Say “No” to Triangulated Feedback - Esther Derby

This resource first appeared in issue #55 on 19 Dec 2020 and has tags Becoming A Manager: Feedback, Becoming A Manager: Managing Individuals, Managing A Team: Other

Say “No” to Triangulated Feedback - Esther Derby

This one hits a little close to home this week.

Derby’s article talks about the perils of “triangulated” feedback - team member A tells you something about team member B and you bring it to team member B. A team is a group of people who are accountable to each other in working to a common goal. By being a cut-out in these accountability conversations we short circuit these needed conversations, eroding trust, and give ourselves a bunch of worse-than-meaningless busywork to boot.

The reason this hits home is last week I actively made a situation between two team members significantly worse by interjecting myself too soon and too forcefully. I felt like I was doing the right thing - my intense personal preference is to avoid these situations, so taking decisive and immediate action “seemed” right to me - but it absolutely was not. In this particular situation, monitoring and checking in after a day or so would have worked much better. To be clear, being completely uninvolved is not a solution either, but we can’t be a first- or even second-choice option for dealing with between-team-member conflicts except in extraordinary circumstances.