The criticism trap (part 1)
Why does “feedback” always mean “criticism?”
“The feedback that has the most emotional power has two characteristics: It relates to a domain you care about, and it’s in an area where you feel uncertain.” – BJ Fogg, Director of the Stanford Behavior Design Lab
Have you ever noticed that negative feedback is SO MUCH more specific than positive feedback?
Every time performance reviews come around, people say “remember, feedback is a gift,” or otherwise encourage critical feedback as the path to growth. It makes some sense — giving critical feedback can be uncomfortable, so people are less likely to do it.
Positive feedback is way the fuck more useful than criticism, if you’re good at it, but no one ever teaches how to be good at it. And it’s way the fuck easier to criticize than it is to praise in a way that creates meaningful progress.
No one ever says “here, this is a better way to give positive feedback.”
Even when there is positive feedback, it tends to be vague. “Great job” or “nice work” or “well done on that report.” What part of the report was well done? So the result was good (that’s what’s being praised), but what are the repeatable inputs that will teach you to do a great job next time too?
When someone on my team puts together a great chart for the first time — simple, clearly labeled, understandable at a glance, relevant to the larger narrative — and I say “this chart is awesome. I love how clearly you thought about the labels and the scale, and how you use it as a proof point for your big picture message…”
...every chart that person creates from then on is going to be amazingly labeled, legible, and well thought out.
That actually happened, and I only had to give the feedback once. Critical feedback can be a useful tool, but I’ve never seen it create that amount of change that quickly.
Here are the reasons to use more specific, more positive feedback:
You reward people for thinking through details. Talented people think about their work A LOT. But if they don’t feel like their attention to detail is recognized or valued, they may let standards slide — why put in the extra work if it isn’t noticed? Specific positive feedback about the details shows that their work is valued, and it tends to get them to double down on quality.
You show people good things they didn’t realize they were doing, and can now repeat. Sometimes a top performer is successful for reasons they don’t realize. Other times people get lucky, and happen to do something really smart by accident. In either case, specific praise shows them what they do well — which lets them have repeatable success by doing it again.
Negative feedback, in excess, can lower morale and cause “avoidance.” To a behavioral psychologist, negative feedback would be classified as “positive punishment” (you are adding something negative into the environment), and it’s known to cause avoidance. Criticism can be useful to make corrections, but if you use it too much people will start to go out of their way to avoid work that might be criticized. That means less engaged people and fewer creative ideas — why go out on a limb for a good idea if all that happens is critique?
Positive feedback creates psychological safety — and creativity. A rule of reinforcement is that it causes behavior to happen more frequently. If you decide to reinforce “ideas that show thoughtfulness and consideration,” people will bring you better thought-out ideas. If you praise someone any time they come up with an idea that’s outside the “usual” playbook, you’ll quickly have a team member searching for things that no one has ever done before. Positive feedback rewards curiosity, and a curious team is more likely to find creative answers to problems.
Critical feedback is easy to use because all you have to do is not like something. Positive feedback is much harder because it’s less reactive. You need to have a sense of what behavior you want to encourage in advance, so that you can shower it with praise in the exact moment it happens.
What does this actually look like in action?
No amount of criticism could teach a pigeon how to bowl. But positive feedback did.
During World War II, B.F. Skinner was contracted by the military to create “pigeon-guided missiles” using his research on operant conditioning. A pigeon would sit in the head of the missile with a little window that showed the target, and could be trained to peck at the target to control the flight of the missile.
It never took off, Skinner thought, because people didn’t take it very seriously (gee, I wonder why). But in the course of training pigeons, Skinner discovered “shaping” by teaching a pigeon to bowl.
One day we decided to teach a pigeon to bowl. The pigeon was to send a wooden ball down a miniature alley toward a set of toy pins by swiping the ball with a sharp sideward movement of the beak. To condition the response, we put the ball on the floor of an experimental box and prepared to operate the food-magazine as soon as the first swipe occurred.
But nothing happened. Though we had all the time in the world, we grew tired of waiting. We decided to reinforce any response which had the slightest resemblance to a swipe — perhaps, at first, merely the behavior of looking at the ball — and then to select responses which more closely approximated the final form. The result amazed us. In a few minutes, the ball was caroming off the walls of the box as if the pigeon had been a champion squash player.
“Shaping” is the process of reinforcing actions that aren’t the behavior that you want — but are the next step towards the behavior you want. A pigeon that doesn’t hit the ball can be rewarded for looking at the ball. Then for moving toward the ball. Then touching the ball. And then touching the ball with increasing intensity.
I once had someone on my team who had amazing ideas but was very quiet in meetings.
What I could have done was say “you have great ideas, you should talk more in meetings.” I didn’t do this, and I’m almost 100% sure it wouldn’t have worked, because:
It doesn’t do anything to overcome the things preventing outspokenness, which were likely social (concern about being “wrong” in front of the team)
It doesn’t reward the desired behavior of speaking up
It is potentially punishing, if receiving that feedback makes the person feel bad. In operant conditioning terms, punishing the absence of a desired behavior is total nonsense — it can’t possibly help.
