Tell Me How I’m Doing

I saw Bobby and his dad walk into the auditorium for that evening’s Youth Group meeting. Bobby was walking with a limp. I asked him, “What happened, Bobby? Did you get hurt?” Bobby put on a brave face and said in a solemn tone, “I got hurt playing ball last night. I’m the catcher for my Little League team.” His dad chimed in with a gruff chuckle and the words, “Yeah, if only he could learn to catch the ball he’d be all right!” Bobby’s face fell, crushed. I wanted to punch his old man–but we’re not allowed to throttle others at church. His negative feedback, delivered in front of me and several others, completely deflated Bobby’s countenance.

I was thinking about Bobby as I read a little book that had managed to get lost in my pile of “things to read one day.” I recently “rediscovered” the book titled “Tell Me How I’m Doing: A Fable About the Importance of Giving Feedback” by Richard L. Williams when I was cleaning. Always looking for an excuse to read, I paused, sat back in my chair, and leafed through the 128-page gem. A little more than an hour later, I was stunned. “Why haven’t I read this until now?” I asked to no one in particular. (Which was good because I was alone…)

“Tell Me” is the fictional story of Scott, a supervisor, who has his work and home life transformed by developing the skill of providing feedback. The premise of the story is that each one of us has a “feedback bucket” that needs consistent replenishment. (See one of my previous posts on “How Full is Your Bucket,” by Tom Rath and Donald O. Clifton.) Our feedback buckets leak because they have holes. Sometimes we put the holes in ourselves. Sometimes other people blast holes in them for us. The bottom line is that people–you, me, the people around us–require feedback to be their best. Without feedback even the best of us will shrivel up and die inside. The best employee becomes a performance problem. An outgoing daughter becomes closed, distant, and discouraged. A spouse or other loved one becomes alienated and lonely. Feedback is the key to keeping their buckets full and keeping them happy, healthy and productive.

Williams outlines three steps to correcting the problems we’ve created in our relationships due to lack of or improper feedback:

1. Stop negative feedback
2. Give genuine positive feedback
3. Apologize as needed

It’s pretty obvious what #1 did to Bobby. In a similar way it crushes the spirit in all of us. Note that negative feedback is not the same as corrective feedback. See below.

The key to positive feedback is to make it genuine. In Ken Blanchard’s classic book, The One Minute Manager, a similar principle is suggested. Go looking for things people are doing right and reward them with a one-minute praise. People have fine-tuned B.S. detectors. They can smell a fake comment from a mile away. Make your positive feedback genuine and specific. “Bobby, I really like the way you hold your glove in the strike zone for the pitcher to see. That helps him to aim correctly!”

Corrective feedback is the replacement for negative feedback–turning a bucket-drainer into a bucket-filler. Bobby’s dad’s remark at the top of this page was negative because it was nothing more than a complaint. It put Bobby down for not having some level of skill. Corrective feedback would be delivered differently. First, it would not be delivered in front of me. And it would take the form of, “Bobby, I’d like you close your stance just a bit to make it easier for you to react to a pitch thrown outside of the strike zone. That will give you an edge if the ball comes in high and you have to go up to prevent the passed ball.”

In addition to genuine positive feedback, much of the feedback that fills our buckets comes from things that are surprising to me:

• Making eye contact while talking
• Saying “Hello” as we pass in the hallway
• Holding open the door for someone on our way into the building
• Learning the names and ages of a co-worker’s children
• Remembering your sister-in-law’s birthday
• Regularly calling a relative who lives far away

It is in the simple acts of caring, of getting to know people, and developing trust that we can fill the buckets of others.

Bucket fillers unite! And Speak Up!

Be a Bucket Filler

I’d walked that same path more than a thousand times, yet on that one, crisp Saturday morning I noticed a weathered bronze plaque mounted on a small cement slab level with the grass. About 4 feet off the path, the plaque had obviously been there for quite a long time but had heretofore escaped my notice. This new-found distraction was worth taking a moment to absorb.

Like I did on that one Saturday morning, today we’re stopping along the path to admire something that’s been there for quite some time. We’re taking time to notice…

Recently my boss recommended a very interesting book, “How Full is Your Bucket,” by Tom Rath and Donald O. Clifton. The ideas in this text are not new–we’ve been on this path a thousand times before–but the presentation is compelling. For example, Stephen Covey speaks of a very similar idea with his concept of the Emotional Bank Account. I was touched by the book such that I felt it was appropriate to “interrupt” the current series of blog posts about impromptu speaking to get this “on virtual paper” while it’s on my mind.

The bucket metaphor is a good one. The premise is that we all have a bucket. When our bucket is full, we feel good. Not so when our bucket is empty. The idea is to figuratively ladle water into other people’s buckets through positive interactions with them (doing what Covey would call, “making deposits in the Emotional Bank Account”). A kind word. A specific praise. Purposely catching people doing the right thing and praising them for it. (Oh! There’s “The One-Minute Manager!” I told you these ideas are not new!)

A proverb in the scriptures that I hold dear tells us that the tongue has the power of life and death. I’ve taken it as a lifetime challenge to speak life into the people around me.

One thing that is very clear from my readings on this subject: Our objective is not to get other people to fill our buckets. In none of the books I’ve read does the author even hint that we ought to be in this for ourselves. No. They consistently and correctly point us to filling other people’s buckets. As we Speak Up in our daily interactions at work or at home we ought to be looking for ways that we can genuinely and sincerely ladle encouragement into other people’s buckets. A quote from the book says it well:

Whether we have a long conversation with a friend or simply place an order at a restaurant, every interaction makes a difference. The results of our encounters are rarely neutral; they are almost always positive or negative. And although we take these interactions for granted, they accumulate and profoundly affect our lives.

Speak Up and Speak Life.