Feedback Is A Gift

When I'm at my best, I am focused on the future entirely. I am everything in stride, spring in the step. Something goes wrong, we'll deal with it, you know? When I'm at my best, my vision is the only thing that I can see sometimes blindly. I still think it's the best.

At my best, I'm naive. I actually believe I can change the world. I actually believe I can do half the things I talk about. And at my best, I'm the best team player in the world. I love it.

At my worst, I'm susceptible to fatigue. I'm susceptible to running out of steam. And when that happens, things that I take in stride all of a sudden become exaggerated. Stresses that I can take every single day all of a sudden start to feel stressed and feel stressful, and the hard part is I'm aware of it.

So if I snap at someone, I'm aware of it, and that sucks. And I don't like it. I guess it's better that I'm aware of it, but it means I get to look at it, you know? But also get it means I can manage it. I'm learning.

How do you manage it?

I ask for help. I go to people I trust, and if I need to vent, I went to them rather than somebody who doesn't deserve to be on the receiving end of it. Because it's not them. It's me, you know? So I try like when I feel it to call somebody who won't judge me, who knows that that's not who I am. They know that I'm tired, and they know that I'm stressed. And they know it's just a venting.

It's just a release. It's the emotional equivalent of going to the gym and just hitting a punching bag or just doing a bunch of pushups just to get it out of you, you know? Whatever it is, and once it's done, it's done. I'm good, you know? Give me 20 minutes to vent, and scream, and yell, and be pissed off. And then I'm completely fine, so I'm very good about making sure that I call somebody who I get to do that with. And it's all good.

All they do is offer me a safe place to do it, because the last thing I want to do is unload on somebody who just was wrong place, wrong time kind of thing. Doesn't happen that often. That's the good news, but also, I think, it's very important for all of us to remember that none of us is perfect. But also, we don't get to use our imperfections as an excuse.

That's who I am. You're just going to have to deal with it. I'm just stubborn. That's bullshit, you know? Yes, we're all imperfect. Yes, we all have our foibles. Yes, we act appropriately sometimes by accident. Yes, we make mistakes. Yes, you know, sometimes I'm a little I'm a little curt when I shouldn't be. All true, but I don't get to say that's who I am.

If I'm aware of those things, then I have to work on them. I'm a work in progress, and the goal is to be a better version of myself tomorrow than I was today. And if I was not at my best today, I better work on being at my best tomorrow. So I do not accept this nonsense with people. They use their they use the imperfections of humanity as an excuse rather than an aspiration, rather than a motivation to get past it.

But at the same time, you have to be aware of them if you can work on it. I think, you know, you have to be aware of your weaknesses if you're going to work on them. I think blindness is way worse to be blind, which means the way we overcome blindness is being willing to accept the feedback from others.

My opinion about feedback is that it's a gift. This happened last night actually. A friend of mine needed some advice how to talk to somebody to have a different conversation that she admittedly avoids stressful conversations, and so the stress builds up. Or it creates a tension in her relationships.

So my advice to her was go to this person, because the advice that we often give people or rather the advice that we often get in situations like this is you have to find the courage to have this conversation. You have to get over it, and you have to tell them, you know? You have to put aside your discomfort, and you have to confront the situation, right? That's usually the advice we're given, and my opinion is the complete opposite is just lay it out there.

To go up to somebody and say I want to have a conversation with you, but I don't have it. It makes me incredibly uncomfortable. I am naturally avoidant of these kinds of things, and i would rather not do this. I'll tell you right now. The conversation that we're about to have, I don't want to have.

In fact, it would be much easier for me not to have this, but I'm going to tell you what I'm going to tell you not because I want to do it. Because I don't, but I love you. And I'm going to tell you this, because I think you need to hear it. And if it makes you uncomfortable, what I need you to do is understand that I don't want to do this, and I'm doing it because I'm giving you a gift.

Not I'm giving you a gift. Please receive this as a gift, because I don't want to do it and then telling them what you need to tell them. So all the discomfort is on the-- you have to find encourage. You don't have to overcome anything. You can just put it on the table and say, I hate this. I'm uncomfortable, and I'd rather not do it.

But I'm going to do it, because I love you and care about you. And I want you to be the best version of yourself, and I want you to see your own blind spots. So whatever I'm telling you, please receive it as a gift. And by the way, if you get angry, it's probably because it's true. Because if you have no emotional response, then you can just ignore me and go about your day.

So I think the willingness to ask for feedback and receive feedback. And if you have an emotional response, it's probably true is essential. Because how are we going to be better if we can't see where we need to improve? It goes back to this theme that seems to run through this whole interview, which is asking for help, and asking for feedback, and being willing to receive the feedback, and simply saying thank you when you get it rather than offering an excuse.

I went out and visited Benning, and I went out to Ranger school. And I was talking to some of the instructors, and they were telling me how they had these things called spotlight rangers, which was guys who are spectacular in the field. And when the instructors mark them like, oh, look, it's fantastic, right? But when the spotlights turned off, they're assholes, and those guys make terrible rangers. Because they're in it for themselves and not in it for each other, right?

And the way that they find the spotlight rangers, they don't give them their ranger tabs is they do peer reviews. They ask the other candidates, what do you think of each other? Do they uphold values? Would you share a foxhole with them? Would you go to war with them, which are two different conversations. One's skill based. One's personal, and they can find the spotlight rangers. And they coach them.

And if they're uncoachable, and they say that when we sit down with these ranger candidates, we say your candidates think you're stubborn and difficult to work with. And if they go I totally understand why they would say that. There was just one situation, and they totally don't really know who I am. They don't want those people on the team.

The ones they want on the team are the ones to go, oh, boy, woah, yeah, I got to work on that. Woah, yeah, I'll work on that. Those are the ones they want. It's not the criticism that's the problem. It's the way they deal with their imperfections. That's the big deal, and those are the ones they want as rangers.

I found that really kind of brilliant, and we need more of that in the private sector, you know? That we don't just give a free pass to the person who's the fastest or the strongest. But rather we look for and measure for the kind of teammate they are, the kind of leader they are, and weigh that against their performance. And sometimes willingly ask them to leave despite the fact that they may be the highest performer, because they're a terrible teammate.

And so if we are driven to be the best leaders, and we're driven to be the best teammates and team members, then we have to be open to the fact that we are imperfect. And we are works in progress, and we need to not only be open to feedback but ask for it. The harsher the better.

That doesn't mean we have to be mean when we give people feedback. We have to be honest, but we don't have to be mean. I don't know where this whole thing about brutal honesty came in. You know, it doesn't have to be brutal. It just has to be honest.

You know, do I look fat in these jeans? I like the other jeans better. That's honest, but it's not brutal, you know? I think there's a responsibility risk to demand honesty and be honest.