I'm happy when your feedback is a slap in the face

You don't even have to check on Google to guess that are countless articles about the importance of great feedback. Harvard Business Review, Forbes, Inc, Fast Company, etc. have probably all constructed a detailed set of guides and content describing "how to give feedback". There are probably expensive e-courses that you can buy about delivering on feedback.

I'm not an expert on how to give feedback - most people say I'm way too direct (must be the Jersey in me). So I'm just going to throw my personal experience out there as a millennial lady who is relatively junior in her career and has worked with a number of different bosses across management consulting and in the tech world.

Personal preference when it comes to feedback?

Direct feedback, please, and quickly. I love it. Aside from direct feedback being efficient, it makes me feel like I'm tough (again, that Jersey feelin'). Part of me thinks that people who don't like direct feedback -- or just pretend to like direct feedback -- are a special kind of chicken.

Maybe I'm a masochist. Maybe I'm not someone who appreciates the subtleties of human interactions. People say that I'd be a horrible script writer because screenplays and stage plays are all about subtext, and a few years ago, I had no idea how to read subtext. By contrast, there are people who have this inborn beautiful art of weaving through interpersonal interactions with flawless political correctness in their conversations. You know these people. They're so talented at being politically correct that you don't even realize that they've insulted you until the next day. That's a talent!

Direct feedback is also an awesome talent.

Here's what's not so awesome: I once worked for a manager awhile back who, at the beginning of our working relationship, would effusively pour praise over me. Sounds awesome upfront, but I had just barely started as a working professional and was still figuring out how to walk. On that project, the bar was pretty low and most of the assignments at the time were simple with little wiggle room to actually knock it out of the park. But according to him, I was amazing! The praise felt weird and inauthentic, but hey, you take what you can get. We're all programmed to see praise as a good thing.

But the moment there was a mistake, I received teeny tiny little hints that I'd screwed up rather than precise feedback through quick, straightforward conversations. I didn't quite understand why our interactions felt strange because I couldn't read the subtext at the time. The project seemed to wrap up well and was a ton of fun, but it was only months later that I learned through a back channel that he was actually disappointed and wished I had completed certain deliverables differently. Yikes.

In the past, there have been managers like this who "hide away" behind a veil of not having the time to give coaching, and the feedback loop of problems takes too long to get back to me, usually when it's too late. Sure, it's on us team members to communicate up -- and I'm learning every day how to further refine that skill -- but obviously that goes both ways in terms of making time and having the chutzpah to say something to make a change.

Different strokes for different folks - direct feedback doesn't work for everyone, and it doesn't work for every company culture. But suffice it to say that if you want to get things done quickly, direct is probably the way to go. I'm not sure that people want to work for managers who will be effervescently supportive and glowy when things are going well and then shun their direct reports when they need real coaching or a straight slap in the face (not literally).

These are a few of my favorite things...!!

My favorite manager that I got to work with at Deloitte insisted that he was available for his team whenever it was required, even in the late hours of the night if we needed feedback on something when it was an awful first pass. It was a relief. It's like being in a relationship with someone who doesn't just want to hang out with you when you're beautiful with makeup on, but also when you're ugly crying in your pajamas as you try to solve your life's problems. Granted, he is/was an extreme person, but he insisted upon coaching his team members at all stages and putting in that extra time to develop people in a direct, almost terrifying manner. But dang, the people he helped develop who could take that feedback were incredible, and I learned so much from them, too. And once you received positive feedback from him, you knew that he wasn't BSing you. You knew that he truly meant the feedback that he delivered, positive and negative.

At Glassdoor, I've gotten to work on an incredible team. The women who lead my reporting line are absolutely impressive, inspirational, and intimidatingly effective. Working for people you respect is easier said than done, and I'm so lucky that I've gotten to have true role models as bosses. But what I appreciate most of all about my team leaders is that they're unbelievably honest with me, and they're VERY quick to deliver tough conversations, sometimes with distressing feedback. Let me be clear: I WANT that coaching; I'm grateful for that coaching, and I think most ambitious young people are as well, even in the instances where it might be emotionally taxing.

Most ambitious young people are more than willing to put in the work to apply feedback; health conscious as we millennials may be, we will stay up through the night or wake up early if we have to in order to parse through and learn from new feedback, especially when a learning curve is undeniably steep. Putting in that work following feedback is what makes for a faster ramp up to mastery; it makes us into better employees, better business partners, and better people.

How about you -- am I totally off base? What is your preference when it comes to feedback, and when have you worked best?

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