who wants my advice?

A couple of months ago, I went into a job interview and was asked a tricky question- 'what kind of feedback did you get in performance reviews and how did you react to it?' I didn't really know how to respond since I had never received feedback in a performance review. I ended up explaining the dynamics of my former employer's performance review process and tried to answer the question by addressing how I looked for implicit feedback instead, primarily by analyzing the way problems were communicated to me.

One way I did this was by keeping track of how often I was asked the same question. If someone asked me the same exact question twice, I took it as a sign that I needed to create resources (like FAQs or user guides) or make an adjustment to our process (perhaps by sending a periodic report answering the question before it got asked again).

I didn't get the job.

At the time, I was pretty sure it had nothing to do with this answer. In fact, I actually thought I gave a good answer. Finding signs of strain in throughput or looking for ways to answer questions before they are asked creates significant value for all kinds of organizations.

A couple of weeks later, I went into another interview. Things went OK to start but I felt things slipping when I was once again asked the same question- 'what kind of feedback did you get in performance reviews and how did you react to it?' Nothing had changed about my past and so I tried to give the same answer. But this interviewer was different- his philosophy seemed to be 'ask first, interrupt the answer, then ask another question'.

That threw me off a bit and, since I was trying to link an unrelated idea to the question instead of just answering the question, I lost the plot. My response was not as good as it had been a couple of weeks prior.

We went back and forth a little bit longer before it occurred to me- this guy thinks I'm lying! Either that, or he simply was incapable of wrapping his head around the idea that there were companies out there that do not give annual performance reviews.

I didn't get that job, either (1).

One problem for a job-seeker is the lack of useful feedback after a job interview. Luckily, I had some experience with that sort of thing. True to my own response, I reflected on those interview experiences and considered different ways to answer this question that I had been asked in an identical manner on two separate occasions.

The approaches I took with my old job would not work here. I could not create a user guide, FAQ sheet, or pie chart to hand out before future interviews. A variation of this approach does sometimes work- early on in my job search, I updated my resume after interviews to 'answer' questions I seemed likely to get again. However, I suspected that in this case, adding 'did not get performance reviews' to an application would only confuse HR departments. No shortcuts- I would need to answer the question, somehow.

An implied angle of the question was to talk about what I learned. So, I thought back to what I learned on the job. Perhaps if I could distill five and a half years of learning down to a couple of clever soundbites, I would be able to better navigate this question.

Learning that I should get to work at seven or nine-thirty seemed a possibility. I suppose I could talk about what I learned as a SQL programmer. I always thought learning to give 'simple answers for simple questions' was among the most useful things I'd ever learned.

But these lessons did not come to me in the form of feedback. For example, no one told me explicitly to come in at seven or nine-thirty. I did it because I realized that when I came in sort of early, like between eight-fifteen and eight-thirty, I would get flagged down by other early birds looking for my help to get their days off to a good start. I never got anything done that I had planned on. It was better to beat everyone into the office by a huge margin or come in after everyone was already distracted (2).

That didn't mean that I was never told about the best time to come in. My office, like I assume is the case for most others, had a number of Self-Annointed Productivity Gurus. These well-intending folks would sometimes try to help me with my 'problem' by suggesting how I could better prevent myself from being bothered in the future (though presumably not from them, since they were intending to be helpful and therefore were exempt from ever 'bothering' anybody).

One person told me that eight-thirty was a good time to come in and that I should keep doing so. If I wished to signal that I was busy, I should use headphones. Another thought I should try working from home to build better efficiency into my schedule so that I could do a regular nine to five shift. I suppose I could have responded to these bits of feedback and adjusted my schedule.

Sometimes the suggestions came less directly. One colleague who was always in around nine-fifteen came in one day at eight. By eight-twenty, we were among a small group standing outside waiting for the fire truck to respond to the alarm that had just gone off. "Never come in early," she muttered as the firefighters rolled in. Again, I could have simply taken that comment as a form of feedback and used it to figure out my schedule. I didn't do that, though, just like all those other instances of feedback, direct or otherwise.

Just the other day, I got a clue as to why I never did. My hospice volunteer group often gets together to discuss topics such as the volunteer role, events around the home, and news about our lives. Sometimes, we read and discuss relevant articles. One recent meeting introduced me to Parker J. Palmer's article 'The Gift of Presence, The Perils of Advice' (3).

I found the article particularly thought-provoking for its firm conclusion on advice-giving: don't give unsolicited advice (4). I've wandered off down that road in the past and reached a similar conclusion. It is possible I've even written here on little old TOA that perhaps it is best to not give advice. So I related immediately to Palmer's idea and felt that I understood where he was coming from in the article.

And yet, the counter-arguments are fairly obvious. There seems an essential importance for advice-giving. How would anyone learn otherwise? This blog started after some advice (and might end the same way). Surely, if people are giving advice, it has some value. Or put another way: if people are giving advice, some of it must have value.

