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Getting Feedback Right on Diverse Teams
INSEAD professor Erin Meyer explains how to offer advice across cultures, ages, and genders.
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We know that teams mixing people of different generations, genders, and cultures yield better outcomes, and that frank, constructive feedback is key to improving individual, group, and organizational performance. But these two attributes — diversity and candor — often clash, says Erin Meyer, a professor at INSEAD. She’s studied the challenges that arise when teammates with different backgrounds try to give one another advice and offers recommendations for overcoming them, including establishing norms around regular feedback and ensuring that it is asked for, designed to assist, and actionable. She’s the author of the HBR article “When Diversity Meets Feedback.”
ALISON BEARD: Welcome to the HBR IdeaCast from Harvard Business Review. I’m Alison Beard.
Research tells us that diverse teams and organizations, ones that include people of different races and cultures, genders and generations, can out-innovate and outperform heterogeneous ones, but that only happens when they’re managed well. A big area where we fall short is giving and receiving feedback. It’s critically important, but hard to get right. Some say radical candor is the answer. Others, a feedback sandwich where you offer praise, then criticism, then praise again. Some people like quarterly performance reviews with their bosses. Others think colleagues should be constantly giving advice to each other.
But our guest today says that in a diverse group, there’s no one size fits all approach. That’s because different types of people will have very different expectations around how feedback should be handled. She’s here to help us understand those differences and bridge the gaps. Erin Meyer’s a professor at INSEAD and she wrote the HBR article “When Diversity Meets Feedback.” Hi Erin, thanks for joining me today.
ERIN MEYER: Hi, Alison. Nice to be here.
ALISON BEARD: Erin, we’ve seen all the research on the importance of both team diversity and then candid, authentic feedback. More organizations seem to be accepting and encouraging both, but you seem to be saying that the two don’t naturally work well together. Why is that?
ERIN MEYER: Yeah, well, I think it’s fascinating because we’ve seen that almost every organization, for example, all 100% of the top Fortune 100 companies, are focusing today on having a better diversity inclusion and inclusion agenda. But at the same time, I’ve seen so many companies that are trying to move towards more open and direct feedback in their organizations. I think that started with a few writers who really made an impact. The first is that Kim Scott from Google, she talked about this whole idea that even obnoxiously aggressive feedback would be better than what she calls ruinous empathy, meaning that you have feedback that you could give to somebody that would help them, but you choose not to give it.
I think also very interesting was a Ray Dalio, who had this, of course, very popular book, Principles. Ray Dalio, the founder of Bridgewater. In Principles, he talks all about radical transparency. He even does things in Bridgewater, like having people explicitly rate one another on shared Google Docs during meetings so they can give feedback to one another right there while they are in the meeting.
I also did my last book with Netflix chairman and founder, Reed Hastings. He also talks about how candid feedback is one of the top three important elements to put in place in your organizational culture. This idea that I should really have the courage if I see how you could improve to tell you that to your face.
But what I’ve seen in my own research is that trying to have these two things on the agenda at the same time, get that diversity going in your organization at the same time that you get that feedback going, those things really don’t go well together. That’s because most of us are not ready to hear feedback about how we could improve from someone that we don’t feel safe with. Unfortunately, the research shows that we’re much less likely to feel safe with people who are different from us.
ALISON BEARD: Tell me about the types of diversity that you’ve looked at in which you see feedback not working quite well, or not being managed well enough to work well.
ERIN MEYER: What I looked at in my own research was specifically at gender differences, at cultural differences, and also at generational differences, and how difficult it is to receive feedback across these, let’s say, diverse divides.
ALISON BEARD: Yeah. I want to dig into each of those categories and talk about the problems and solutions. But first can I ask, why didn’t you cover racial diversity?
ERIN MEYER: Yeah. Well, it’s just not something that I had done research on. My first book, the Culture Map, was all about national cultures and how we operate differently in different countries in different parts of the world. And then of course, as a woman in a business school, which has over three quarters male professors, I also became interested a while ago in studying how gender diversity impacts our effectiveness in a work environment. Then I’ve also been interested in generational diversity because as I am now in my fifties, I’ve just noticed how feedback is given so differently in younger generations than it was in my generation. Those are three areas that I’ve looked at in my own research, and I just didn’t include racial diversity because I haven’t done research on it.
