Feedback and goal setting is something that I would have
thought pretty much everyone that is successful does. Without goals, you essentially wander
aimlessly going from one point to another, dealing with things that strike your
fancy. On the other hand, if you have
goals, your waste of our most precious resource – time – will be limited. In my personal life, I have goals set for
both the long term and short term in both my private and professional life and
they are what drive me day to day.
Feedback is something else that I must have in order to accomplish
things to my standards. From a
professional standpoint, I strive to produce deliverables that are essentially
error free and ready to be immediately used pending a quick review from my
superiors. I don’t want my supervisors
to have to spend hours adjusting my work; after all, that is generally why they
delegated the task to me in the first place (to take it off their plate so they
can focus on more pressing matters). In
order to ensure this, I am constantly asking for feedback to better my work
processes and methods. If I can learn
what my boss wants to see, I can eliminate the rework for the both of us by
doing it right the first time. From an
operational standpoint, feedback is also crucial. I became a very good Officer of the Deck
(OOD) by always inviting feedback from my superiors. I would think out loud so they could hear my
thought processes and critique them, and I would also ask how they would have
done things differently to obtain their perspective.
From the research on feedback and goal setting I conducted,
I was both surprised and not surprised by some of the findings. It is not surprising that when feedback and
goals are intertwined, the performance level of personnel increases. What was surprising was that positive
feedback contributes little to this phenomenon.
According to studies, positive feedback can lead to levels of complacency
and lack of aggressive pursuit of goals.
To me this was initially counter-intuitive but after some thought, I
figured out where my misunderstanding was.
My first thoughts of positive feedback would be a coach saying good job
after making a great play, or your boss saying that the report you turned in
was outstanding. I would be glad to hear
it but on the other hand, I know that my work isn’t perfect and without me
knowing what I did wrong, I can’t fix it.
The same thing applied to sports when I thought about it – even my best
swims during my career had aspects that I could improve on and my coach was
sure to tell me about them after congratulating me on a good swim. Sometimes they were big fixes, sometimes
small, but the only way to pursue perfection is to constantly look for ways to
better yourself (through goals) and you can’t do this without having feedback
provided to you.
Given that my experience in the work force is with a younger
than average age group (the CO is the oldest guy on the boat in his early 40s),
I can’t really speak for the generational gap in feedback. I can say that in my limited experience in a
small community, feedback is both highly encouraged and sought after. As I described above, you can’t get better
unless you know what you are doing wrong, and that is the purpose of feedback (learning
after the fact as opposed to teaching – learning that is done prior to the fact). I generally like to receive feedback as long
as it is constructive but I will admit sometimes I don’t like it in the moment
(operationally speaking). This was
especially true in my early days on the sub when my engineer would pick me to
pieces during drills (he would get me on the small things that I would
overlook) - it would drive me nuts during the evolution but once I cooled off I
greatly appreciated the help and applied the lessons learned. I can honestly say that my attention to
detail is a direct result of him picking at me for the 30 months that he
did. As far as giving feedback, it
really depends on my comfort level with both the person and the
evolution/task. If I feel very
comfortable with the material, I will probably offer feedback; if I am very
comfortable with the person, the feedback will probably be unsolicited if it is
appropriate. The way I usually approach
feedback is from a discussion point of view – I ask them why they did something
in the manner in which they did it (this often allows them to realize their own
mistakes as they hear themselves say something wrong) and then explain why what
they did was wrong or inefficient. This
worked out really well on my first sub and is something that I will use again
once I get back out to sea.
With respect to the final portion of this blog, clearly I
think that feedback is a crucial aspect of being a professional. If you are not constantly attempting to
better yourself, you are regressing.
Goals and feedback are tools to help you ensure that you achieve all
that you can. I firmly believe that
feedback is an essential tool in the work place and one that should be stressed
at all levels. I can attribute much of
my success to both the goals that I have set for myself and the goals that
others have set for me, as well as feedback that I have received over my
career.
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