Tell Me How I’m Doing

A Fable About the Importance of Giving Feedback

Author: Richard L. Williams, Ph.D.
Pub Date: 2007
Your Price: $24.95
ISBN: 081440832X
Format: Hardcover

• Tell Me How I’m Doing
• Sample Chapter
• Praise for this book
• Table of Contents
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Chapter 1
The Experiment

"Hey there, you goin'?"

"Yeah, I'd better. I really don't have time, but if I don't go, he'll be on my case."

"Let's get a move on, or we'll be late."

Scott had forgotten about a meeting his boss had scheduled for the managers in his division that morning. He didn't want to go, because he had some things he needed to do. He really didn't have time for the meeting. In fact, he didn't have time for many things lately. The problem was that he had too many problems, both at work and at home.

Moments later his boss said, "Let's get started. We've got a guest coach and I want to give her as much time as I can. We're going to do something that may seem weird to some of you, but if you'll give our coach a chance, I'm sure you'll see how important her message is. I first heard her speak a couple of years ago, but it took a while for her message to sink in. Guess I'm a little slow on this subject."

Scott was thinking, If it took a while for you to get her message, what are we doing here? I've got a lot of things I could be doing right now.

Complete This Statement

The coach began. "Thanks for inviting me here today. Let's begin by having you complete this statement: `The biggest problem with being a manager is to get your people to . . .'"

After a brief pause, a colleague of Scott's replied, "Get them to do what they're supposed to."

Another added, "Without whining or complaining." Several of the managers in the room nodded their agreement to this comment.

Still another colleague said, "I need my people to do it right the first time."

The coach asked, "Let me guess. For the most part your employees know what they're supposed to do?"

"Pretty much," someone responded.

"So I'm curious. If your people know what they know, why do some of them do what they do?"

There was a long silence in the room while everyone pondered the answer. Scott was thinking that the employees who had given him the most trouble that week pretty much knew what they should do, but they fought him at every step. Scott's face must have given his thoughts away because the coach looked at him and asked, "I can see the wheels turning. Tell us what you're thinking."

Caught off guard, Scott said, "I was thinking that no matter how much my people seem to know, it's hard to get them to do what they need to. I'm not sure if that makes sense."

"Sure it does. It makes so much sense that we're going to spend some time this morning figuring out the answer. I don't like to play games with blame, shame, and guilt, but in a situation where an employee knows what to do, how to do it, and even when to do it-but for some unexplainable reason chooses not to do it-what is the root cause?"

No one answered, so the coach looked at Scott and asked, "What do you think? Who is responsible?"

Scott shook his head and said, "If my employee knows what to do, how to do it, and when to do it, but then chooses not to do it, it's the employee's problem."

The coach walked to the center of the room and took a drink of water. She looked in the eyes of the dozen people in the room and said, "What do you think: employee or manager?"

Most of the managers in the room smelled a trap, and those who didn't were unsure of the answer. Scott wasn't sure what she meant, but he was sure that there wasn't any way he was responsible for what his employees refused to do. In fact, Scott was becoming frustrated with this discussion, but he didn't want to be disagreeable with his boss in the room.

Sensing frustration in the room, the coach raised an eyebrow and with a slight smile said, "To answer that question, let me tell you why your boss described this presentation as a little 'weird.' But before we do that, let's take a short, five-minute break. There is something I need to do."

The Invisible Man

A few minutes later, as Scott was walking back to the meeting room, his boss stopped him. "Say, Scott, would you do me a favor? The receptionist in the front lobby has an envelope with my name on it. Would you mind getting it for me? It's okay if you're late to the meeting." A bit puzzled, Scott agreed and began walking toward the other end of the building.

Back in the meeting room, the coach quickly closed the door and said, "We're going to conduct an experiment. Scott has been sent on a fictitious errand so that we can set it up. In a minute he'll return with an envelope that your boss asked him to fetch: That's the fictitious errand. When he returns, I need all of us to completely ignore Scott. We don't look at him. We don't talk to him. If he asks a question, we ignore him. We'll all pretend he isn't here. And we're going to do this for the next hour. We'll have another break in about an hour, so be sure that you don't engage or communicate with him in any way during that break. Remember, for an hour he doesn't exist. After the next break we'll debrief Scott to see what he noticed and how he felt about being ignored. Any questions? Good. Now let's begin so he won't suspect anything when he returns."

A minute later Scott walked into the room and tried to hand the envelope to his boss, but the boss didn't reach out to take it; he just looked straight ahead at the coach. Confused, Scott placed it on the table near his boss and returned to his seat.

The coach was telling a story about a man who, after he was promoted to a supervisory position, became so ineffective in dealing with his employees that he later lost his job. His employees complained that the new supervisor overly criticized and complained to the point that they lost their motivation to perform. The coach looked up from her notes and asked, "What do you think? Can criticism, complaining, or even sarcasm motivate employees to work harder?"

No one said a word. There was total silence. Finally, Scott raised his hand; he wanted to clarify something. But the coach ignored his upraised hand and no one looked his way. After a few seconds of silence, the coach continued, "It looks as though we're not sure of the answer."

She walked to a position directly in front of Scott. Without looking at him, she continued, "When someone is critical or sarcastic to you, how motivated does that make you? When someone ignores you, how much harder do you work? Think about it."

