The Poetry of Immediate Feedback

In a poetry slam, a poet gets up in front of a live audience and a handful of judges who have numbered cards and reads his or her poetry.  The poetry slam I have been to was a loud raucous event, fueled by alcohol, a rock band and an emcee with a sarcastic sense of humor.

The appeal of a poetry slam for the audience is easy to see.  You get to cheer and jeer as the spirit moves you.  You get to hear short creative works, presented by their creators and pass certain and swift judgement on their creation.  It has a bit of a Roman Coliseum feel to it.

It had me wondering, however, what the appeal was to the poets who participate.  The prize money is small and the venue is obscure.  The crowd can be downright hostile.  What would drive a poet, presumably a soul sensitive enough to create poetry worthy of performance, to step in front of the verbal firing line of the poetry slam.

Then it occurred to me.  For the poet, the appeal of the slam was the feedback, immediate feedback.  Audiences at slams hold little back.  If they think something is funny, you will hear belly laughs.  If something touches them, they don't hide their tears.  And if they don't like what they are hearing...well, let's just say the poet finds out about it!

Employees are no different than the poets at the slam.  They are hungry for feedback.  They are willing to stick their neck out, if means getting feedback.  Especially if its immediate feedback.

Feedback is a powerful and often neglected management tool.  The things about feedback is that it has a fairly short half life.  The power of feedback diminishes as the distance increases between the situation/action/event being critiqued and the feedback of that situation/action/event.

Too many managers see that annual evaluation process as a time for feedback.  If the first time your staff member is hearing about what you thought about something they did is during the annual evaluation session, you might as well save your breath.  Because unless the thing you are talking about happened on the way into the meeting, it probably won't have any impact.

At a poetry slam, poets almost always know if the audience likes their poem long before they finish reading their three minute creation.  If it is bad enough, the poet won't even get to finish.

I am not suggesting that we start providing managers with numbered cards and encourage them to cut people off in mid-sentance.  I am, however, suggesting that managers should connect their feedback as closely as possible to the situation being evaluated.  Otherwise it is a bit like someone saying, "I like the haircut you got last April."

If you ask most employees about what they lack, 

My estimation is they will say feedback.

It is easy and cheap to address that need

In a timely and forthright manner, indeed.

I am ready to be booed off the stage!