Dr. Therese Huston - Let's Talk: Make Effective Feedback Your Superpower

Therese Huston, Ph.D., is a cognitive scientist at Seattle University and the author of three books.  Her new book, Let’s Talk: Make Effective Feedback Your Superpower, was just published by Portfolio / Penguin Random House, and the New York Times called her last book, How Women Decide: What's True, What's Not, and Why It Matters, “required reading on Wall Street.”  Therese received her BA from Carleton College and her MS and PhD in cognitive psychology from Carnegie Mellon University. She’s currently enrolled in a graduate program in Organizational Leadership at Oxford University.  In 2004, she founded the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning at Seattle University.  Her first book, Teaching What You Don't Know, was published by Harvard University Press.  Therese has also written for the New York Times and Harvard Business Review and her last book was named a summer reading title by Oprah.com. 

Therese gives talks and leads workshops on how to create more inclusive workplaces.  Microsoft, Amazon, Cleveland Clinic, and TEDX have all asked Therese to speak on creating more inclusive workplaces.  Her favorite place to speak was Harvard Business School to a standing-room-only crowd, and her least favorite was a conference in Denver where no one showed up. To learn more, visit her Website.

Quotes From This Episode

• "The three types of feedback that employees need are appreciation, coaching, and evaluation."
• "Carolyn Wiley looked at 50 years’ worth of data on different types of feedback and found that roughly 80% of managers think they give feedback and appreciation...Whereas only 20% of employees feel that they hear it frequently enough."
• "There’s a great team out of the University of Michigan that found the best performing teams get 5.6 pieces of praise for every piece of criticism"
• "You want to state your good intentions when you’re giving feedback."
• "The specificity of the feedback women get is less specific praise and less specific coaching."

Resources Mentioned In This Episode

• Book: Thanks for the Feedback by Douglas Stone and Sheila Heen
• Project Implicit:

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Transcript

Note: Voice-to-text transcriptions are about 90% accurate. 

Scott Allen  0:02  
Everybody, Good afternoon. Welcome to the Phronesis podcast. And today we have Therese Huston...Dr. Therese Huston, and is the founder of the Center of Excellence in Teaching and Learning at Seattle University. She's given more than 225, keynotes and workshops. She's spoken at Amazon, the Cleveland Clinic, Harvard Business School. She's done TED Talks. Her work has been featured on NPR, Oprah's O magazine, the Harvard Business Review, Time Magazine, Huffington Post, the LA Times. And now to reach the pinnacle, the Phronesis podcast,

Therese Huston  0:39  
I feel. I feel so lucky to be here, Scott, I want you to introduce me, everywhere I go. That was amazing.

Scott Allen  0:48  
We are so thankful for your time today. And I'm really, really looking forward to this conversation. But before we jump in, maybe tell listeners a little bit more about you.

Therese Huston  0:59  
So I am originally from Cleveland, and I know you're there in Cleveland. So I make that note, I know you have listeners all over the world, but we have a love for the corner of northeastern Ohio. Yeah, exactly. Um, I, I feel very lucky, I've been able to pursue a number of passion projects, and the most recent one is trying to help people get better at feedback. It's one of the things that so many of us dread, and it doesn't have to be a dreadful experience. So that's, that's where my passion is right now. And I've been, as you said, very lucky, I've been invited to into a number of workplaces to help them make their culture more inclusive, you know, and, and so many organizations right now are putting up things on their website saying, you know, we need to make a difference. Black Lives Matter and various things, but we need to make it more than lip service. So I'm really trying to help people have the tools to be more inclusive around race and gender and other dimensions of difference.

Scott Allen  1:57  
I love that. I love that. I think that in the sustainability world. They call that greenwashing where the brochure looks beautiful. And we're talking in very, very flowery terms. But are we actually really doing the work behind the scenes, and shifting the culture and the mindset of the organization. And so your work is really to help organizations truly make that shift where we can be more inclusive.

Therese Huston  2:22  
And I think so many of us want to make a difference. And we're hungry for what's the advice to make a difference, right? That we're like, Okay, well, I'll read the books, I'll do my homework, but then we're not sure what to do differently. When we show up at work. How do we change our little culture? Little corner of the world? How can we make the culture better through our own conversations? And it's, there's, there's great research, I know, you appreciate research. There's great research out there on how to do this. And I'm, I'm trying to bring that research to the world.

Scott Allen  2:50  
Let's jump in. So the book is let's talk and maybe share a little bit with listeners, what was the impetus of the book? Why move into this space? specifically? What do you think? Well,

Therese Huston  3:02  
my motto is we all deserve great feedback. But we don't all receive great feedback. And I want to change that. I there, I have two inspirations or ways that I got excited about writing this book, one's professional one's personal. So I'll tell the professional first then I'll tell this personal story. Cool. So on the professional side, as I talk with people about giving feedback, talk with managers and leaders, I've discovered who gets training and how to give feedback, right? Who don't get it? No one? No, you don't get it in your MBA program. I just did an event for attorneys. You don't learn it in law school, you don't learn it in your Ph. D program. The only group I can find who is trained on how to give feedback are elementary school teachers. Right? So right, they're taught how to give feedback to their six-year-olds or their eight-year-olds, but most of us aren't trained and how to give feedback to adults. And yet we show up at work, and it's a regular part of what we do. I think one of the...you commented in one of our earlier conversations about how you're impressed with some of the statistics that I provide. And one of the statistics that really struck me was from Carolyn Wiley at Roosevelt University, she looked at 50 years' worth of data, and she found that 80% of managers think they express praise and appreciation frequently. So yes, 80% of managers think I'm telling people what great work they're doing. But only 20% of employees feel like they're getting enough appreciation and praise.

