Using Feedback: Experiment

Episode Transcript

The Using Feedback Experiment card states, “You may have spent years building the behavior that feedback is asking you to change. Treat each attempt at change as a form of practice.” And the card invites you to try what’s called the low stakes pilot, which you can do by trying the new behavior in a low stakes, safe environment, then asking yourself, “What happened?

How did it feel?” And learning from those insights. So when we receive feedback we’ve decided is worth acting on, there’s a tendency to treat the first few attempts as the finish line. Do it once or twice and assume the new behavior is locked in. But consider what’s actually being asked. You may have shot a basketball a particular way for five years.

You may have presented in meetings the same way for an entire career. Changing that isn’t a task, it’s a process, and the mindset you bring to that process matters enormously. Treating each attempt as practice rather than performance does two important things. First, it takes a little pressure off.

Practice by definition is not perfection. It’s repetition with the intention to improve. Second, it gives you permission to fall back into the old behavior occasionally without concluding that you failed. It probably will happen. The old habit had years of reinforcement. You may have heard the phrase, “What fires together, wires together.”

Well, your old habit has likely had years of wiring itself into how you operate. The new one’s just getting started. Again, this concept applies whether you’re trying to improve the attitude you bring to relationships or how you study for exams. But practice alone isn’t the whole picture. The card is also about reflection, and reflection as part of the practice, not separate from it.

So decades ago, I was competing in Brazilian jujitsu tournaments, and I had a ritual. The moment a match ended, win or lose, I’d shake my opponent’s hand, take my mouthpiece out, sit down, and immediately open my notebook while everything was still fresh. I’d write about what it felt like to try a new move I’d been working on, something I’d received feedback on, what hurdles came up, whether it worked, how my opponent responded.

Over time, that notebook became basically documented proof of improvement. And when I stepped into mixed martial arts then, where the stakes were significantly higher, those habits were locked in. I rarely fell back into older, less effective patterns because I had practiced and reflected my way to something new.

You don’t need a tournament to use this approach. A low stakes environment, a casual conversation, a team meeting that isn’t a high profile presentation, a practice session before the real one, that’s all you need to begin. Try the behavior, then reflect. Write it down if you can. It’s that combination where real change happens.

That’s card 01 of the Using Feedback suit. Change rarely happens all at once, but practice plus reflection repeated over time has a way of quietly making the new behavior feel like it was always yours.