Deep Down, It Is the Same Thing

Have you ever noticed how hard it is to receive negative feedback.
It doesn't really matter if it is "constructive".
It really punches me in the guts when I hear I've not done something well.
Particularly if I've tried hard at doing that something well.

It happened at work, when Mark told me how he noticed a routine job was not done quite right. Year after year, the job was not done the way it should be done. He raised it and to him, to do it the "right way" was brushed off as being too hard.

Luckily, I wasn't the one who had the difficult task of not addressing his concerns (for one reason or another. But I can imagine that would not have been encouraging for Mark who felt brushed off, who wanted to do things right.

It happened at home, when my wife told me how I am lacking in doing certain chores.
It is a great thing for Jenn to want jobs to go well around the house. I want that too, most of the time.
It was very tempting to brush her off and go on about how I don't get the recognition I deserve.
I can recall countless times where I've gone defensive - and it led to in a near WWIII event.

Listening without judgement.
At work.
At home.
At dinner time.
At bath time with the kids.


We secretly expect our managers and leaders to be able to attain this kind of broad shoulders listening.
But we rarely encourage them when they do.
But we rarely pursue it ourselves.

This takes immense amount of maturity and work.
And many failures.

Like most things, all good endeavours are hard.

Who else is seeing this at home or at work?
I'd be keen to hear of your journey, or if you've embarked on that journey.

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In a part of my job, I get paid to chew on this stuff.
I get training and lots of on the job experience to hone this in.
And it's so good and useful that I really should be sharing this stuff.

What? I thought you were an engineer? 

Yes, I am also a part time investigator.
As an incident investigator I get to look into an incident and find out what went wrong - e.g. person rolls their ankle or equipment fails catastrophically.
I dig in deep and try to clearly articulate the root cause.
On the surface the issue is the technical bit that broke or the person who deviated from the accepted norm. A good investigation rarely blames the bit.
I write a report and the company tries to fix the problem based on my recommendations.
Almost always, the root cause points back to something that relates to how the manager(s) do their job. Often, when multiple parties are involved, the managers failed to failing to communicate to the teams or to promote the right kind of communication between the parties. Or when problems are glaringly obvious, they are not addressed because managers don't listen.

See the Deepwater Horizon Movie for a fine example of not listening to your frontline people.
On the surface (pun intended) it is about an oil rig.
Deep down it is about encouraging people to speak up.
And to listen. And then to do something to address their concerns.
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I have been reading this book btw - awesome.