Scott Allen  4:31  
And that reminds me of the Dunning Kruger effect. Have you ever read any of that research?

Therese Huston  4:36  
I have? I have. So how do you see it connecting?

Scott Allen  4:39  
Just that we tend to overestimate our own abilities?

Therese Huston  4:43  
Of course, no, that's a perfect example. And that, you know, and it also aligns with we think we're better at something than we are and that's and people think they're better at praise than they are. So the way that I think about it is managers think that they're offering a buffet of praise. And recognition. And employees are like this is a buffet of kale. Okay?

Scott Allen  5:11  
the Brussel sprouts!

Therese Huston  5:13  
Exactly. I'm done with the feedback. That's good for me. So that's the professional inspiration to really help people get over that dread and improve become the feedback givers. They imagine that they are. And then the personal inspiration, some of my most memorable feedback experiences at work. were times when I was either giving hard feedback or receiving hard feedback. Do you have time for a quick story?

Scott Allen  5:39  
I do. Yeah, please.

Therese Huston  5:40  
Okay, great. So early in my career, I was in my early 30s. And I had just been in a new job for a year it had been a career shift. And you know what it's like when you make a career shift. You're really anxious. Am I doing this? Right? Yeah. And I asked my boss a year had gone by. And so I asked her, could we sit down and have a performance conversation where we review the year what went well, what I can improve? And she said, Sure, let's go out to lunch. This is a great idea. I'm not sure why it had to be my idea. But it was. And so she said, Let's go out to lunch. So we had this, we went to a really nice restaurant, Scott, we had a lovely lunch. But we didn't talk about my performance at all. We talked about her family. We talked about my upcoming wedding. Nothing, nothing is great bonding, right, great bonding. And that's it. So at the end of the conversation, we're paying the bill and I'm thinking, Okay, we've got a 15-minute walk back to the office. I'll bring it up on the way back. Yeah, I'll ask I'll ask her like, okay, let's talk about my year. And she said, Can we threes? Can we just duck in the restroom before we head back? And I said, Sure. Scott, I'm not kidding. We both get in our stalls. And she said, so about your first year. And I'm thinking this is a public restroom. No, no, no, no, who? I don't know. Wow. Right. I don't know if he's gonna walk in. I can't write any of this down. I mean, there are so many ways this was wrong. It was painful. And I took away two lessons from that. First of all, the feedback recipient feels really powerless. Right? I could have said, Not right now. Not now. But I didn't feel like I had that power to do that. I just needed to accept this the way she was giving it. And the other lesson that I learned is, even when people have good intentions, they can flub their feedback, I think she meant well. I think she was all of a sudden, like, Oh, I forgot to bring this up. We need to talk about this. And she felt an urgency. But it made me realize people even when people have good intentions, this doesn't always go well. So I there's a real need out there to help people give better feedback.

Scott Allen  7:43  
Yes.

Therese Huston  7:45  
And I know your listeners are probably thinking Teres I wouldn't make that mistake. I would never give feedback in a public restroom. But obviously, it can happen, right? We don't realize the different places where feedback is ill-timed or inappropriate. And I want to help people become more aware.

Scott Allen  8:04  
Well, it is so interesting to Reese because my wife spent the week conducting some interviews and one of the applicants didn't answer, and then ended up calling back about three minutes late to the interview. And the applicant, my wife would have she was okay. Sometimes your ringer doesn't go off, we get it. But the applicant literally for the next three or four minutes just was saying Oh crap, I'm so this just really really pisses me off. And I can't believe that happened to me. And it's one of those moments where if you could play it videotape or audio back to that individual about how they showed up in that moment, I think they'd be horrified. But each one of us, you know, that social awareness, each one of us, I think, walk into some of those situations now and again, but even to help people be aware that logically, Yes, I understand that I probably shouldn't start the interview by communicating this way. I probably shouldn't give feedback from a bathroom stall, but it happens.

Therese Huston  9:07  
And I and I'll bet you know if and I tell that story about the bathroom stall in my book and I'll bet if my former boss reads that story, I'm not even sure that she would remember it was her because I'm sure for her. It was just a moment of like, Oh, well at least I told to Reese how she was doing right she probably doesn't remember the context or how horrifying she had trouble probably taking my perspective on how horrifying this was. Was it goodness at least? I think that's why she thought it was okay. Right? Because you got this nailed. I'm impressed here one check. But I didn't know that. Right. I didn't know where she was gonna go with a conversation. And, you know, if I write another book on feedback, I'd love to write feedback on how to be receptive to feedback because I certainly was not receptive at that moment. But if you've got a great point if we could see the video of ourselves You would think that did I say that? Did I? Did I do that for real? Yeah, exactly.