ALISON BEARD: Okay. Let’s dig into some of these categories, and specifically the problematic patterns that you’ve found. To start with age diversity, why does someone have an easier time getting feedback from someone their own age than someone much older or younger?
ERIN MEYER: Well, there’s this fascinating study that was conducted in Germany that defines something that was called status incongruence. Basically what it shows is that when you’ve got bosses who are younger than their employees, that the employees are likely to be much less happy than when their bosses are older than them. I think that that just happens because in our society we grow up getting feedback from people who are older than us. So the idea that now someone who’s younger than us would be in charge of telling us what we should or shouldn’t do, or how to be more effective, that makes people feel uncomfortable.
ALISON BEARD: Do you find that the reverse can be problematic too? People of a younger generation, for example, thinking that their elders might have outdated views and aren’t giving them good advice or feedback?
ERIN MEYER: I haven’t actually seen that. What I saw more is that each generation has a different idea about how often feedback should be given and who should be giving the feedback to whom. I do believe… Cross generation, we think it’s appropriate for the boss to give feedback to the employee. That’s clear. But younger generations today have been focusing on the fact that it’s not just the boss who should give the feedback, but I should also be giving feedback to those who are at the same level than me. Even it’s my job to give feedback to my boss if I feel that I have something that I could tell her that would help her succeed.
ALISON BEARD: Yeah. What strategies have you seen work to bridge generational divides around feedback?
ERIN MEYER: Yeah, I had this one example when I was doing the research of this writer who was working for an organization. He was in his late fifties. He talked about that every month they would get together as a group of people and they would give feedback to one another about their writing. He talked about how first he’d gotten feedback from a couple of his colleagues who were about his age and had about the same level of experience he did. Each of them gave him some good feedback, but also some tough feedback. He felt comfortable with it.
And then there was this guy named Connor, someone who was a couple of decades younger than him. Connor was much more direct in his feedback and said, “Look, overall, I think the article was fine, but you didn’t put enough of your personality in the article. I feel like we really can’t feel who you are.” And what the guy told me was that he had this reaction like, “Oh my God, this arrogant kid, who does he think he is giving me feedback about my writing when he has so little experience?” So that’s the status incongruence.
But then he came home and he started thinking about it and he realized, after calming down, that actually that had been clearly the best feedback that he had received in that meeting, largely because Connor’s perspective was so different than his own.
I think that we can actually take a lesson from that, which is that the reason that he got the feedback was because they had these formalized meetings on a regular basis and the job was to give feedback to one another. The more we put in place these feedback loops, the more we can get the feedback out there. Even if it’s sometimes difficult receiving feedback from people different than us, it helps us get the feedback in a way that we can take it in.
ALISON BEARD: Let’s talk about gender differences. Where do problems arise there when people are trying to give advice or feedback?
ERIN MEYER: I think most of your listeners have probably heard of mansplaining, which happens when men give feedback to women who actually have more expertise than the man giving them the feedback. An offshoot of that is this idea of man vising, when men give unsolicited advice to their female colleagues, and the women generally take that as the men thinking that they are superior to the women.
I was interested in this, whether men think that they do this, and how many women actually feel that they are in these situations. What I found was that first of all, the vast majority of men do not feel that they do this, versus women who over 90% in my research talked about saying this had clearly happened to them. I wanted to figure out, why was this? What I saw, first of all, is that men do give a lot of advice not just to women, but also to men. I also interestingly saw that women give a lot of feedback to other women, unsolicited advice to other women. The clear difference that I saw was that men give a lot more unsolicited advice to women than women give to men. That makes things a little uncomfortable, I think, when we think about who we’re giving helpful feedback to with the desire to be helpful.
ALISON BEARD: And to capitalize on the diversity that you have with respect to gender on your team.
