They Are Right and Wrong: Listen For The Feedback

Bill Hader is an American actor, comedian, writer, producer, and director. I first learned of him while watching Superbad after a few friends told me it was hilarious, and they were not wrong.

He speaks in the video below about getting feedback on his writing from other people. He breaks it down into two steps.

Firstly, they are right. If they have an issue with something he is writing then they are probably right that it is a problem.

Followed by, the second part that they are probably wrong in how to resolve the issues.

They Are Right

As a leader, you have to make decisions. These decisions are not going to please everyone.

If people voice their issues, they have a good chance of being right. This, of course, is from their point of view.

Unpack That They Are Wrong

The trouble is that people aren’t great at feedback. They will probably tell you how to fix the problem without describing specifically what the problem that they have is.

Your job is to listen to the feedback and ask many follow-up questions to break the issues into the problem and the solution from their point of view.

Critical Conversations

If you have a healthy team, there will be healthy debates about issues. This should be encouraged.

The challenge is to break those debates into actual problems devoid of solutions and then you can start to work on solutions once problems have been identified.

It might be that a team member doesn’t understand the reason why they are doing something so they are trying to make the process align with their why, not the team’s why.

Or they need some more information about where the project is heading to understand why you are doing this today and that tomorrow.

Many of the problems will be a misalignment of understanding or awareness. Your job is to listen to the concerns and communicate the missing information. Or, if they have a point, change your position.