Mon 15 Jun, 2009
Self Improvement through Negative Feedback
Comments (15) Filed under: Introspective, Tips and TricksTags: Negative Feedback, Raid Leading
Negative feedback is hard to give. But it’s even harder to receive.
http://www.worldofmatticus.com/2009/06/11/so-you-think-you-can-raid/#ixzz0I9N1a6kb&D
As you can see, Matticus was discussing on Friday how badly it sucks to have to give bad news. Its interesting how age kind of redefines how you view and approach things. Some people can be blunt and they have no problems giving bad news out to people. Other people just hem an haw and have a nightmare of a time telling people anything that might be negative.
As much as I’d like to say I’m a nice worldly person… as much as I’d like to say I’ve mastered the fine art of conversation and I can handle anything the world throws at me, I can’t. I’m just a guy… in my early thirties who’s going to share a little bit of insight.
The Formative Know it All Years
As I’ve progressed through my career post college, I’ve kind of grown quite a bit. Its hard to believe for those who are younger, but we all kind of come out of college with a semi, “know it all” attitude. Just a tip.. you go to college to prove you know how to learn. You don’t got to college to learn a damned thing about what you’re going to do with your life.
I was a know it all. I also didn’t understand jack shit about how to talk to people. Business, medicine, law, politics, electrical work, engineering or for that matter any profession has a its own set of communication style and land mines. I guarantee if you’re in college or just getting out of it, you WILL step on one and it will hurt your career.
I know I’ve had my share, but with the help of some mentors I’ve grown to the point that I don’t fear getting into those difficult situations any more. There’s a different approach I take that generally won’t leave me battered and bruised when sitting in front of VPs and Directors in my company.
Self Improvement or Fired?
As my real life career has taken me forward, one of the things I’ve done is to take a bunch of classes on Project Management. One of those classes was largely a class on communication. I really liked that class for a couple of reasons. One it was taught by a pair of instructors. The first one was a woman and came across with all the sublty of a freight train. The second one was her brother and was a very mild mannered “geeky” kind of guy.
The class was very insightful, but one of the key points I thought they brought to the table was this…. If you were screwing something up, would you rather someone told you or that they just fire you because you’d been doing it for 9 months? In other words, would you rather have the chance to improve and fix a perceived problem or just find out that it wrecked your career while you sat there oblivious?
Baby Steps in Feedback
I will freely admit I’m not the best at this. I’m sure there are a ton of people who are better at it than me, but you shouldn’t always treat the world with kid gloves. Hell as some of my guildies can tell you, I probably dance around the point a little bit too much. Some times I could probably be a bit more direct and pointed with my comments. I even had a request from one of my raiders to make sure we’re getting specific feedback on what they need to improve.
This is basically what we call constructive feedback. None of us will ever be perfect. Hell theres lots of stuff I’ve messed up in my day. The point is that constructive feedback is there to help your raiders grow.
Specific and Timely
One other point that I think is very important with feedback. Wether good or bad, it needs to be specific and timely. That means that if the raid just did something very good, that needs to be mentioned right away. If they have something that needs to be improved, that needs to be brought up as well. For instance,
“Joe… I see your rogue’s DPS is hovering right around 2500 for last nights raid. When our DPS is lower, that extends the length of the fights out and puts a greater strain on the healers. They are more likely to run out of mana or not have enough cooldowns left to save a raid member. If you can increase your DPS it will shorten our fights and we’ll be able to clear more bosses.”
You show what they did wrong… what the impact on the raid was… and what they can do to improve and what the impact of that will be. It doesn’t do any good if I wait two weeks to provide feedback to Joe. If I do, it has less impact. Odds are if I’m looking at a specific item like tanking the boss in a different spot, we need to give that update right away. It reinforces what we need and what its impact will be on the whole.
Another key point is that when approaching the constructive style of feedback, you need to make sure to stick to events… not people. Don’t describe the person… describe events. People tend to take things a lot more personally when you describe them personally.
It Goes Both Ways
I know I harp on this point a lot, but the feedback has to go both ways. As a raid leader you can’t fear hearing feedback from your raiders. They should be able to come to you and talk about why your description wasn’t clear or a suggestion on a way to adjust a boss/trash fight for greater impact. Feedback is a postive thing if you approach it right folks.
Zapity says:
“They should be able to come to you and talk about why your description wasn’t clear or a suggestion on a way to adjust a boss/trash fight for greater impact.”
Or about how damn awesome you are Star?
Very good points.
Starman says:
Positive and negative/constructive feedback should be shared pretty openly in my opinion. Its just as helpful to reinforce to people that they did an awesome job of not standing in bad stuff as it is to say…. “um… people we really need to stay out of the bad stuff.”
Its a good way to reinforce stuff in people’s heads. Besides who doesn’t like hearing they did good things too??
Chriasas says:
I always find it amazing how much the problems in life and in WoW intersect. In a rapidly evolving and information driven world, it all often comes back to communication and interpersonal interaction. Ironically, the one thing we are getting worse at in life.
Vas says:
Takeing the nicer way may work to teach people but, for a progression guild it just doesn’t work as well.