Again Scott raised his hand-a little higher this time. In fact, his hand was now right in front of the coach's face. But still she ignored him. Scott looked around the room at a dozen of his friends and colleagues, but no one looked at him. It was as if he had disappeared. What is going on? he thought.

An hour later the coach gave another break. Scott walked up to his close friend, the person he usually ate lunch with and someone he had known and worked with for the past five years. Scott was upset-something was going on, and he didn't like it! "What's going on?" he asked. But his friend looked right through him and walked out of the room; he didn't seem to see Scott. If this is a joke, it's not funny!

The meeting resumed with Scott's arms folded tightly across his chest and his face set like concrete. He was thinking that there were only two possibilities: either a space alien had made him invisible, or a dozen people, some close friends, had made him the victim of a sadistic game. Either way, he didn't like it and was feeling frustrated and felt like going back to his office to do something productive.

"Something the matter, Scott?" the coach finally asked.

"Something is going on, but I don't know what!" replied Scott.

"So what do you think is going on?" she continued.

"You're all playing some kind of a game."

Sensing his frustration, she smiled and said, "Scott, we were indeed playing a game. Your boss volunteered you for an important demonstration, because you know these people well and he thought you could take a little ribbing. I hope he was correct."

"So what's this all about?" he asked.

"Scott, for the past hour everyone in this room has denied you any type of feedback whatsoever. I instructed your colleagues to totally ignore you. None of us, myself included, could look at or speak to you. I realize it's an unusual demonstration, but I needed someone to experience firsthand what happens in the heart of a person who is denied feedback. So now I need you to tell us what you felt and how long it took you to notice that something was different."

Scott paused and said, "Well, I could tell as soon as I walked in the room. Nobody looked at me. Nobody responded in any way."

"And you felt . . ." the coach prompted.

"I felt awful, especially on the break when people looked straight through me. I knew something was wrong, but I couldn't figure out what it was."

"So, Scott, how important is feedback in your life?"

"If it was feedback that was missing, it's really important."

The coach took a couple of steps toward Scott and said, "And if you as an employee were denied feedback, totally or even partially, in this organization, for an hour, a week, or even longer, how productive would you be at performing your job responsibilities?"

The managers in the room noticed a pained look on Scott's face. It was apparent that something had just struck him. He paused a few seconds and replied, "Not very."

Also having noticed Scott's reaction, the coach pursued her thought and asked, "If you were denied feedback, much like you were for the past hour in this room, how responsible, loyal, or trustworthy would you be to this organization? Would your productivity be high, or low? How much initiative would you demonstrate in your job? How much morale would you have? And how likely would you be to turn down a job offer to go someplace else?"

The coach had hit too close to home for Scott. He felt almost paralyzed as he sat trying to find the right words to answer her questions. Finally, he conceded her questions and merely said, "Feedback is really important, isn't it?"

"That's right, Scott, feedback is important to all of us. It's the foundation of all interpersonal relationships. It determines how people think, how they feel, how they react to others, and to a large extent, it determines how people act in their daily responsibilities."

The coach paused while she looked over the group of managers to ensure that her message was having the impact she intended. Then she looked back toward Scott and continued, "Organizations like this one spend a great deal of time, effort, and money instituting programs to increase and maintain employee productivity. All you have to do is scan the business section of any bookstore and you'll find dozens of books intended to get employees to work more efficiently and effectively. Now I'm not putting those books down by any means, but what I want you to understand is that at the foundation of all worker productivity is a basic need for interpersonal feedback. Without it people tend to demonstrate problems in the workplace: the types of problems that we spend far too much money and resources on trying to solve. And with appropriate feedback people tend to do the things that those books on the shelves attempt to describe."

The coach nodded at her own comment and added, "So, how important is feedback to each of us? Well, let's just say that it's the lifeblood for every person in this room and every mentally healthy person in this organization."

There was an eerie silence in the room as the significance of what the coach had said began to sink in. It was obvious that the managers were taking personal inventory of their own feedback style. A couple of managers looked down at their notes to avoid the coach's eyes. One manager nervously glanced at her watch. Scott stared blankly at a wall and then at the coach.

With her message made, the coach made a concluding comment. "Thanks for your attendance this morning. I appreciate your participation. I especially appreciate Scott being our test subject. I hope you'll all give him an extra dose of feedback to hopefully compensate for what we did to him. Is that okay Scott?"

"I'll be okay," Scott replied.

"In our next class we'll continue our discussion on feedback and find out exactly how important it is to everyone, including our employees and family members."

As people were leaving, the coach walked over to Scott and said, "I really hope you are okay. The envelope exercise can be a pretty unnerving demonstration."

Scott nodded that he was okay.

"Now that you've experienced the power of feedback firsthand, how many of the problems you experience with employees and perhaps your family members are related to your style of giving feedback?"

Stunned, Scott replied, "I've never thought about it."

To which the coach merely said, "Perhaps before our next class you'll have an opportunity to give it some thought. The answer may surprise you."

Throughout that day, and for several days that followed, Scott found himself reflecting upon the coach's questions. At first he conceded that perhaps a few of the problems with his employees could be related to his failure to "give good feedback," as she called it. But there wasn't any way that most of his problems were caused by it. As the days rolled on, he began to question that belief.

© 2005 Richard L. Williams.
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