So what did I do instead?
1. First, I set up team meetings that required everyone to speak, at least for a little bit. At different points this has taken the form of standups where people share their priorities, larger team meetings where people share wins from the week or present their work, or just situations that encourage work-related small talk.
I needed some form of the behavior “talking in a group” to reinforce en route to the desired behavior (“volunteer new ideas to a group for discussion”).
In standups, I had a broad rule for the group about specificity — the more specific the objectives for the week, the better. That gave me something to reinforce for everyone (specificity), and an easy way to also praise the quiet person for speaking up without playing favorites.
2. For a few weeks, I would express approval when the quiet person spoke in the group. Whenever an example of great work came in (from anyone), I would ask them to share with everyone — this included the quiet person, and sharing great work with the group resulted in social praise (so that I was not the only reinforcer of the behavior).
3. Before long I raised the criteria for praise. Instead of rewarding every instance of speaking up, I praised instances of speaking up that included an idea or suggestion.
4. After about 5 weeks of this, the quiet person interrupted me with a new idea, during a team meeting. I was floored. This person used to not speak unless directly called on. Interrupting wasn’t necessarily part of the goal, but that could be dealt with separately.
If you can flip your mindset from “criticize bad things” to “praise things you like,” there are all kinds of opportunities to reinforce behaviors. Other quick examples:
I realized that my team was going with what I said, even if I was only ~40% sure it made sense. Praising people for (empathetic, positive) disagreement led to much livelier and useful team discussions, and contributed to a culture of constructive feedback.
When I wanted writers to include more third-party research/references in their work, I started praising any instances of research (specifically, praising the effort it took to find sources). Over time, I raised the criteria for reinforcement to include type of source or thoughtfulness of use in the articles.
Agendas in meetings. Everybody wants them, ain’t nobody got them. I started praising any of my reports who updated their one-on-one agendas by the end of the day before our meeting. Almost overnight — more, and more promptly delivered, agendas.
How to set your behavior goals. Also...should you?
5. Stay ahead of your subject: Plan your shaping program completely so that if the subject makes sudden progress, you are aware of what to reinforce next. – Karen Pryor’s 5th law of shaping, from Don’t Shoot the Dog
One reason praise is harder to use than criticism is that you have to plan praise. When you criticize, all you have to do is say “I don’t like that,” which is easy to do any time you don’t like something.
But to praise — and have that praise lead to the desired behavior — you have to plan your praise in advance. You need to have shaping “rules” for when you praise, so that you are targeting the right behaviors. And you need to have a sense of progression, for how quickly you work up to the main behavior.
What can you use positive reinforcement for? Almost anything, if you are creative enough.
Pryor’s 7th law of shaping:
If one shaping procedure is not eliciting progress, find another; there are as many ways to get behavior as there are trainers to think them up.
You can praise engagement in meetings. Thoughtfulness in ideas. Punctuality. Specific characteristics of work (dependent on field). In fact — any time you criticize to get what you want, there is probably a positive path you could use instead.
If you want to learn more about this stuff, these are the best two resources:
Don’t Shoot the Dog, by Karen Pryor, is the single best, most accessible resource about behavioral psychology I’ve read
Behavior Analysis for Effective Teaching, by Julie S. Vargas, has a ton of examples and guidance on how to formally analyze behavior and come up with your reinforcement plan
At the simplest level, the steps are:
Identify your desired behavior
Find the smallest reinforceable version of that behavior
Reinforce the behavior whenever it happens
When your person is making progress, move to the next smallest version of the behavior
Repeat steps 2-4
I shared this once and got the question “is this ethical?”
I think it is, or I wouldn’t do it, and I think BJ Fogg (founder of Stanford’s Behavior Design Lab) has a good description of why:
“A quick word on “changing others” — a concept that can make people feel a little nervous. First of all, we have to understand that we are influencing the behavior of others all the time, often without realizing it — that’s the nature of living in communities — and no one frets too much about that.
People often try to help a family member with a new eating program or a coworker with productivity issues. But if you challenge people to do something very difficult, they will probably fail, and this failure makes change harder in the future. My view is that the most ethical approach is to be mindful of our influence on others while using the best possible methods to help them.”
When managers criticize, aren’t they trying to change a behavior?
Except that with criticism, people feel bad and stuff doesn’t even get better. Positive reinforcement is communication — it’s saying “that was good, I liked that,” which makes it easier for people to change their own behavior.
If anything it’s more ethical. It feels better and actually works at helping people be more successful.
In a sense, any communication at work has an element of you trying to get what you want. So why not choose the version that’s positive, that’s upbeat, and that creates strong, happy, effective teams?