Instead of feedback, how about feedforward?
Globe and Mail, October 2006 Receiving feedback rarely ranks as one of work’s more pleasurable activities. Now, management guru Marshall Goldsmith has devised a concept he calls “feedforward” — the focus being on how to do things better in the future, rather than raking over the past. The fundamental problem with feedback is that there is nothing the recipient can do to change what has already occurred, Mr. Goldsmith, a California-based executive coach, said in Toronto this week at a convention of the Canadian Society for Training and Development. In a rousing session, the unrelentingly cheerful Mr. Goldsmith had hundreds of delegates practice feedforward by turning to total strangers and confessing one aspect of their behaviour that they would like to improve. Many said they wanted to be better listeners, some wanted to be more patient, less judgmental or better able to handle disappointment. These were the rules: Delegates were to speak to as many randomly selected fellow participan