It doesn't seem worth drawing a firm line in the sand by saying 'no advice, ever' if this is the case. Although the harm of advice is avoided with this approach, it comes at the cost of losing out on good advice.

Maybe the better approach is to modify Palmer's idea and try to only give good advice. That strikes me as a reasonable plan. But I know of at least a couple of problems. For me, three decades of experience has shown that this approach does not work in practice. If it was possible for people to know the difference between good and bad advice, there would be no problem to speak of and no article for Palmer to write (5).

The second problem is that, thinking back over the years, I could not recall a single piece of really good advice. I could point at people I considered very helpful advisers. But even while thinking about these specific people, I struggled to quote exact words of advice from them.

That's when it hit me that the real problem I was having with the feedback question had nothing to do with performance reviews, getting in on time, or creating FAQs. All that was unrelated and, thus, nonsense. The problem was that I, at some fundamental level, thought feedback and advice had something in common: they were both useless (6).

And like it happened with advice, this conclusion about feedback was something I reached over many years of observations. At work, I never got feedback. Even more important, no one ever responded directly to my excellent feedback. By some miracle, we all managed to get better at our jobs.

I recognized over time that what 'giving good feedback' meant was that I was so ineffective as a mentor that I had no other choice; it was like a last resort to sit down and talk about what could otherwise be taught, shown, or demonstrated by example. Advice-giving operates with the same ethos- the good adviser does not resort to giving advice.

All of this is well and good, of course, but what does it do for my original problem? I think it goes back to one of those lessons I cited earlier. The question, in hindsight, was a simple one because the conditional terms did not apply to me. I should have just answered- 'I never had reviews, actually, but I can talk about other ways I learn and grow on the job if you would like.'

There are subtle pressures throughout a job interview that I may have caved into. It's tempting, I suppose, to try and tie complex responses back to a loosely related original question. And there is always a nagging urge to provide answers to the questions that I felt should have been asked instead of simply responding to the original prompt.

It failed to work out either time because I allowed each answer to grow more complex than the question. I knew that long before the start of either interview so I feel a little silly for making that mistake twice in quick succession.

Next time, I'll just answer the question and things should go smoother.

Footnotes / imagined complaints

1. Well, that's not entirely true...

Technically, I might still be up for the job. I've yet to hear back. It has been a few months, though, so I'm not holding my breath.

2. And the other lessons?

The programming bit involved an idea I called 'temp tables' (that might even technically be the real name, though I'm not exactly sure). 'Temp tables' are kind of like writing with pencil while 'permanent tables' are like writing with pen. I initially wrote only with permanent tables but noted when the code others used involving 'temp tables' outperformed my code. Over time, I became skilled enough to tailor my technique and use the style of table that optimized my code's performance.

The simple answers idea came from a comment early on in my career. An executive asked me if a list claims was fully reported to a client- a yes/no question if there ever was one. I responded with multiple words instead of a single word. The exasperated response was along the lines of how 'no one at this company can answer a simple question'.

At the time, I thought the guy was a fool. And in the end, maybe I realized he was. But he was no fool about this. A simple question returning a complex answer suggests something.

Everyone is capable of explaining why their particular job is so complex, nuanced, and influenced by the unpredictable powers that be. These people might make for good employees but rarely do they become effective leaders- they are simply too prone to get lost in the details or accept that things are unchangeable. It took me some time to understand why explaining my job was unrelated to my job. When I finally did, I started making real progress.

3. My advice? Be present.

Talking about the 'perils of advice' half of the article (or at least, the article's title) made more sense for us- the 'gift of presence' idea is ingrained in us from day one with the organization. 

4. Which is advice, right?

I wonder why writers try to take these Firm Stances. It never works. This column about not giving advice ends with advice! But I can understand the reverse position- saying 'balance is the key' or 'yin and yang' or whatever feels like nothing is being said at all.

5. Another explanation: get over yourself...

There are a lot of reasons why a given piece of advice could turn out not to be as good as originally thought. The timing might not be right for the other to receive the advice. The advice could be objectively bad, especially if it is based on a mistaken fact, assumption, or understanding about a given situation. It's possible that the attempt to help is seen as selfish, maybe as a way to say 'I told you so' at a later date, or a subtle way to reinforce some kind of power dynamic.

It's possible that the issue is not in the advice but in the delivery. That approach makes sense to me- unless deliberately intending to mislead or hurt, all advice is good. So, to give good advice, mastering delivery and understanding nuance might matter as much as good intentions.

6. A self-aware bull is welcome in my china shop...

I understand that such a stance indicates a certain bull-headed quality in me. That's an accurate enough assessment. I think my self-awareness more than compensates for it but I'll keep an eye on it, regardless.