Hold feedback as one partial view
Treat each piece of feedback as one partial view of the situation, not the final verdict on it.
Why it works
According to the Integral Leadership Review’s summary, the development of a feedback mindset is what enhances the questions a leader asks. The review pairs this with addressing the assumption that the giver of feedback is the sole possessor of the truth. This page’s inference, not the review’s: once a leader stops treating the critic as the one who holds the whole picture, the question shifts from who is right to what this person can see that I cannot.
How to do it
- When feedback arrives, write its claim in one sentence before you reply to it.
- Ask the person what they saw that led them to the claim.
- Write one thing the feedback shows that your own account missed, and one thing it does not show.
- Decide what you would need to check before you act on it.
Evidence
The feedback-mindset link to the first habit is stated in the Integral Leadership Review summary of Garvey Berger and Johnston (2015). The phrase “one source of truth, not the whole of it” is this page’s paraphrase, not the authors’ wording. No study of feedback practice in this form was found. (anecdotal)
Holding feedback as partial is not the same as discounting it. Some feedback is accurate and the practice does not ask you to assume otherwise.
Sources
- Integral Leadership Review (2015). Book review of Jennifer Garvey Berger and Keith Johnston, Simple Habits for Complex Times: Powerful Practices for Leaders.
- Garvey Berger, J., & Johnston, K. (2015). Simple Habits for Complex Times: Powerful Practices for Leaders. Stanford University Press. (The DOI resolves to the 2020 e-edition record.)
Common mistake
Dismissing the whole piece of feedback because the person is wrong about one point, which lets that single error stand in for everything they saw.
Practice this with IX Coach
More practices for Jennifer Garvey Berger’s Simple Habits for Complex Times
- Ask what can we learn here
Before you give an answer, ask what can be learned from the situation in front of you.
- Take a view you disagree with seriously
State a position that clashes with yours in terms its holder would accept, and find what it shows that yours does not.
- Map the system around a problem, not its single cause
Trace the people, rules and feedback loops (chains in which an effect feeds back into its own cause) around a recurring problem, and where its boundary seems to sit, before you settle on its cause.
- Sort the situation by its domain before you decide
Before you choose a response, decide whether the situation is simple, complicated, complex or chaotic.
- Act on what the present shows and let the next step appear
Take the next small action you can see, observe what it does, and let that observation decide the step after it.
- Notice when you reach for a simple story
Catch the moment you explain a messy event with one tidy cause and a confident prediction, and write the story down as a story.
- Test the sense that you are right
Treat a strong feeling of being right as a claim to check, and name in advance what would show you were wrong.
Related concepts
- Vertical Development Practices: How Adults Grow, Not Just Add Skills
Heat, colliding perspectives, and sense-making — and what the research can and cannot promise
- Torbert’s Seven Action Logics of Leadership
Seven ways leaders make sense of pressure, how common each is, and how to work with your own
- Adaptive Leadership, Made Practical
Distinguishing adaptive challenges from technical problems — and leading accordingly
- Ken Wilber’s Integral Theory (AQAL), Made Practical
Five elements for catching what your view of a situation leaves out, held as a map rather than a truth
- The Immunity to Change Process, Step by Step
Why a change you truly want keeps not happening, and the step-by-step way Kegan and Lahey take it apart
- Kegan’s Subject-Object Theory, Made Practical
Moving from being run by your assumptions to being able to examine them
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