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Feedforward. Now I'm going to teach you a very
positive, upbeat way to help yourself get better, to help
other people get better. It's a key component of
my coaching process. It's called feedforward. Now, in feedforward you
are in two roles. Role Number 1 is called: Learn as much as I can. And when I teach
the classes, I always ask, Are there smart people in
this room? Everyone says, Yes. I say, If you had
a chance to learn from these smart people, would you like to
do that? Everybody says, Of course. Role 2 is: Help as much as
I can. Then I ask, Are there nice people in the room?
Everybody says, Yes. I say, If you had a chance to help these
nice people, would you like to help them? Everybody says, Yes, again.
So I say, Look, either you're going to being learning from these smart
people, which is good, or helping these nice people, which is also
good. Therefore it is--all good! Now, what are the rules of feedforward? Rule
Number 1 is: No feedback about the past. No
feedback about the past. We spend too much time
in our lives talking about the past. Have you
ever been impressed with your husband, wife, or partner's
near-photographic memory of your previous sins--which have been documented
and will be shared with you in a repetitive
and annoying way. Well, you know what? We can't
change the past anyway. Rule 1, no feedback about
the past. Rule 2 is harder: You can't judge or
critique ideas. In feedforward you are asked to ask for
input and listen to it without judging or critiquing. A
good philosophy is when I get an idea I should treat
it like a gift. Treat the idea like a gift.
Now, if somebody gives me a gift, should I say, Stinky
gift? Bad gift? I don't like your stupid gift? What
should we say when somebody gives us a gift? Thank you.
Treat the input like a gift and you say thank
you. How does feedforward work? Well, you can do this with
a team, a large group--I've done it from six to 6000.
Each person picks one area to improve. Not 30, not 50,
not 101. And whatever they pick needs to come from their
heart. Then each person says, My name is..., I want to
get better at... The other person gives them one or two
very quick ideas for the future. No feedback about the past.
They say, Thank you. The other person says, My name is...,
I want to get better at... One or two quick ideas for
the future. No feedback about the past, thank you. They shake hands
and rush off and talk to another person. The goal is to
talk to as many people as you can. When I do this
in a large group, maybe in five or six minutes. At the
end of the exercise, I say to the group... I want you
to complete this sentence with one word, This exercise was... And they
all say, positive, simple, helpful, even fun. What's the
last word you think to describe any feedback activity?
Fun. Has somebody ever called you up and said,
I have feedback for you I'd like to have you
come into my office. And you said, Fun, fun,
fun! Fun is the last word you think of. Yet,
when I do the feedforward exercise, no matter what
country I'm in, 95% of the people say it's positive,
useful, helpful, or even--fun. Then I ask,
Why? Why do people see this as fun as opposed to painful? And they say,
Well, to start with it's fast. One thing we do about coaching is we talk
too much, and in this exercise you learn to
give one or two very quick ideas. Don't babble
on. By the way, if I'm doing coaching, we
often talk too much. I give you my best idea.
Now I talk some more, my second best idea. I
talked for an hour, my 75th best idea. What happens to
the quality of ideas when we keep babbling, they get
worse, and worse, and worse--and you don't remember my first good
idea. Your remember my last stupid idea. Another term is,
It's simple. It's not too complicated. It's positive. It's focused on
a future you can change. Not a past you can't change,
anyway. Have you ever made a fool of yourself in front
of important people before? How much fun is it to relive
that event? Well, that's not a whole lot of fun. This
is focused on what you can change, not what you can't
change. Some other comments. No judging. I always tell the group, If
I would have allowed you to judge or critique each other's
comments, you would have spent twice as much time debating about
the comments as listening to the comments. How much do I
learn proving you wrong? Nothing. How much do I learn proving I'm
right? Nothing. What percent of all interpersonal communication time is spent
on somebody talking about how smart they are--or how dumb somebody
else is? About 65% of all time is wasted on that.
Cut that out, life is much, much more positive. One gentleman
said, I listened better in this feedforward exercise than I almost
ever listened in my life. I asked him why. He said,
Normally, when other people talk to me I'm so busy composing
my next comment to prove how smart I am, I am
not really listening. I'm just composing. The irony, he
had a Nobel Prize. A man with a Nobel
Prize at a management class trying to prove he
was smart. I said, Look, you got one Nobel Prize,
you're not going to win two. It's okay. Let's
just declare victory here. Well, couple of final points
on feedforward that make this work. A common misconception
of coaching is: I have to have a deep knowledge
of you to help you. I've done this with groups of
people didn't even know each other. And they're shocked how much they
learned. Sometimes we learn more from people we don't even know. They
don't have stereotype. They don't history. They don't have baggage. A bigger
misconception of feedforward is: I have to be better than you to
help you. Or superior to you, or you have to be smarter
than me to help me. Wrong. At the end of the exercise,
when I work with large groups, I say, How many of you
felt the need to say this to the people around you? I have your problem too. I
have your problem too. I have your problem
too. They almost all raise their hands. It doesn't
matter what country I'm in. Even though our
cultures are different, in here we're not that different.
We're not that different on the inside. And most
people say, I am amazed at how similar everyone
else's issues are to my own issues. Well, we
don't have to be better than others to help
others. Better off being a fellow human being, stumbling
through life. Without clear answers to tiny little questions like:
who am I, where are we, and what is
going on here? That's all we are anyway. We're not
little gods. We're just little confused people stumbling around.
What's great about feedforward is the whole focus is on
helping each other. Not judging each other. So, if you
look at feedforward, a very simple process. What do you
learn? You learn to ask for input. You learn to
listen non-defensively. You learn to say thank you and give
people recognition for what they say. You treat it as
a gift. You don't have to use the gift, you
listen to it, and you thank them for giving you
the gift. And on the other end, you learn not
to judge. You learn not to
critique. What's great about feedforward is--everyone
is focused on helping everyone. No one is focused on judging everyone.
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