<story><title>Toxic positivity does more harm than good</title><url>https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-01-14/what-is-fono-toxic-positivity-is-doing-more-harm-than-good</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>tchalla</author><text>In the end, HOW you deliver feedback matters. Personally, I have three important characteristics for a feedback.&lt;p&gt;Point 1 : &amp;quot;Be Specific&amp;quot;. I can not stress this enough. Please point out specific observable behaviour.&lt;p&gt;Point 2 : Frame feedback in terms of team&amp;#x2F;organisational goals. Every team has a purpose within the organisation. It&amp;#x27;s a team game and every team member should know the feedback in context of the team game. Individual feedback, team context.&lt;p&gt;Point 3 : Cite the past but look for future changes in behaviour. You can not change the past but you can influence the future.&lt;p&gt;For example, &amp;quot;Hey John! When you do X, it helps the team achieve Y. Please continue doing so!&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;Hey John! When you do Z, it lets the team down. What can you do differently?&amp;quot;.</text></item><item><author>ChuckMcM</author><text>A lot of insight in the parent comment here. Most importantly this: &lt;i&gt;&amp;quot;...there seems to be two camps of people: those who want constant positive reinforcement and those who it completely has the opposite effect ...&amp;quot;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you are leading and or managing a team, one of the most important things you need to know are how do people want their feedback. My experience is that it varies from person to person (I suspect that there are many more than two camps :-)) and as such it is unlikely that you can meet that need in group feedback.&lt;p&gt;Because of that, my choice these days is to split feedback into two fora, the group status meeting and 1:1s. In the group, feedback is modulated by progress against plan. So &amp;quot;we need to work harder&amp;quot; for behind plan, &amp;quot;neutral&amp;quot; for on plan, and &amp;quot;this team is killing it&amp;quot; for ahead of plan. In 1:1s the feedback is based on the expectations that have been set for that team member, do they know what is expected of them? Do they know how it is being measured? And where are they with respect to measurement vs expectation.&lt;p&gt;1:1 feedback often times (for me) takes on more of a mentor&amp;#x2F;mentee tone rather than a how are we doing on the schedule tone. Doing that well also requires a certain amount of trust which, as a manager, you have to earn by being honest with your team members.</text></item><item><author>halfmatthalfcat</author><text>I&amp;#x27;ve felt a lot of &amp;quot;false&amp;quot; positivity espoused by project managers, especially those in charge of agile ceremonies.&lt;p&gt;Examples: &amp;quot;I&amp;#x27;m really {proud,impressed} of all of you for your output this sprint&amp;quot;, &amp;quot;You guys are {killing,crushing,owning} it&amp;quot;, &amp;quot;You all should be very proud of what you guys did&amp;quot;, etc.&lt;p&gt;These aren&amp;#x27;t given after periods of crunch time, they&amp;#x27;re literally every week to the point where it feels so contrived and artificial. They&amp;#x27;re given when we&amp;#x27;re just doing normal, expected work.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ve mentioned this to colleagues and friends and there seems to be two camps of people: those who want constant positive reenforcement and those who it completely has the opposite effect, an annoyance. I guess I fall into the latter.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>_j6y1</author><text>Completely agree that HOW matters so much!&lt;p&gt;To me and probably many others (albeit often subconsciously), point 3 comes across as blaming, overly-generalized, and lacking in personal (and group) accountability for your experiences.&lt;p&gt;What about something like,&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Hey John, the last time you did X, Y happened, which had Z consequences.&lt;p&gt;I felt { disappointed &amp;#x2F; let down &amp;#x2F; concerned &amp;#x2F; irritated &amp;#x2F; worried &amp;#x2F; angry &amp;#x2F; $whatever_emotions_came_up_for_YOU }.&lt;p&gt;Other team members reported feeling $emotions.&lt;p&gt;What was going on there for you?&lt;p&gt;How can I &amp;#x2F; we help you to avoid X in the future?&lt;p&gt;Do you have any ideas about what you could focus or work on in order for Y not to happen again?&lt;p&gt;Here are some specific requests I have for you in order to avoid this kind of thing in the future: $requests