Scott Allen  10:05  
So what else did you learn in the process? What are a couple of things that stood out for you, as you did the research for this book? Well, there are,

Therese Huston  10:13  
there are two findings, I'd love to share because they're fascinating in terms of the research, I don't think that they're obvious. But they're easy things to change once you know about them. So you know, I love the low-hanging fruit when it comes to research. Yeah. So the first one is, what are the different types of feedback an employee needs as a manager, you need to be thinking about what does the other person needs? And most of us think of feedback as two kinds of feedback, right? There's positive feedback and negative feedback. Or if you're, if you're being delicate, you don't call it negative feedback. You call it constructive feedback, right? Yeah. So you think positive and constructive. But there's a great book by Douglas Stone and Sheila Hien, Thanks for the Feedback. And they point out that from an employee's perspective, what they really need are three kinds of feedback not to so the first kind is the positive positive feedback, they call it appreciation. And I like that, that notion, it's what I like about your work, what I want you to do more of those are the kinds of things my boss said in that bathroom stall, keep doing this, and this and this, right. That's appreciation, that's great. But the other two kinds that we all need, as employees that we're hoping for from our supervisors, are coaching and evaluation. So coaching is how you can adapt what you can change how you can approach a problem differently, right? It's, it's how to make how to take what you're doing and make it even better going forward, expanding your skill base, right? So that's coaching. Love that. Yep. And the other is evaluation. This is the part that makes most of us anxious evaluation is letting someone know where they stand. Right. You know, you know, Scott, given the number of years that you've been at john Carroll, are you producing at the level that we have research that we'd expect for someone for at your level? Right. And it's letting someone know, are you getting the promotion? You know, are you on track to get the promotion? Maybe I don't know the news about the promotion. But all too often, we just do evaluation conversations when we absolutely have to when HR requires it. And people you know, I've worked with a lot of leaders, and they find that if they do evaluation conversations more often, employees are so grateful to find out Yes, I'm on track or no, I'm not on track. So So anyway, those are the three types that employees need appreciation, coaching, and evaluation.

Scott Allen  12:27  
Well, and what's interesting is I I would be interested in what the research would be on. And Teres I'm just I'm losing it right now as to whether this was the research that you suggested at the beginning of our discussion because I think it was, I think probably leaders think that they're giving a lot of that appreciative feedback, but I think there's it's probably lacking was that the statistic you gave at the very beginning of our discussion?

Therese Huston  12:50  
That was so yeah. Carolyn Wiley's work, found that you know, she looked at 50 years' worth of data on different types of feedback and found that 80, roughly 80% of managers think they give feedback, appreciation, specific, frequently specific, specific, right? Whereas only 20% of employees feel that they hear it frequently enough. So that's Yeah, that's the statistic.

Scott Allen  13:13  
Well, in some of the coaching feedback, I imagine as well, so many missed opportunities, where the leader is literally kind of observing something I've been hearing this a lot in the last year, while they're never on camera, will have you set a norm in the meetings that everyone is on the camera. But it's interesting because they're making judgments in their head about an individual when we haven't explicitly made the norm. Explicit. Yes, right. But that's happening, right? Because for some reason, at that moment, the leader isn't coaching or isn't suggesting an alternative alternate behavior, to take things to the next level. Right. So I think, whether it's the appreciation, or whether it's the coaching, I have to imagine there are so many missed opportunities. First, from a day to day, was there anything on the coaching the frequency of coaching type feedback? Did any of that research exist?

Therese Huston  14:03  
You know, I haven't found much research on the frequency of coaching. You know, most of the research is on the frequency of praise. There's a great team out of the University of Michigan that finds that the best performing teams get 5.6 pieces of praise for every piece of criticism, right? Which is Yeah, I think of office space and the pieces of flair, right. Lots and lots of pieces of flair, lots of pieces of appreciation. So I think that's one of the reasons we see that appreciation gap. But there's less data on coaching. What what I have seen is that we want to offer to coach as immediately as possible. So for instance, the great example that you gave, you know, people aren't on camera. You know, you might not want to call it out in the in 10 person zoom meeting, say, hey, Scott, can you turn on your camera, but as soon as you know, you can do it privately in the chat, right? Yeah, you could I could just send you an individual chat that says Hey, Scott, can you turn on your camera? And that's coaching right at the moment, right? All too often what I hear a real frustration for employees is that there'll be one person who needs coaching. And because the leader or the manager is uncomfortable doing it, they make it a policy that isn't convenient for everyone, right? They, they now say, you know, everyone needs to be on camera, or there's this, you know, consequence or you know, and it's kind of like one of those like, Oh, come on, you know, I've got my three-year-old in my lap. Really?

Scott Allen  15:36  
Please talk to Jim.

Therese Huston  15:37  
Exactly. Just talk to Jim, right. Or when I talk with employees who are in the service industry, there'll be all of these signs in the break room for policies where they're really just about Jim, when the truth is, right. We're really tired of all these extra requirements that are placed on all of us when if you just coach the one person, it would be enough?

Scott Allen  15:56  
Yeah, yeah. Okay, so three types of feedback, eight types of feedback, what else? What's another theme from the book that stood out for you?

