his or her meaning from the situation. It doesn’t require any checklist but it does require practice.

Jo: Is there anything to help deal with that kind of emotion and anxiety that comes up in this process?

I think that the only way to deal with those emotions as a feedback-giver is to always remind yourself that you are doing it out of love for the person. You can’t give feedback to somebody you don’t care about. Don’t even try to!

Tomáš: I think that the only way to deal with those emotions as a feedback-giver is to always remind yourself that you are doing it out of love for the person. You can’t give feedback to somebody you don’t care about. Don’t even try to! Even if we put this into a corporate situation (where feedback is often formalised, strict and often tied with performance management) if the feedback is not given with the clear intention to help the person to perform better, be a better worker, then the feedback will not work. Especially if the feedback comes across as disciplinarian or designed to create some kind of power differential, it always backfires.

On the other side, even if somebody gives me good feedback out of love, I can still feel bad because I might learn something that I have not been aware of. Through the questioning, the feedback-giver can remind me about my own meaning-making process that’s missing something or there is something in my own mind that I don’t want to deal with, the shadows that I hold. It’s not an inherently enjoyable process, it’s a growth process. It’s something that we should cherish and actually welcome in our lives. If done well, it is an enormous gift that we receive from others willing to engage in a conversation with us about how we are making sense of things. People may not necessarily enjoy it but they are often very grateful when they realise how deep the conversation went.

Tomáš Hančil is one of the Complexity Partners. He works extensively with constructive adult development and complexity, for instance as a partner of the Growth Edge Network and Cognitive Edge. He holds a PhD in Philosophy from Princeton University. He lives in Prague

Joanne Wood is a facilitator and writer based in London. She works as part of the leadership team at RISE Beyond and mentor in The Girls’ Network. She blogs at Wood for the Trees. She holds a Masters degree in Gender Studies from the Central European University.

This interview was conducted 2020 and first published in a Blog with Matthew Rich-Tolsma in "Complexity Guys".

References

Kegan, R.,& Lahey, L. (2002). How the Way We Talk Can Change the Way We Work: Seven Languages for Transformation. Boston,MA.: Jossey-Bass.

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