&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;The edgy part about this for many people is taking ownership for their experience, we live in a society with a lot of deconditioning around this . Nobody else but you is responsible for how you feel. John didn&amp;#x27;t let you down, you had expectations about what he was going to do, and to your assessment, he didn&amp;#x27;t meet those expectations (that&amp;#x27;s also a reasonable thing to say, I think -- I would give more detail and context about specifically how those expectations weren&amp;#x27;t met). That you felt one way or another about this has nothing to do with John, and there&amp;#x27;s a lot of subtle and overt problems that can arise in a relationship when we attribute our experience to another person with our language.&lt;p&gt;I also mention that it sounds overly-generalized because saying &amp;quot;when you do X&amp;quot; has an implicit assumption that he will continue doing X in the future, and isn&amp;#x27;t really all that specific about why X has certain consequences - I think it&amp;#x27;s better to use specific situations in the past when X happened and to talk about what came up when that occurred. This is basically what I&amp;#x27;m hearing you say in Point 2 :)&lt;p&gt;edit: fixed variables, wording</text></comment>
<story><title>Toxic positivity does more harm than good</title><url>https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-01-14/what-is-fono-toxic-positivity-is-doing-more-harm-than-good</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>tchalla</author><text>In the end, HOW you deliver feedback matters. Personally, I have three important characteristics for a feedback.&lt;p&gt;Point 1 : &amp;quot;Be Specific&amp;quot;. I can not stress this enough. Please point out specific observable behaviour.&lt;p&gt;Point 2 : Frame feedback in terms of team&amp;#x2F;organisational goals. Every team has a purpose within the organisation. It&amp;#x27;s a team game and every team member should know the feedback in context of the team game. Individual feedback, team context.&lt;p&gt;Point 3 : Cite the past but look for future changes in behaviour. You can not change the past but you can influence the future.&lt;p&gt;For example, &amp;quot;Hey John! When you do X, it helps the team achieve Y. Please continue doing so!&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;Hey John! When you do Z, it lets the team down. What can you do differently?&amp;quot;.</text></item><item><author>ChuckMcM</author><text>A lot of insight in the parent comment here. Most importantly this: &lt;i&gt;&amp;quot;...there seems to be two camps of people: those who want constant positive reinforcement and those who it completely has the opposite effect ...&amp;quot;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you are leading and or managing a team, one of the most important things you need to know are how do people want their feedback. My experience is that it varies from person to person (I suspect that there are many more than two camps :-)) and as such it is unlikely that you can meet that need in group feedback.&lt;p&gt;Because of that, my choice these days is to split feedback into two fora, the group status meeting and 1:1s. In the group, feedback is modulated by progress against plan. So &amp;quot;we need to work harder&amp;quot; for behind plan, &amp;quot;neutral&amp;quot; for on plan, and &amp;quot;this team is killing it&amp;quot; for ahead of plan. In 1:1s the feedback is based on the expectations that have been set for that team member, do they know what is expected of them? Do they know how it is being measured? And where are they with respect to measurement vs expectation.&lt;p&gt;1:1 feedback often times (for me) takes on more of a mentor&amp;#x2F;mentee tone rather than a how are we doing on the schedule tone. Doing that well also requires a certain amount of trust which, as a manager, you have to earn by being honest with your team members.</text></item><item><author>halfmatthalfcat</author><text>I&amp;#x27;ve felt a lot of &amp;quot;false&amp;quot; positivity espoused by project managers, especially those in charge of agile ceremonies.&lt;p&gt;Examples: &amp;quot;I&amp;#x27;m really {proud,impressed} of all of you for your output this sprint&amp;quot;, &amp;quot;You guys are {killing,crushing,owning} it&amp;quot;, &amp;quot;You all should be very proud of what you guys did&amp;quot;, etc.&lt;p&gt;These aren&amp;#x27;t given after periods of crunch time, they&amp;#x27;re literally every week to the point where it feels so contrived and artificial. They&amp;#x27;re given when we&amp;#x27;re just doing normal, expected work.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ve mentioned this to colleagues and friends and there seems to be two camps of people: those who want constant positive reenforcement and those who it completely has the opposite effect, an annoyance. I guess I fall into the latter.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>UpsilonAlpha</author><text>To add on to this. Following these steps will often avoid the problem described by GP. If you can&amp;#x27;t find specific actions to praise, then there is a good chance the recipient will feel the praise is hollow.</text></comment>