Therese Huston  16:03  
The second finding and practice is, again, really, it's not obvious. But once you know about it, it's a really easy to fix to make, it's going to feel artificial at first. But Wow, you will be impressed with the results. And that is that you want to state you're good intentions when you're giving feedback. So first, give the bad news. And I'll give you the good news. So the bad news is that when you're giving someone news that's unwelcome. So and often coaching or evaluation is unwelcome news, or can't that's at least the part that makes us anxious and dreaded. If you've got bad news, people will immediately scribble in negative intentions, when that might not be what you mean. Yeah. Leslie, john is a business professor at Harvard Business School, a management professor. And she did some fascinating studies, where basically she was having the researcher flip a coin, right? Yeah, so they flip a coin. And they're gonna get tell you heads or tails, and you're gonna win money, whether it's heads or tails, right? Because you've used you've said ahead of time, Scott, I'm going with heads, they flip the coin. And then they tell you, oh, sorry, Scott, it was tails. And the participant thinks that the researcher wanted them to have a losing outcome. They will just immediately ascribe negative intentions, even though they saw the person flip the coin, they can see that it was random. Right? Yeah, so we and so just imagine at work if you have bad news for someone like you, you're telling someone, I need you to provide the budget numbers once a week, you know, I know right now, you do it once a month, but we need those budget numbers more often. Yeah, that person could be like, Oh, you're such a micromanager. Or you don't trust that I'm good with numbers or you know, they're just going to assume some negative intentions on your part, when really all you're doing is like, I've got to make sure that we stay within budget. It's COVID. We're hurting, right? Yeah, that you don't have any negative intentions. You think nothing negative about that person. But let's see, john, john found two things. One, if you state your good intentions ahead of time, and the researcher just basically had to say, I'm going to try to get heads for you. Right? He said, You said you wanted heads, I'm going to try to get heads, and then it's still random. Let's do this. Exactly. And then it was random. But the participant thought, Well, that was like that experiment. They didn't mean to write they gave him they thought much more positively of them. So what a simple thing to do. Yeah. And the other thing is that they found that people never ascribed good intentions. So if they got a good outcome, they didn't tell a positive story on their own. Right. So if you said, I'm expecting heads, and the researcher flipped and got heads, the participant wasn't thinking, Oh, she was trying to get me heads. The researcher had to tell them, I'm trying to do this for you. And then they told a positive story. So the negative story pops up automatically, the positive story does not. So that's why we need to tell people a positive story. Right. Interesting. It's really

Scott Allen  18:58  
quick and feedback. What is that? That is that? It's always if I was just reading off the top of my head, would that be? I want us to have a great working relationship.

Therese Huston  19:07  
Yes. So that could be as simple as that. Right? That's nice and generic, you could use that in any circumstance. It could be something like, you know, I want people to see how professional you are. And so I'd like you to do this extra thing. I know, I know that you're a professional Scott. And I want other people to see that too. Let's take the example of a budget, right? You want people to provide, you know, you've got someone who's in charge of the budget, and you want them to give you budget updates once a week. That's a hard one, right? What's the positive intention there? The positive intention, the good intention that you could express might be something like, Look, I don't I see how organized you are. I see how on top of things you are, and I don't want to surprise you at the last minute with a budget request, because I think that would just disrupt the fabulous system that you have. So I'm wondering, could you add this to your system of giving me budget update every Monday? Hmm, that sounds like Oh, that's great. You're trying to work with me, right? Yeah. You're trying to honors you're trying to honor something that I consider important, which is I'm super organized. So that would be a way that you could frame it as I want good things for you. I don't want to make life harder for you. Could we do this?

Scott Allen  20:11  
Yep. Like, is there another example that comes to mind for you?

Therese Huston  20:16  
Oh, you know, um, I had one recently where someone provided the, someone I was working with provided the wrong detail into a client. And it was a really important detail. So I was like, oh, my goodness, it

Scott Allen  20:31  
was $100,000.

Therese Huston  20:34  
Yeah, something like that. Right. I wish we were working with those numbers. But yeah, so something like that, where I had to correct the detail immediately. And, you know, first I checked in with her, are you doing okay? Because this is not like you to get a detail wrong. So I, you know, I said that first, which was important, because it gave her a chance to tell the story. And then I said, You know, I know that you're incredibly detail-oriented. And I want to make sure all of our clients trust that about you as well, I want that to be the first impression that they get of you is that you're, you're someone who's entirely on top of the details because that's going to help them relax. And it's also going to mean less work for you because they'll be checking with you less often. So what can we do to make sure that you get the details right the first time, right? But again, I was putting it as and people really care about their reputations. So that's always a good one to go to. I want to make sure you have a good reputation.

Scott Allen  21:26  
Yeah, I mean, I imagine it could go to, I want to, I want to see you succeed, I want you to progress in the organization. I want you to live into whatever your aspirations are here. And then you kind of go into that coaching feedback or some of the behavioral shifts that you would like to see exactly. Again, that's a positive intent, which is positive intent.

Therese Huston  21:49  
Yep. And it's really worth it. And I'll tell you, Scott, it's an easy step to forget. Because john found that it was important to do this at the beginning, not at the end, say, oops, sorry. And then a good thing. You know you want to set the story positive from the beginning before you give the bad news. I found I did it recently with my husband. Where I had to give him feedback on something. And I framed it as like, honey, I want to make sure you create a good impression on people. And blank. And I've got to tell you, Scott, it worked like a charm. I couldn't believe he was just like, Oh, yeah. Oh, thank you so much. And he's he is not someone who takes feedback. Well, so it was really, it was a win and marrow laboratory. Exactly, exactly. But it'll feel artificial. When you do it. It'll, you know, at least for me, it does. And then I'm amazed at how the other person leans in. They're curious because you've stated this good intention.

Scott Allen  22:48  
Yep. Oh, that's wonderful. What one, one area that caught my attention in the book was practice number four, except you're biased and be vigilant. And there was a statistic that really stood out for me, which was about three-quarters of adults have unconscious gender bias that favors Men at Work. So most of us need to take extra steps to ensure that bias doesn't leak into our evaluations. So three quarters.

Therese Huston  23:16  
It's high, right? He's disturbing. It really is. And so that statistic comes from a study where the team was looking at over 380,000 people that were surveyed in the United States. So this is data in the US. And they found that out of that 380,000 people 76%. So like you said, basically, three out of four people had a strong association where they automatically associated men with careers and work, and they associated women with home and family. And when I first read this, Scott, so it's really interesting. I'm gonna I'm going to confession time. Yeah, I have you. Have you ever taken the Implicit Association Test? Have you ever done that?

