Transcriber: Rocio Pérez Maier Reviewer: Michael Nystrom
I would like to ask you a question.
How do you feel when you have an idea, and people tell you it’s rubbish?
Well, let me tell you.
It’s actually much worse when they don’t give you feedback at all.
Do you start imagining nightmare scenarios?
My idea is so bad they are shocked.
They don’t tell me anything because they don’t want to hurt my feelings.
Oh, no! They’re going to fire me.
That was me 20 years ago, before I discovered ‘positive feedback’.
Before I worked with great leaders
who are skilled at giving frequent and timely feedback
that was positive, balanced and actionable.
Unfortunately, these kinds of leaders are quite rare.
What I know from my own experience,
working with thousands of people from many different cultures,
is that the business world is not a very kind place.
People tend to focus on the negative instead of the positive
because it’s so much easier to tear people down than to build them up.
So today, I’d like to share with you
how we can move from the blame game to the appreciation game,
from triggering fear to sparkling enthusiasm,
from destroying self-belief to building confidence,
from zero or negative feedback to positive feedback.
This is a story of how positive feedback saved my life
and how it can change yours.
Let’s rewind back to 2010.
I’m living in Shanghai.
The economy is booming,
and business opportunities are everywhere.
And me?
A stay-at-home mum with three little children
with no hope of returning to a high-level job.
I live in a country where I don’t speak the language very well.
And one of my three children has some health issues.
My life consists of cooking, cleaning and changing the diapers.
The highlight of the week was a trip to the local supermarket.
I didn’t sign up for this.
I went abroad to study.
I worked so hard day and night for years and years.
Of course, I love staying with my kids, but it’s so tough.
Up until my first child, my identity was a “successful business person”.
The career that I had built seemed so far away.
I desperately needed to reclaim my original self.
One day I was in the kitchen making pasta,
when I got a call from James Thompson, my ex-boss.
In this speech. I’m using Jim as a perfect example of a great leader.
“Hi, Noriko! It’s Jim.”
“Hi, Jim. It’s been years. How are you?”
“Business is good. How about you?
What are you up to these days?”
“Well, I have three kids now,
and my youngest daughter has some health issues.
So I’ve had to stop working, you know?”
“I’m sorry to hear that.
I think I’ve caught you at the perfect time.
I have an interesting project for you,
and it won’t take you away from your family.
Would you like to work for us from home on a part-time basis?”
“A project for me?
From home?
Thank you.
But Jim, I’m not sure if I can do that.”
You know what was crazy? As happy as I was for his offer, I was scared.
I was too scared to go back to the business world.
I’ve lost confidence completely.
I didn’t know if I could be useful at all.
“Shall I take this opportunity? What if I failed?”
I couldn't decide.
And what helped me to make the decision?
Two words: ‘positive feedback’.
Beautiful life-affirming comments like:
“I believe in you.”
“You should not give up your entire career just because of a few years
when your kids are small,” David told me in Tokyo.
“We need more and more female leaders.
You will inspire the generation to come.”
Feedback from Carolyn in Shanghai.
“I think you have good interpersonal skills”,
Peter told me right after a big meeting in London.
When my English was still very poor,
and I was blaming myself for not contributing at all to the meeting,
his comments saved my day.
The positive feedback that they gave me stayed in my heart for years.
By reaching out and by giving me a unique opportunity,
Jim showed me that he believed in me much more than I believed in myself.
Positive feedback encouraged me to return to work after the gap of many years.
As the famous American writer Mark Twain once said,
“I can live for two months on a good compliment.”
Yes! We all live for compliments from others, from bosses and colleagues.
I was born and raised in Japan.
An extremely high-context culture with little awareness of feedback.
Like many other colleagues, I was starved of appraisal and recognition.
Positive feedback was some kind of a vague concept for me then.
Little did I know that one day,
I’d be singing the praises of positive feedback in TEDx.
Later with my own teams,
I put positive feedback at the center of the culture,
and whatever their background or nationality, it worked like a charm.
So what exactly is ‘positive feedback’, and how does it work?
It’s not just saying, “Well done!” or giving somebody a pat on the back.
It’s not sugarcoating negative feedback either.
For me, positive feedback is a verbal and non-verbal communication
of appraisal, acknowledgment, appreciation and recognition.
For me, ‘positive feedback’ means a feedback
where the experience as a whole is positive,
where you can criticize as well, but you frame it in such a holistic way
that the recipient sees the overall process as positive
and, most importantly, helpful.
So let’s take a look at the four key pillars of positive feedback.
Number one: appraisal of the result.
You might say things like, “Well done for the great sales result!”
This kind of positive feedback is very common,
and you're probably familiar with it.
But if you think positive feedback must be associated with great result,
you are missing important opportunities to motivate your team.
Moving on to the other three areas, which are not as often used
as appraisal of the result but as critical to the feedback.
Number two: acknowledgement of the action and the behavior.
When I went back to work, Jim was my senior,
and I didn’t meet with him on a day-to-day basis.
