The End in Mind

I dislike the word “review.”

The past is only useful in one regard, as information used to direct or predict the future. Suppose I review a contractor’s work on my house. In that case, I have one of two goals: I either want to change one or more aspects of future work from that contractor when I hire them again, or I want to inform my friends/family/community about that contractor in a way that affects their potential future with them. If I never intended to use that contractor again and I didn’t think my review would help anyone else make future decisions, I would never bother.

However, many people seem to focus their “reviews” in any context on the past. If I’m scolding my kids for some behavior, I’m not trying to change the past behavior. That’s absurd! I’m trying to affect the future – and that’s how I start that conversation with my kids, every time. “Let’s talk about how we can make sure this doesn’t happen again, okay?”

(Parenting side note: This helps reinforce that redirects from a parent are about changing behavior, not “being mad” at a person!)

So here’s my tip, the future I want to see: When you give feedback, review something, or comment at all on the past, start by thinking about the future you want to see.

Let’s say one of your employees makes a costly mistake that loses a client. You’re stressed, frustrated, disappointed, maybe even a little angry. Naturally, you want to talk to the employee about the mistake. But pause. Because what a lot of managers naturally do as “feedback” here is describe the mistake. They talk about how severe it was. They talk about the impact on the department, company, even themselves. They act, in other words, like the future they want to see is “My employee feels super bad, their confidence is shot, and they have a worse relationship with me.”

Look, the employee knows the severity of the mistake. Your goal isn’t to vent your frustrations, right? It’s to prevent similar mistakes in the future. And to attempt to reach that goal, you have two choices: You can get rid of the employee if you feel like they’re too much of a liability, or you can correct their behavior to minimize future risk. If you evaluate that employee as too much of a risk, then that’s fine – but that’s the only necessary action then. Venting your frustrations doesn’t help! And if you want them to correct their behavior in the future, then you have to think about whether each thing you say to them moves toward that goal or not.

Does telling them how mad you are give them better information about how to do that? Do you think that the reason they made the first mistake was because they didn’t know how mad you’d be? Because they didn’t realize that losing a client would have a negative impact on the business? No, of course not. People make professional mistakes because they lack information, expertise, or skill. Your goal is to give them that skill, if it’s possible to do so.

So picture that future: “My employee never makes this mistake again, because they have the tools that they were missing when they made it the first time.”

(Incidentally, this is why I think firing people because of big mistakes is so foolish. Experience is the best teacher – why get rid of someone who is probably so likely to never make this mistake again?)

Once you picture the future you’re trying to reach, you may come to a startling conclusion: You barely need to talk about the past mistake at all. You can mention it as the context for the discussion, maybe you can answer questions about it, but don’t dwell. Just get to the tasks at hand! Fuming, blaming, and venting aren’t feedback. They aren’t directional. And they don’t lead to the end you (hopefully) have in mind.