Scott Allen  23:59  
I've done two or three of the different because of a different site difference, right? Yes,

Therese Huston  24:03  
exactly. Right.

Scott Allen  24:04  
I've done two or three of them. Yes.

Therese Huston  24:06  
So the Implicit Association Test the for any listeners who aren't familiar with this? You can take it at Harvard's website and as you said, there are tests for unconscious bias. And you could be you could test yourself on gender or race. There's one for obesity, or do you have bias against people who are overweight? There are, there are ones about anyway, anyway, gender, gender, and race as well as a number of other factors. And so I  was curious whether I had an unconscious bias around gender and work. So I took the one that has to do with gender and do you, associate men or women, with family or men and women's work? And I was really upset Scott because I was one of that 76% that associated men with work and women with family. And so I thought immediately Well, that's wrong. I got that dude. I'm like, let's take it again. I was just in a bad mood or something right? And you can't You can immediately take the test again. And I took it again. And it takes about 15 minutes, and I got the same result. And this time I was, I was trying hard right to, not to lose, so to speak. And it was really fascinating to me because I'm someone who goes around the country and gives talks about gender bias and work and how to improve the situation for women at work. And yet, even I have at the unconscious level, I more strongly associate men with work. And I think part of that is we have really ever come from a real matriarchal family, were like, the women, the women are definitely in charge at home. And so it's just an eye-opener, we can have one set of beliefs consciously, and a really different set of beliefs unconsciously. And the two can be contradictory. And yet, yet that still could coexist. So for any listener who wonders about their unconscious bias, try the Implicit Association Test. You'd be surprised.

Scott Allen  25:57  
And I'll put that in the show notes for sure. So that because it doesn't cost anything, it's free, right? It's free.

Therese Huston  26:03  
Great. Yep. They do collect your data. They collect your data. That's the only thing to let people know what they do to collect your data. And they'll tell you that so you have to say yes, except but

Unknown Speaker  26:12  
yeah, okay. Have you

Scott Allen  26:14  
ever seen, I oftentimes will share this story. When I talk about conceptual blocks, which are rules we have in our head that kind of subconsciously define how we, how we think about something. And there's a story that goes, a young boy and his father were out playing football when they were caught at the bottom of a giant pile up, both were injured and rushed to the hospital. They were wheeled into separate operation rooms and two doctors prepped up to work on them. One doctor for each patient, the doctor operating on the father got started right away, but the doctor assigned to the young boy stared at him, and surprise, I can't operate on him. The doctor exclaimed to the staff. That child is my son. How can that be? Have you ever heard that story?

Therese Huston  26:57  
I have? No. And it just creates this like we know we can't wait. Maybe it's a stepdad right, you start thinking like, right, Is this his adopted? Father? What is

Scott Allen  27:07  
your story, your story you just told reminded me of my wife? Because now I'm going to be in big trouble. But she said that because she didn't? The answer is that the female surgeon is, you know, the female or the surgeon is a female surgeon, the doctor right that women can, but when you and I'll put that in the show notes for listeners try it. It's fascinating. I've done this in healthcare organizations. Wow. percentage of people don't get it. But I think it's interesting, because and then another answer to that is that it could be a gay couple which I had an audience. Yeah, I'd never thought of that. Yeah. So your It reminded me your story that you just mentioned reminded me of my wife when I showed that to her. And she said, Don't you ever tell someone that I didn't get that right?

Now, I've told the world!

Therese Huston  27:55  
I remember our meeting. It's fascinating. I'll admit when I read that one, too. I remember reading it in an article by Adam Grant and Sheryl Sandberg a few years back was the first time I encountered it. And I fell into it too. I immediately I try it. You think you're being clever, right? Do you think you're being clever coming up with it's it's a gay male couple? Or it's a stepdad? Right. I'm not even realizing that your unconscious bias isn't even allowing you to picture a female surgeon. Right? Yeah, it's, it's not counting up is one of your clever possibilities.

Scott Allen  28:25  
Yeah, yeah. Well, talk a little bit about this chapter. What else did you find? When it comes to providing feedback and other gender differences? I'm really, really interested in hearing more about that. What did you find?

Therese Huston  28:38  
Well, I find this part fascinating for two reasons. So I'll get into some of the different ways we have gender bias and our feedback. But I think the key takeaway is that we don't expect to give feedback differently to men and women, or to white people and people of color. We just think, well, of course, you know, sure. I vary my style a little bit when I'm giving feedback to different people on my team. Yeah, but the way that we vary our style falls along gender and racial lines, we really, we don't realize it, we think we think we're just responding to the unique aspects of some one person, but we're really responding along gender lines.

Scott Allen  29:16  
So we're almost telling ourselves a story. We're almost fooling ourselves in a way, right?

Therese Huston  29:20  
Yes. Oh, that's so interesting. That's a nice way to put it. We're fooling ourselves.

Scott Allen  29:24  
We just stylistic difference. It's just Hi, I'm just adjusting my style. But yes,

Therese Huston  29:28  
right. And, you know, this is the way that I talk with Scott versus this is the way that I talk with Elon right that you know, um, you know, that's we have different relationships. But they're predictable patterns. The researchers are finding how you talk to all the women on your team versus how you talk to all the men on your team. And the result is that men get better feedback. So there's, there's a couple of things a couple of key findings. So the first one is frequency, where male employees get more frequent feedback than women do. There's a study in the UK Hey have 2000 employees, all of them worked at companies with at least 50 people. So we're not talking like a three-person startup, right? At least 50 people. And they found that 43% of the male employees got feedback from their supervisor every week, whereas only 29% of the women did. Now, when when I share that statistic, to groups where, you know, we're talking about gender bias, the women are like, wait, men get feedback every week.