But he still managed to catch me and send me messages.
“Noriko, they told me
you’re establishing great relationships with other departments.
Well done!”
“Noriko, they forwarded me your latest document,
and the analysis you did on the market was very interesting.”
Actually, at that stage of the project,
I hadn’t really reached any result yet.
The work was quite tough, and I sometimes felt pretty useless.
But his comment encouraged me, motivated me
and also helped me to understand my strengths.
So if you think your team is doing a great job,
please say so.
Please communicate, even before they reach the result.
Because unless you communicate, they would not know.
And no feedback may seem like negative feedback.
Working without feedback is like driving without navigation.
It is so easy to feel lost.
Number three: appreciation of somebody’s existence and presence.
From my experience, there are two kinds of managers:
someone like Jim and others who are not like Jim.
Jim comes in the morning smiling, making eye contact.
“Good morning! How are you?”
He nods when you speak in the meeting, and you know that he listens to you.
And the other type of managers who are not like Jim
would come in the morning unhappy, dragging their feet.
They go straight to their desk.
They put the bag down, take their laptop out, open the computer,
start working without looking at anyone or saying a word.
You might be sitting next to them, and you feel as if you don’t exist.
From Jim, you understand he appreciates your presence and existence,
which is a positive feedback.
From the other type of manager, you feel completely unnoticed,
which is no feedback at all or negative feedback.
Which type of manager would you like to work for?
Which type of manager are you?
Number four: recognition of the potentials.
When we don’t reach a result, we often get negative feedback.
Now, what is behind such negative feedback?
You give a task to your team,
you expect this much and they deliver this much.
Usually, we focus on the expectation gap and what has not been delivered.
The manager asks, “Why? Why has it not been delivered?”
The team gets defensive.
The conversation is usually one way,
and focused on the past on what has not been delivered.
So what to do?
I would like to suggest the following three points
to turn negative feedback into positive feedback.
To give constructive criticism, but also communicate
the belief and the expectation behind such negative feedback.
Number one: use the sandwich method of ‘Kiss, Kick and Kiss’.
Number two: change the focus from the past to the future.
Number three: ask questions instead of having one-way conversations.
So for example: “The sales document that you have put together
is clear, detailed and offers a solid argument.
Well done!
Let’s improve your presentation skills to make your project even more compelling.
You don’t need to be shy when presenting. You can demonstrate your real authority.
I know you can do that because I’ve seen you doing so.
We can practice together.
What do you think? Let me know how I can help.”
Here the conversation starts from appraising the sales document.
And then comes the ‘kick’:
constructive criticism about the presentation skills.
The chat ends with the manager’s belief on the colleague’s authority
with a supportive follow-up.
Simple questions such as “How can I help?” and “What can I do?”
allow the conversation to be two-ways and forward-looking.
And the bit about asking questions?
As a coach, I love asking questions.
With a simple follow-up like “How can I help?”
and “What do you think?”,
we can show appreciation and respect for the other person,
which is positive feedback itself.
So that’s the brief outline of the four pillars for positive feedback.
Instead of just looking at the result,
I strongly urge you to see deeper; to go beneath the surface;
to see their action, their behavior, their presence and their potential.
By turning no feedback into positive feedback
and by transforming negative feedback into a positive one,
you are sending the message “I see you. I trust you. I recognize you.
I appreciate you and I believe in you.”
By proactively sending such messages,
your team will be hugely motivated and driven.
They will grow in confidence.
And when everyone builds the positive feedback muscle,
the great work culture is established because positive feedback is contagious.
And guess what?
Every company that I worked with in establishing positive feedback culture
has seen a huge increase in the bottom line.
You might be wondering, “How does it increase the bottom line?”
Well, people are happier. Their productivity goes up.
The staff retention goes up.
The research from Gallup shows just by knowing their strengths,
that employees increase their productivity by 7.8%.
And the team that focuses on strengths every single day
has 12.5% greater productivity.
So being positive really does work.
Now, this is not rocket science. And I know you know that.
But then let me ask you,
how many times have you received positive feedback this week?
So I hope I have helped you to see the power of positive feedback.
The first step really is to move from no feedback to positive feedback
by putting your positive minds into words.
And then to transform negative feedback into a positive one.
It just takes a few seconds.
Positive feedback helps to create a great culture.
Positive feedback helps to make a psychologically safe environment.
Positive feedback improves the bottom line.
So why not give it a try?
Giving positive feedback is like sparkling enthusiasm all around you.
So join me!
Let’s make the workplace safer and kinder.
And don’t worry if you don’t receive positive feedback directly from the person
that you have given it to.
Just put it out there, and it’ll circulate and come back to you in a virtuous cycle.
In his usual gentle way, the Buddha says:
“Life is too short.
Grudge is a waste of perfect happiness.
Laugh when you can, apologize when you should
and let go of things you can’t change.”
Wise words.
And I’m sure if Buddha was alive today, he would add:
“Always give positive feedback whenever you can,
both to yourself and to people around you.”
Thank you.