I recently learned of a great trick that a company called Gong use in their culture. When delivering feedback to colleagues, they can ask, “do you want feedback with sugar, or without?” What it provides is an opportunity for someone to say, yeah I’m not feeling like I’m made of stone today, so maybe deliver with some sugar, or on the flip side - no sugar thanks,  give it to me straight no chaser!

Feedback is possibly the most fun thing we do in courses, it’s always interesting to find out how far apart people’s frames of reference can be within the same company/department etc. What the Gong trick does is make sure that people know that our level of capacity to receive feedback changes, it changes over time, it changes by subject, it changes constantly, and that in order to maintain high levels of feedback, there needs to be a feedback loop on the power of the feedback!

As I’m writing this I can hear chimes of my colleague, Joanne Benjamin saying, it’s all well and good doing a training course on feedback, but it’s nothing compared to getting feedback on your feedback.