Scott Allen  30:28  
I just get it in bathroom stalls, I guess. That's not how it works?

Therese Huston  30:37  
Well, and you know, you know, my boss was not I have I had a male colleague who started the job the same month that I did, you know, she wasn't giving him the feedback that way, right? She wasn't going in the bathroom stall.

Scott Allen  30:50  
"We finished lunch, I like to give my feedback in a very specific way."

Therese Huston  30:58  
So men are getting feedback more often. It's not that every man is getting feedback once a week, but more men than women get feedback once a week. And so that's concerning. Then there's also the specificity of feedback. So men tend to get more specific praise, and more specific critical coaching, they get more specific coaching. So an example would be women are more likely than men to be told the Vegas feedback possible, which keeps doing what you're doing. That's great. You know, I'm so glad you're on the team. Scott. Just keep it up. Okay. Okay. So that's, it's kind of like, well, which of the 50 things that I did this week? Should I keep doing right? Because I'm, I'm trying to knock it out of the park, but you're not giving me anything specific. So women are more likely to get that vague praise. Women are also more likely to get vague coaching. So whereas women might be told, you know, you might tell Denise on your team. Denise, you need to show more curiosity, right. And some of your listeners like oh, that's pretty specific. Teresa, I, I could that would be helpful. You tell that to Denise. But what do you tell David, you tell David, okay, David, you need to show more curiosity, when a potential client doesn't get back to you. Now that that is so much more specific for David to know what to do differently. Whereas Denise is like, well, when do I need to show more curiosity in meetings and emails? Right? She's now she's it's "whack a mole" for her. Right? Where's David? David's,

Scott Allen  32:25  
David's more? Well, he is he's set up for success in a different way than she is. Right. Exactly.

Therese Huston  32:33  
Exactly. He's he now knows the steps to take and that step is a much smaller step for him. Whereas for her, she just like, I could show curiosity everywhere. I just don't even know where to begin, right? And isn't that going to be tedious for other people? If I'm always asking questions, right? Where is he, he's way more set up for success. So the specificity of the feedback, women gets less specific praise and less specific coaching. Wow. And then the third one that I found really interesting is consistency. So and I talked about this quite a bit in the book, men tend to get more consistent feedback, and women tend to get feedback across the board. So a lot of companies use ratings, numeric rating systems, where you get a one out of five, or you know, you get a one out of three, where three is "exceeds expectations," and one is not meeting expectations. And what one research team has found is that, but of course, you don't just get the number, right, Scott, you're not just given a five on a sheet of paper? With no comments, right? There's a five and then there's a bunch of comments, right? Yeah. And what one research team found was that when you look at men who get a five, they tend to get the kind of comments that are exemplary. You're so impressive, you do superb work, you know, you're one of the team members that contributed the most this year, right? The language is very strong. And that's what they found for men. If a guy gets a five, he's got the super-strong, positive language. But what they found for women was that when that super strong, positive language appeared in women's reviews, the women would still get a three or a four. So you had this inconsistent feedback when we're being told that they're so impressive, and they're superb with clients. But then they get a three and they're like, wait, I don't I don't know what to improve, right? Yeah, you're telling me I'm at the top of my game, but why didn't I get a five? Why did I get a four out of five? And so people managers seem to sugarcoat the comments, too for women. Whereas men, if a guy gets a five, you can really believe that he does exceptional work. Whereas for a woman, you're kind of like, Well, does she really deserve a five because I see all inconsistency is here, right between her comments and the numbers. And I think that makes it I think it's one of the reasons that women have to work harder to get the same opportunity. Unity's for promotion. It's a hidden reason because we get inconsistent messages about women. And we begin to suspect that the comments are sugar-coated from women, whereas we know people will tell men like it is.

Scott Allen  35:11  
Wow. Why? For literally the last three statistics that you shared, why I hear you, what hypotheses do you have?

Therese Huston  35:21  
Right? It's such a good question. That's the $100 question or the $1 million question. Um, I think there are at least two reasons. So one, you know, we get into a little bit of the theoretical research here, one of the things that happen when we're providing feedback across differences. So if you're a white male manager, providing feedback to a female employee, or you're a white manager providing female to a black employee, is that we experienced something called protective hesitation. Have you heard that phrase before? protective has not? Okay. Yeah. Yeah. It doesn't seem to have broken through the site guys yet. So protective hesitation is this notion that it's uncomfortable, to give information that you think the other person will take the wrong way, right. And it's always uncomfortable, or it's often uncomfortable to get tell someone, they're not performing up to standard. However, it's really uncomfortable. If you're a male manager, giving feedback to the only woman on your team, you're concerned, she'll think I'm sexist, she's gonna think that I don't think women can perform as well as men. And so if you're that white manager or that male manager, you're thinking, Oh, you know what? I'm just gonna tell her she's doing fine. Because that's the easy thing to say. As opposed to with the men on your team, you're like, come on, I know you can do better, right? But you feel that that would be taken as sexist if you said that to the women on your team. And I've heard that in a lot of my interviews when I can get managers to be really candid. They'll be like, I've got one woman on my team, and I'm not coaching her the way I coach my men. Oh, I wish I could. But I, I just don't know how right and it's really fascinating that people trip up.