ERIN MEYER: Yeah, that’s right. Why does it matter? The issue is that when you receive unsolicited feedback from a colleague, someone gives me suggestion about what I should do better, and I didn’t ask for it, it clearly puts the feedback giver in a position of power. Because when I receive that feedback, it makes me feel kind of embarrassed, and also like you’re my teacher and I’m the student. So automatically you get a power boost and I’m put in a position of being the kid. It’s not just when I give feedback that I make the other person feel like they’re underneath me, but it actually makes me feel better about myself.
ALISON BEARD: Is the answer here for men to give less feedback and advice or for them to do it in a different way?
ERIN MEYER: I think what’s really important here, this is what I call the three A’s of feedback. The first two A’s are feedback that we should use at any time. The first A of feedback is aim to assist. In general, if you’re trying to get a culture of feedback going in your organization, you want to teach your employees if you’re going to give feedback to someone else on the team, don’t do it just to get frustration off your chest or because you’re irritated with somebody. You should only give feedback when you think, “You know what? This would actually help that person.” So that’s the first A of feedback, aim to assist.
The second A of feedback is that feedback must be actionable. If there’s something that you think I could do to improve my performance, then give me the feedback. But if there’s something that you think I’m doing poorly, but there isn’t a clear action I could take in order to do it better, don’t give the feedback.
But the third feedback A, that’s what’s really important with this gender issue, is that if the person hasn’t asked you for feedback, then ask for feedback for yourself before you provide the feedback. You could start by saying something like, “Hey, we both gave presentations this morning at the all hands meeting. Did you have any ideas about what I could do to do a better job in the next all hands meeting when I give a presentation?” And then maybe they’ll say, no. Maybe they’ll say yes, but either way, you give them the opportunity to take the power first, and then you can move on to, a suggestion that I would have for you would be. That’s the third A, which is ask for feedback before you provide it. I think if you’re doing those three A’s of feedback that you can’t help but be helpful.
ALISON BEARD: Yeah. You can also ask for permission to give feedback, right?
ERIN MEYER: Actually, I did not find that asking people for permission, like, “Do you want feedback?”, is a good action. In fact, there’s research that shows that sets off the fight or flight mechanism in my brain. If you say to me, “Hey, can I give you some feedback?” Automatically my brain sets off that alarm that’s screaming, “Oh my gosh, danger.” But in truth, no one says, “No, don’t give me feedback,” because it would just sound so inappropriate.
ALISON BEARD: Right. No, thank you. I don’t want your opinion.
ERIN MEYER: Right. I actually think it leads to an added discomfort and power play.
ALISON BEARD: What about advice for women to give more advice or commentary or feedback for men?
ERIN MEYER: Well, I do think that that is equally risky. Of course, I do believe that your listeners are quite aware of all of this research that shows that women are much more likely to come off as being aggressive when they take charge or when they give open feedback.
The best way to deal with that for managers is instead of saying, “Oh, hey, just go out there and give a lot of feedback to one another,” to really think about how can I structure feedback on my team to have it part of our routine? So it’s not just like, who dares to give the feedback to whom? But you know what? Next week in our meeting, we’re going to do a little bit of speed dating feedback. We’re all going to go off, maybe in a Zoom room for, five minutes with one colleague. I’m going to tell you one thing I think that you could do to improve your performance, and then you can tell me one thing that you think I could do to improve my performance, and then I’ll move on to the next colleague.
Whatever it is, but set it up so that women are giving feedback to men in equal numbers, that men are giving it to women, and that everybody knows that the feedback is coming so we can get ready for it and we recognize, “Well, this isn’t a power grab, or you thinking that you’re better than me. We’re just following the routine that’s been set up by the boss.”
ALISON BEARD: Is there any research on how the team and feedback dynamics are impacted when there are non-binary teammates in the mix?
ERIN MEYER: I don’t have research on that, but I’m sure that it’s just the same concept magnified, which is that the more people are different than we are, whoever it is, the more you come from a different background, you have a different way of thinking, you have a different way of seeing the world, the more likely my brain is to be nervous when you give me feedback about something that I should do better. That’s why the more diversity we have on the team, the more we need to think carefully about training the team on the three A’s how to give the feedback, and then we’re not on the alert, we’re ready to take it.