We aren’t in the business of teaching people how to raid. If your dps is sub-par, you are replaced. If you can’t stay out of the giant blue beams chasing you around, you are replaced. If you can’t spread out, you are replaced.
Now none of that is a first time offense replacement. More of a 3 strikes type thing. And remarks like “Great job not dying to the giant swirling blue thing on the floor” are reduntant in that there are very few reasons to ever, ever die in that. And if you do die in that, we’ll bring in someone who won’t simple as that.
Because of that comments in progression guilds tend to be much sharper because, there are several assumptions that they take about their member’s abilities. The important thing to remember is that they are not personal, if the player can learn to do things properly they will be a welcome addition again. But, these guilds just simply don’t have the time or desire to sit down with players to teach them why viod zones/fire/black holes are bad.
The Daily Quest: Keep watching the skies | The Frozen Gnome says:
[...] over at Casual Raid Leader has a great post about taking negative feedback during raids / WoW, everyone should read this and link it to their [...]
Vas says:
Oh, forgot to mention:
Progression guilds do have positive reinforcement. It just come from seeing the boss go down with everyone alive or that shiney box pop up on the screen. Instead of from the other people in the raid. When something goes wrong but, the fight is pulled out anyway. There will be a, you guys CAN NOT do that but, great job on the recovery. Type of thing.
aneldarr says:
@ Vas: Ending feedback to your raiders with something possitive will make them feel more possitive about the feedback.
Reply in general: If you got something negative to say to someone, do it in a wisper or a private channel on vent/ts. If you do that the one geting the negative feedback wont take it as a shameing them action, but more of a helping action.
JustinM says:
Well, 3 out of 4 ain’t bad. Nowhere in your comment to him did you tell him what he can try to do to fix the problem. “Increase your DPS” is a result of something you do, not something you do in and of itself.
Starman says:
@aneldarr
I do agree with that point. If it is something specific to an individual raider, i rarely if ever do it in open channels. Its best left for off channels where the person can process it without fear of being embarressed in front of the entire guild.
Mutak says:
Reminds me of a post i saw a while back on the WoW forums.
Some Guy: Now that i’ve graduated college, i feel like i just hit 80 and i’m ready to raid for phat lewts!
All the people who have been out in the real world for a while: You’re not 80; you just got out of the starting zone.
Lyri says:
Just a thought for the raid leaders who pug people, yelling at them, and telling them they are retarded (their word not mine) because they haven’t read up on strategies for the raid (a pug?!) really isnt going to win respect.
Not getting mad at people, and being prepared to pay repairs is a far more reasonable approach. You just cant expect everyone to know everything. Even reading up on a fight isnt going to be the same.
With advice on gear etc, it is helpful to suggest gear, but more specifically it is helpful to suggest achieveable stats ie “You should go for x gear or y gear because it has stam or hit or x on it which will help you do more dps.”
Anyhow, I do think too many people make others feel like crap. At lvl 80, some people have been playing this game a long time with a specific spec that is what they know. It might not be raid perfect tho, and you can make the suggestion (now) to dual spec a raid spec.
Just some thoughts.
Adelphia says:
Boggle@Vas
Glad I’m not in your raid. You must be in a very top end guild if you have a steady stream of people knocking on your door eager to take the spots of those you replace…at least until they in turn are booted. Personally I would find such a raid culture oppresive and stressful. I consider my guild to be a progression guild too, although we are coming late to the game – 5/14 on ulduar, but we have started to nail some Glory achievements, and I dont have the luxury of discarding raiders like used tissue paper, I need to help build them up and improve the way they play, benching is erserved for those who can’t or won’t listen to the feedback they are given.
My advice to people is that positive reinforcement shopuld NOT be mixed with negative, don’t send mixed messages, either you are correcting a behaviour or you are encouraging one dont cross the streams.
When you have given a negative (aka constructive) feedback, make sure to follow up with priase if they do achieve the change you are looking for. this is very important!!
yunk says:
I find it funny vas takes raiding more serious than business managers do. Certainly they give feedback that is often negative, sometimes you are nice, sometimes you can’t be nice. But there is no profession in the world, even in the military, where the only feedback is negative and it’s always harsh. Yet raiding is so tough that you have to be tougher than than any real life profession? yeah right.
Casual Raid Leader » 365 +1 = New Mission says:
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TehScat says:
Specific and Timely advice here is the big one. One of the issues my raid personally has is low DPS, and not from gear. I’m taking steps to personally ‘interview’ DPSers and train them, and to direct them to sites like EJs that can improve their rotations. But at the end of the day, if when you tell them their DPS is low, and they rage and leave, or silently take offense, you’ve lost.
I try to do the same as your example, but I always try to give a very direct example. A great example is Mimiron phase 1, in our 10m.
“, we are really struggling on phase one here, and what we need to do is finish off the boss before the fourth plasma blast. Our healers and the tank run out of cooldowns and its impossible to keep him up through the fifth. We only need to do an extra 4% to the boss next time, so make sure you bring your all so we can get him down.”