Scott Allen  37:01  
Are they worried about legal ramifications? Are they worried about you know, it going into HR? What, what do you hear people say? Or what? Again, what kind of hypothesis do you have? Is it just that they're not skilled? Is it all of the above?

Therese Huston  37:15  
Yeah, it might be all of the above. You know, I'm not sure that people that managers are going so far as to think of legal but they are concerned that you might go to HR that you could get a reputation for being someone who isn't good to women. That who is who isn't fair to women. So that is one of I think the reputation is part of the concern. There's also a concern, I so surprised by this. And I know there are some listeners like Teresa, it's so sexist. But I hear from a number of managers like, Ah, what if she cries? Yeah, people expect that to happen more often with women and women do tend to cry more in the workplace than men. But it's one of these fascinating things. I interviewed one manager at a tech company. He's been a manager for 20. Some years, he's only had one woman cry once in his office. And yet, and yet, he now fears that that will happen again. And so he says, like, you know, what can I do? I've got to be careful with women. I, you know, I don't want them to get upset. Right. But it's only happened once.

Scott Allen  38:18  
Yeah, but he's still that was like a big thing in his head. Big thing. Exactly. And he's had a lot of men in his office yelling and screaming.

Therese Huston  38:27  
Exactly. Right. Right. He's probably had a, he's probably had a lot of men get emotional and other ways. But this, this was so uncomfortable for him, or he's had so few female employees, the fact that it happened once, who knows if it could happen again, right. But it but that likelihood is there. So people expect women to get more emotional. And when men get angry, they accept that they don't, that doesn't bother them as much as a woman getting sad. And often it's really interesting. I interviewed one female executive, who got the feedback that she wasn't getting a promotion. And she cried. But she didn't cry because she was sad. She was just so mad that she didn't feel she could get angry. She had this incredible welling up of emotion. And crying seemed like the better outlet, right? So she wasn't sad. She was pissed off. But she didn't feel like she could get away with getting angry. Or expressing it.

Scott Allen  39:22  
Right. So what are your thoughts on why? Any other thoughts?

Therese Huston  39:27  
Um, you know, I think the most depressing reason because so if that's alright for me to go to the most depressing reason is that we pay more attention to men's work. There's, there's research I can't remember the team, the research team now, but there's research showing that..oh, they're out of the University of Kent and remember where they are. They found that we tend to be really interested in men who show potential, right? So when we think about something we pay attention to potential in man if we got an employee who thinks he's going to be a superstar, oh my gosh, he's got what it takes, we pay more attention to his work, and we want to invest more in him. Whereas for women, we aren't as interested in potential, we need to see a track record, we become more interested in women, once they've accumulated a whole bunch of accomplishments. So that creates this interesting attention dynamic, where you've got a guy who's only worked for you for six months, and you're like, he is amazing, I want to keep investing in him, he's, he's gonna be, he's gonna be the next manager that comes out of this bunch. Whereas for women, six months in, you still haven't seen enough of a track record for her yet. So you're not paying as much attention to her because she's got to build up the track record before you start paying attention to her the way you pay attention to the guys with potential. So I think I think one of the things that are going on is a little bit of potential goes a long way for men, whereas a little bit of potential for women, and we still want her to prove herself. And so I think we pay less attention.

Scott Allen  40:56  
When you can get into some really interesting research around, you know, self-promotion, I imagine. Yeah, interesting research around negotiation. And you've read some of the Linda Babcock research, I'm sure from Carnegie Mellon, where it's just so multifaceted. And the dynamics or it's just so complex. It is it really is.

Therese Huston  41:18  
And I try to come back to the human element of this, you know, I've talked with so you know, I interviewed a female police chief, there aren't many female police chiefs. And for confidentiality reasons, I can't say who it is. But I interviewed a female police chief and when early in her career when she was trying to make the transition. She was working in domestic violence, and she wanted to work in homicide. And homicide is very male, me, first of all, police forces tend to be dominated by men, or have more male employees. But especially homicide, Homicide is an area that's very male-dominated. Anyway, she wanted to make the switch to homicide, and her supervisor was like, now you need, you know, you need at least another year in domestic violence before we move you into homicide. And she was able to point to a colleague, a male colleague, who started the exact same time as she did in domestic violence, and he had been moved to homicide already. And it was great. from her perspective, like, Look, this is the evidently This is enough time in the role. And her supervisor was just like, well, I don't know what to tell you. You just haven't handled the same kind of cases. Which was baloney, right?

Scott Allen  42:26  
Again, the stories we tell ourselves that to justify and back into kind of my reasoning in this moment, right,

Therese Huston  42:33  
exactly right. We do we don't know why we do things I think this is, you know, if there's one takeaway from all the entire literature of psychology is we don't know why we do things. But we're really good at making up a story for why we did something. And that's the hard part. Right, though the entire, you know, therapy industry is based on people pulling through and understanding why they did something. And the honest truth is, we often don't know why we did something we were good at lying to ourselves.

Scott Allen  43:05  
Yes. And we have different definitions. The one that comes to mind in the last year and a half has been the word careful. Well, we've been really careful. What does that mean?

Therese Huston  43:15  
What context what context?

Scott Allen  43:16  
 COVID. "We've been really careful." Oh, you were just at the bar. Three nights a week now.

Therese Huston  43:27  
That's right. We all have different tolerance, tolerances, or appetites for risk. And so you know what I call careful on what you call careful.