ALISON BEARD: You are an expert in cultural differences. What are some of the examples of issues that you’ve seen arise when you do have people coming from different parts of the world and trying to work together?
ERIN MEYER: Feedback across national cultures is one of the most fascinating and dangerous aspects of intercultural communication. Let me just say, I didn’t mention this earlier, but I’m American, I think you can tell from my accent, but I’ve lived in France for the last 22 years.
One of the things that surprised me the most moving to Europe was that Americans usually think of themselves as really direct communicators. Other cultures stereotype Americans as being really direct, but that’s because we focus on transparency and clarity and putting things in writing. But in comparison to all continental Europeans, the way we give feedback is not direct at all. This whole method of giving three positives for every negative and catching people doing things right, that’s a strong part of the American culture. But for Europeans, Continental Europeans, that kind of feedback is really confusing.
I have a very recent example working with this Ukrainian woman, Olga. She talked about moving to the U.S. recently. She said, in Ukraine, there’s no problem. If you need to tell a colleague that you didn’t like something about their work, you just say, “Hey, I didn’t like this about your work.” There’s no problem in telling somebody that you thought that their work was poor, or you’d saying something like this absolutely can’t continue.
She moved to the U.S. and she was called into her boss’s office after just a month on the job. He said, “Olga, you cannot communicate to your colleagues like this. You can’t tell them that their work is totally inappropriate or is causing big problems. You need to start by telling them something that you liked about their work. Instead of saying must, you should say something like, you might try.” I thought that’s very interesting for us all to think about how just the wording that we might use, and the formatting that we might use, can be really misunderstood when we’re working in the intercultural environment.
Let me say, what we see with the U.S. is that on the one hand, Americans give more positive feedback and stronger positive feedback than any other culture in the world. But on the other hand, the explicitness of the American culture, the desire that we have in the U.S. to really spell things out and make sure that we’ve explained clearly all of the feedback that we have, even if we’re wrapping the negatives with the positives, that can come off as very direct in Latin America and Asia, and specifically most strongly in Southeast Asia.
I had a recent example of this American that I was working with who was working with a group in Thailand. Thailand is one of the least direct cultures in the world when it comes to providing critical feedback. He was accused of bullying by his Thai colleague who had complained to Human Resources. What he had done was the way that we’re trained in the U.S. He had started by saying, “This was really good, and I like this, but this part isn’t working.” There were two elements of it that I think are useful for us all to think about. The first is what I call, say the good and leave out the bad.
I’ll give you some personal examples. I was working with Indonesia a couple of summers ago. The coordinator in Indonesia asked me to send her two photos and a video. I called her up a couple days later and I said, “Did you receive what you needed?” She said, “The photos were excellent, thank you.” Then I said, “Oh, would you like me to send you some more video options?” She said, “Well, if you have them, that would be wonderful.” You see how we were able to have that entire discussion without her ever saying to me, “I didn’t like the video.” If you say the good clearly enough, then the bad will just become obvious.
I was speaking at another conference in Singapore a while ago. I was working with a local manager, and I said to her, “I’m worried I don’t have enough local examples.” She said to me, “Okay, well give me your examples. Let me test them out.” So I gave her my examples, and the Singaporean woman said, “Oh, well, the examples you gave last week were excellent,” so I get it. In other words, don’t use those examples. Use the ones you gave last week. Say the good, and leave out the bad.
ALISON BEARD: Yeah. When you’re working in a global organization, say you have a call with a team in Asia in the morning, the UK in the afternoon, a different region in your own country at the end of the day, are you suggesting that people should just sort of stay aware and modify their style of giving feedback on the fly with each person that they’re dealing with?
ERIN MEYER: First of all, I do believe that as global leaders, we should try to be aware as much as possible of the feedback tendencies in the cultures that we are working frequently with. Definitely we want to be aware and we want to make some slight adaptations when we notice things are not going well. But on the other hand, of course, we can’t be expected, any of us, to be experts on every culture in the world. We all have our own individual authentic styles also. In these cases, I think it’s really useful with both humility and curiosity for us to bring up the topic of cultural differences. I’d encourage people definitely to bring up the topic and not be afraid to talk about it as long as we do it with humility and curiosity.
