Hacker News Reader

Comment by andai | Hacker News Reader

This is brilliant! It really is context dependent. There's probably exceptions to that though.

I heard an example yesterday that dealt with a more "universally" negative trait: a boss gave feedback to a colleague who was widely considered an asshole.

Everyone had already told him to stop being an asshole and that didn't help at all. That's not actionable.

Instead, they boiled it down to four specific behaviors that produced the complaints, and then came up with alternative behaviors to execute in those situations.

The complaints went away within a week.

Source: Alex Hormozi

---

Edit: I've just read a few of the other posts on this blog (Terrible Software), they are equally brilliant. Highly recommended.

View on HN

The is exactly the advice that one of my favorite podcasts, Manager Tools, would prescribe. Don't give feedback about emotions or internal feelings, give feedback about behaviors. Telling someone they are acting like an asshole can be met with, "but, no, I'm not acting like an asshole." Telling someone, "When you cut off people mid sentence and speak loudly, you will have people complain about you." gives them actionable ways to change their external behavior in the future. It doesn't matter if they are still an asshole on the inside.

Do these places ever discuss receiving feedback? Genuinely actioning feedback like this requires an extremely high level of trust, and expecting that level of trust in a short time window is borderline predatory.

For example, I would never provide critical feedback within the first 6 months (minimum) of a new hire starting (similar window I apply to providing feedback on codebase issues etc).

I don't get it. Don't you want to give as much feedback as possible in the beginning, before bad habits form and relationships are permanently soured?

Sorry for the late reply. The Manager Tools podcast definitely talks about both sides of feedback. Everything they teach is predicated on building strong relationships, through weekly 1x1s, and starting off with positive feedback only after multiple months of conducting 1x1s.

Out of curiosity, what were the 4 behaviours and alternatives?

Using the post’s framework, I wonder whether his “assholery” had any positive flipsides— maybe something like speaking openly when others (politely) wouldn’t?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com