Scott Allen  43:38  
Oh, well, Teresa, I am so excited. You've given a wonderful taste for listeners as to what they can learn from your book, let's talk and we will put that link in the show notes and links to your TED talks and some of the other resources. So everyone you will have access to all of that information. And I always close out the podcast by asking what you've been streaming or listening to or reading what stood out for you in the last year. What have you been exploring? It doesn't have to do with feedback or anything like that. But what stood out?

Therese Huston  44:11  
Well, I one of the things I've tried to do during COVID because I...you know, working remotely working at home all of the time and not being able to just go to coffee shops to hang out. You know there's so many

Scott Allen  44:25  
I've missed the most is coffee shops,

Therese Huston  44:27  
right? Surprisingly Yeah. What I've been trying to do is I've adopted this phrase I'm trying to read for joy. And I'm trying to do that over breakfast and lunch because those are usually meals that I have for myself I often have dinner with my husband is the way we do things at our house. And breakfast and lunch. I'm trying to read mysteries. I'm trying you know that that might seem odd to call it for joy, but it's it I can get completely immersed in a police procedural Yeah, yeah. And love the character development. So right now I'm reading Robert Galbraith's. That's the pseudonym for JK Rowling when she writes mysteries, Yes, she's so here we go. She adopted a man's name when she wrote mysteries. Isn't that fabulous?

Scott Allen  45:15  
How many of you how many I did not know she was doing this. How many Has she written? She's,

Therese Huston  45:19  
I think five. Now I'm on number three. Yeah, I'd love a series because if you love the detective, then you have more to go, right. Yeah, my daughter

Scott Allen  45:28  
just finished Well, one daughter just finished the Harry Potter series, and another is close. So we've had a lot of JK Rowling in our house in

Therese Huston  45:37  
fabulous. Oh, and those books are long. So that's, that's impressive to get through all those but they're compelling. Well, and even her children's books are like mysteries, right? You're trying to figure out who done it. So anyway, I've been reading Robert Galbraith's books, and then I really have enjoyed Celeste Ng's book, Everything I Never Told You. Are you familiar with that one that takes place in Cleveland? Oh, goodness, it takes place in Cleveland in the 1970s. And it's about a teenage daughter that dies and how it affects everyone in her family. I won't say anything more than that. But it's beautifully written. So I'm reading for joy and just reading about characters that are fascinating. That's great. That's been it's been a really good habit to adopt. Well, especially

Scott Allen  46:21  
after doing the research that is involved in something like a book, like you've just, you know, completed recently, right? I mean, it's, it's, that's a different type of reading for a different purpose. And to do so for joy. There is if you go into the show notes of Phronesis David Day, we talked probably about six months ago, he loves these Danish mysteries. Oh, there's this author that he just spoke so highly of. And there was a TV series called the bridge built out of these, but there's a bridge between Denmark and Norway,

Therese Huston  47:04  
Copenhagen and Copenhagen and Malmo I think yeah, I think.

Scott Allen  47:08  
Yeah. So he just he spoke so highly of that. So I purchased my father-in-law, one of those for the holidays. And so, but a few guests have talked about their love for mysteries. Yeah,

Therese Huston  47:21  
I find them deeply enjoyable. And so a parallel goal for me, in addition to reading for joy over breakfast, and lunch, I'm trying to make one out of every four books that I read, be from an author of a different identity. So instead of just reading, white women's fiction, because I'm a white female, I'm trying to make sure that one out of every four books that I read is written by a black author, or I'm heterosexual. So I'm trying to read by a gay author, I'm really trying to expand and it's an interesting way for me to make sure that I'm not just digging myself deeper into the little echo chamber that I'm used to. So that was one of the reasons that I picked up Celeste Ng books, one of her books because she's an Asian American author.

Scott Allen  48:07  
Well, I think a lot of like what we've been discussing, and to your point back to psychology that you made that comment about the field of psychology, which I think is true. But it's we all have these default behaviors that we're blind to, we aren't, we don't even notice some of the patterns. And it would be so interesting, on so many dimensions, if we could perform the analytics on ourselves some of the time, just even Okay, the authors I've chosen, what are the analytics on that over the course of your life? fascinating, because there'll be patterns. And I think sometimes those patterns are shutting us off from possibilities and from other worldviews and other perspectives. And so I think that's great. That's awesome.

Therese Huston  48:48  
You know, it would be really interesting, you know, you said, playing the movie, we thought we talked earlier, we'd love to see the movie of ourselves, or we'd be appalled to see the movie of ourselves. You know, I would, I would love to have someone show me how my tastes and books have changed over the years. I'd like to think they're more sophisticated, but maybe they're just more fun. I don't know. Could be both?

Scott Allen  49:10  
Well, Therese, thank you so much for your time today. We really, really appreciate it. And I will place all of your information in the show notes so people know how to get in touch with you and your work. Thanks for the good work that you do. I hope you will come back and we'll continue the conversation and continue the learning. I thank you so much. And you are on your way back to the Midwest in the coming months. So welcome back to the Midwest.

Therese Huston  49:35  
Thank you. I'm sorry, I'm going to be sad to leave Seattle but it's always good to come home.

Scott Allen  49:39  
Yeah. Well be well take care and I and I'm excited for our paths to cross again.

Therese Huston  49:45  
Thanks so much, Scott. I really enjoyed this.

Scott Allen  49:46  
Okay, bye.

Therese Huston  49:47  
Bye bye.

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