Critique as a participant shaping the work
The Overlap #56 (Last one for the year!)
Welcome to a subscriber-only edition of The Overlap!
I’ve promised you that I’d experiment with three subscriber-only editions until October 27th. Today is October 27th!
As a reminder, this is the last Overlap of 2022. I take a sabbatical from November 4 to January 2. I plan to pause my business writing then until I’m back in work mode. So if you’re a monthly subscriber, your subscription will be paused until then.
The Overlap will resume in 2023! We have six subscribers, and two of you have graciously paid the annual (🙏🏽). I initially was going to not continue this if we didn’t have fifteen subscribers. But six subscribers? And two annual payers? This tells me I should keep this going in 2023.
So let's do it.
Once I’m back from Sabbatical, we’ll continue to release these every other week! The plan is:
January 5: free edition out
January 12: paid edition out
January 19: free edition out
January 26: paid edition out
…so on.
Onto the post…
We’ve all received unhelpful feedback on our work. But have you ever shared unhelpful feedback?
Chances are you have.
How’d you know your feedback wasn’t helpful? Maybe it wasn't actioned on.1 It wasn't integrated it into the work. "What! I shared Jilian this feedback. Why didn't their work change?"
So why was your feedback unhelpful?
Maybe you were heckling.
Maybe you just like to talk! You are generally the first to give feedback when someone says “any feedback welcome!”
Maybe you’re not feeling happy with your own work/self, so you unfairly take it out on other people’s work. Projection, yo.
Maybe your feedback was correct, but not in service of that person’s specific goals.
My point is, feedback takes many different forms. A joke. A DM. A Google Doc comment. A long-winded pontification on how the problem is more systemic than you realize (my usual unhelpful feedback). More questions than answers — “why aren’t you telling me what to do!”.
Here’s what I try to remember when I ask for feedback: listen to the feedback that’s meant to help improve my proposal/output/solution. Pay less attention to everything else. I’m filtering out the signal from the noise. I’m focused on what I can improve, rather than spiraling on what’s wrong/lacking/deficient about my work.
Great feedback comes from a place of shaping the work. The person offering feedback should be invested in your work’s success. (And no, you aren’t overly sensitive if you choose not to pay attention to feedback that isn’t meant to improve your work.)
When I share feedback, I try to remember: only offer feedback that intends to improve the proposal/output/solution. Your teammates (most likely) want helpful, actionable feedback. Not an essay, a smart-ass remark, or a systems analysis.
Spaces for healthy feedback
Have you ever been a part of a really great Design Review? They’re my favorite. Here’s what I notice:
The person presenting work clarifies the feedback they need. (“Before I share my work, here’s the feedback I need…”)
People ask clarifying questions before offering feedback
People offer feedback specific to what’s being asked for
Feedback-sharers check to see if their feedback is useful (“How’s my feedback landing with you?”)
The person who shares work and asks for feedback doesn’t take anything personally
The most senior feedback-sharer doesn’t always go first (they know they’re creating anchoring bias if they do)
The person asking for feedback doesn’t succumb to the most senior person’s feedback. They consider it within their own worldview
The person asking for feedback has the decision right on which feedback to action and which to disregard
These patterns help groups foster spaces for healthy feedback. And they apply to more than just Design Reviews. Product Managers can get together to share their own challenges and ideas to solve their challenges and solicit feedback from other PMs. Engineers do code reviews. Leaders who propose strategic shifts/changes can use these patterns above.
If you ever host a design review, product review, or any kind of meeting where a group gives feedback on work, here are some healthy patterns you want to consider:
Make it clear what it is we’re giving feedback on. Design work. Workshop agendas. A product decision. A proposal to get rid of an old process. A new strategic direction. Sounds obvious, but I’m surprised by how often review meetings don’t do this.
Make it clear what’s expected of attendees. Is everyone expected to share work? Or is it opt-in?
Don’t always be the first to share feedback after someone presents work. Why? You’re preventing others from practicing feedback. If you’re always the first one, the group will implicitly pick up that their work needs to be approved by you. If you intend to foster a space for anyone to give great feedback, take a step back and let others weigh in first.
Have a designated facilitator. Their job is to keep the format/flow of the meeting, and notice who’s speaking up most and who isn’t. Some teams don’t need designated facilitator, but it helps to start with one.
Reiterate that people who ask for feedback have agency over which feedback to action and which to not. Folks with less experience will feel pressured to action everyone’s feedback. Reiterate that they have their own judgment. And clarify that the point of a review is to help individuals develop their own judgment (in addition to improving the work).
What’s worked in your feedback spaces?
Listen to the feedback that’s coming from a place of shaping your work. When offering feedback, come from a place of improving the work.
And foster spaces with your team where feedback comes from a place of shaping the work. It’ll emerge.
Have you ever created space for feedback? What practices have worked for you? What are you considering trying in your next design review?
What I’m Reading
Two things:
Mitch Goldstein’s Tweets on critique are really good:
Adrienne Maree Brown has a protocol for haters. It’s relevant. I want to share it. From Emergent Strategy (emphasis mine):
I have an inner protocol in my doula work with parents and babies: ask myself if I am needed, support only as needed, do absolutely everything that is needed (change the diaper, sweep the floor, rub mama’s feet, take out the trash—no task is menial), and make space for the natural order to emerge. I offer, from this defensive and sacred place, a protocol for those who are most comfortable approaching movements from a place of critique, AKA, haters.
1. Ask if this (movement, formation, message) is meant for you, if this serves you.
2. If yes, get involved! Get into an experiment or two, feel how messy it is to unlearn supremacy and repurpose your life for liberation. Critique as a participant who is shaping the work. Be willing to do whatever task is required of you, whatever you are capable of, feed people, spread the word, write pieces, make art, listen, take action, etc. Be able to say: ‘“I invest my energy in what I want to see grow. I belong to efforts I deeply believe in and help shape those.”
3. If no, divest your energy and attention. Pointing out the flaws of something still requires pointing at it, drawing attention to it, and ultimately growing it. Over the years I have found that when a group isn’t serving the people, it doesn’t actually last that long, and it rarely needs a big takedown—things just sunset, disappear, fade away, absorb into formations that are more effective. If it helps you feel better, look in the mirror and declare: “There are so many formations I am not a part of—my non-participation is all I need to say. When I do offer critique, it is from a space of relationship, partnership, and advancing a solution.”
4. And finally, if you don’t want to invest growth energy in anything, just be quiet. If you are not going to help birth or raise the child, then shhhhh. You aren’t required to have or even work towards the solution, but if you know a change is needed and your first instinct when you see people trying to figure out how to change and transform is to poop on them, perhaps it is time you just hush your mouth.
☁️☁️☁️
Alright, I’m off The Overlap til January 5th. See you then!
–tim
Even though I frame this “your feedback wasn’t actioned on, therefore it wasn’t helpful”, I do believe there are forms of feedback where it was helpful even though it wasn’t actioned on. Maybe your feedback inspired a new thought or new insight for that person, that helps them frame or talk about their work in a different way.