Attention has one seat
Aug 16
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A newly promoted VP sits down with two people from her team. Same missed deadline. Almost the same words. One of them goes away and fixes the work. The other spends the meeting explaining herself. She is still thinking about it a month later.
Amy Edmondson opens a new Harvard Business Review piece with that scene. She wrote it with Bin Zhao and Fernando Olivera.
Their argument is that people do not learn from feedback because they received it. They learn when the feeling it sets off holds their attention on the work. When that feeling turns to self-protection, the learning stops. The words were fine. They landed somewhere else.
Their argument is that people do not learn from feedback because they received it. They learn when the feeling it sets off holds their attention on the work. When that feeling turns to self-protection, the learning stops. The words were fine. They landed somewhere else.
Who hears it before you do
Your brain has a security chief. I usually call her Amy. She runs the amygdala, two small almond shaped parts deep inside your head. Her job is old and simple. Check for danger. React before you have had time to think.
Your brain has a security chief. I usually call her Amy. She runs the amygdala, two small almond shaped parts deep inside your head. Her job is old and simple. Check for danger. React before you have had time to think.
Amy does not only watch for physical danger. She watches your place in the group. Whether you are valued. Whether people still think you are good at this. For most of human history, being pushed out of the group meant dying. She has one alarm for all of it.
So by the time you start talking, Amy has already read the situation. She is not listening for content. She is checking one thing. Am I still safe here?
When the answer is no, she fires. Noradrenaline and dopamine flood Corty, the thinking part behind your forehead. Too much of that and Corty stops working properly. Now the person in front of you has a problem. Taking in your point needs Corty. Defending herself needs Corty too. There is only enough for one job. She will spend it on whatever her brain marked as urgent. That is never the work.
Same words, two different meetings
I wrote about two people getting identical feedback on a presentation. One of them arrives exhausted. The other arrives in good brain condition. The colleague is critical. Several points missing. A few simply wrong.
Same words, two different meetings
I wrote about two people getting identical feedback on a presentation. One of them arrives exhausted. The other arrives in good brain condition. The colleague is critical. Several points missing. A few simply wrong.
The first second is the same for both. Heart speeds up. Attention sharpens. Then it splits. The exhausted one hears that she is not good enough. She answers defensively and walks out heavy. The other hears something she can use. She thanks the colleague and walks out light.
Nothing about the feedback differed. What differed was the state they came in with.
Status is one of the six needs in MASTER. It moves week by week. Someone who has felt invisible since March hears a small correction as a verdict. Someone who knows she matters hears a useful detail about Thursday's presentation. Same sentence, two different meetings.
Most feedback training works on the sender. The phrasing, the framing, the order you put things in. But the outcome gets decided in the other person's nervous system. Often before you have spoken.
Check what you set off
Two things. Neither one is a technique.
Ask a better question at the end. "Does that make sense" gets a yes from everyone in the building. Ask instead what she is taking away from the conversation. Then listen for who the answer is about. "I will rerun the numbers before Thursday" is attention on the work. "I know, I should have caught it" is attention on herself. The second answer tells you the content never got through. Stop there.
Then fill the bucket when nothing is at stake. Someone who heard in March what she is good at can hear in April what she missed. Two minutes, specific, with no request attached. Recognition given long before a hard conversation is what makes the hard conversation possible.
Leaders I work with give more feedback than they did five years ago. More careful. Better prepared. Well meant. What is missing is smaller than a method. It is a pause after your first sentence, long enough to notice who you are actually talking to. What did the last piece of feedback you gave set off?
Leaders I work with give more feedback than they did five years ago. More careful. Better prepared. Well meant. What is missing is smaller than a method. It is a pause after your first sentence, long enough to notice who you are actually talking to. What did the last piece of feedback you gave set off?
/ Maria