I do believe that the piece that’s common across all of these aspects is that the more that the manager sits down and sets up a routine method for when and how we’re going to give feedback for one another and really institutionalizes that. I’m like, “Hey, you know what? In the next month, I’d like each of you to set up a meeting with each other person on the team and just take 20 minutes to tell that person one thing you think they’re doing well, and one thing that you think that they could do to improve.” It removes all of these kind of reactions, like, “Oh, he thinks he’s better than I am,” or, “That person is giving me feedback because they’re trying to take a power grab,” and just creates a platform where we all understand, “Okay, this is how we give feedback here.” So really creating a team culture or climate can help a lot.
ALISON BEARD: Yeah, because I do think part of the problem when there are sensitivities around differences is that some bosses and colleagues might not even want to try to deliver any negative or critical feedback because they’re worried about how it will come across.
ERIN MEYER: Honestly, in most organizations, most of that useful actionable feedback, it doesn’t get given. That’s because of the brain. The frontal cortex is the most logical part of the brain. The frontal cortex loves direct feedback. But the issue when we’re working in these diverse situations is of course, the amygdala. And the amygdala, among many things, is focused on finding safety in numbers. When you give me feedback that something that you feel that I’ve done you feel was ineffective, that often sets off an alarm in my amygdala. That alarm is screaming, “Oh my gosh, I’m going to get kicked out of the tribe.” It physically throws my body into fight or flight.
Fight. That’s like, “Alison, it’s not true. I’m not the problem. You are the problem.” Or flight. That’s like, “Alison, thank you so much for having given me that feedback. That’s really useful. I’m really going to think about it,” and then I try to never speak to you again. Logically, we see that the more our employees give open feedback to one another, the more successful the team will be. But we all also recognize that because of the fight or flight mechanism in our brain, the feedback, if it’s not done in a routine institutionalized manner where people are expecting it and preparing for it, that it might end up really breaking those relationships and leading to bad feelings on the team where people actually don’t want to work together.
ALISON BEARD: It sounds like what you’re saying is that while this is an interpersonal problem, the solutions are really on the team and organizational level, making everyone aware of difference, explaining that feedback is important, but maybe radical candor or some of the tropes that we’ve heard about good feedback aren’t necessarily going to work for everyone. And then establishing these routine ways for people across all of these divides, cultural, generational, gender, I’m sure it would work for racial diversity too, to sort of, without worrying about power or status, just share advice and feedback with each other.
ERIN MEYER: Most of the companies that I’ve worked with who are trying to put in place a culture of candor in their organization are really focusing on spontaneous feedback. Of course, most of your listeners have probably heard the idea that the best time to give the feedback is the moment that you see that someone isn’t doing something well. But I have seen that that leads to more challenges than positive outcomes, especially in diverse environments. The answer is to create a team culture where the feedback is given in a routine way and we all know how and when the feedback is given. No matter what our diverse opinions or preferences are about how we would like to give feedback individually or receive feedback individually, we all know, on this team, this is how and when and where we give feedback. That gives us a spot that we can all come together and actually learn from that diversity.
ALISON BEARD: Well, Erin, thank you so much for explaining all of this today. I think it’ll help a lot of teams and individuals work better together.
ERIN MEYER: Thank you, Alison. Such a pleasure to be here with you.
ALISON BEARD: That’s Erin Meyer, a professor at INSEAD, an author of the HBR article, When Diversity Meets Feedback. We have more episodes and more podcasts to help you manage your team, your organization, and your career. Find them at hbr.org/podcasts or search HBR in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen.
This episode was produced by Mary Dooe. We get technical help from Rob Eckhardt. Our audio product manager is Ian Fox. Hannah Bates is our audio production assistant. Thanks for listening to the HBR IdeaCast. We’ll be back with a new episode on Tuesday. I’m Alison Beard.