If you look at a carpenter, they have a toolbox; a dentist, they have their drills.
In our era and the type of work most of us are doing, the tool we most need is actually centered around being able to give and receive feedback well.
[The Way We Work] Humans have been talking about feedback for centuries.
In fact, Confucius, way back in 500 BC, talked about how important it is to be able to say difficult messages well.
But to be honest, we're still pretty perezdonald@example.net.
In fact, a recent Gallup survey found that only 26 percent of employees strongly agree that the feedback they get actually improves their work.
Those numbers are pretty dismal.
So what's going on?
The way that most people give their feedback actually isn't brain-friendly.
People fall into one of two camps.
Either they're of the camp that is very indirect and soft and the brain doesn't even recognize that feedback is being given or it's just simply confused, or they fall into the other camp of being too direct, and with that, it tips the other person into the land of being defensive.
There's this part of the brain called the amygdala, and it's scanning at all times to figure out whether the message has a social threat attached to it.
With that, we'll move forward to defensiveness, we'll move backwards in retreat, and what happens is the feedback giver then starts to disregulate as well.
They add more ums and ahs and justifications, and the whole thing gets wonky really fast.
It doesn't have to be this way.
I and my team have spent many years going into different companies and asking who here is a great feedback giver.
Anybody who's named again and again, we actually bring into our labs to see what they're doing differently.
And what we find is that there's a four-part formula that you can use to say any difficult message well.
OK, are you ready for it?
Here we go.
The first part of the formula is what we call the micro-yes.
Great feedback givers begin their feedback by asking a question that is short but important.
It lets the brain know that feedback is actually coming.
It would be something, for example, like, "Do you have five minutes to talk about how that last conversation went" or "I have some ideas for how we can improve things.
Can I share them with you?"
This micro-yes question does two things for you.
First of all, it's going to be a pacing tool.
It lets the other person know that feedback is about to be given.
And the second thing it does is it creates a moment of buy-in.
I can say yes or no to that yes or no question.
And with that, I get a feeling of autonomy.
The second part of the feedback formula is going to be giving your data point.
Here, you should name specifically what you saw or heard, and cut out any words that aren't objective.
There's a concept we call blur words.
A blur word is something that can mean different things to different people.
Blur words are not specific.
So for example, if I say "You shouldn't be so defensive" or "You could be more proactive."
What we see great feedback givers doing differently is they'll convert their blur words into actual data points.
So for example, instead of saying, "You aren't reliable," we would say, "You said you'd get that email to me by 11, and I still don't have it yet."
Specificity is also important when it comes to positive feedback, and the reason for that is that we want to be able to specify exactly what we want the other person to increase or diminish.
And if we stick with blur words, they actually won't have any clue particularly what to do going forward to keep repeating that behavior.
The third part of the feedback formula is the impact statement.
Here, you name exactly how that data point impacted you.
So, for example, I might say, "Because I didn't get the message, I was blocked on my work and couldn't move forward" or "I really liked how you added those stories, because it helped me grasp the concepts faster."
It gives you a sense of purpose and meaning and logic between the points, which is something the brain really craves.
The fourth part of the feedback formula is a question.
Great feedback givers wrap their feedback message with a question.
They'll ask something like, "Well, how do you see it?"
Or "This is what I'm thinking we should do, but what are your thoughts on it?"
What it does is it creates commitment rather than just compliance.
It makes the conversation no longer be a monologue, but rather becomes a joint problem-solving situation.
But there's one last thing.
Great feedback givers not only can say messages well, but also, they ask for feedback regularly.
In fact, our research on perceived leadership shows that you shouldn't wait for feedback to be given to you -- what we call push feedback -- but rather, you should actively ask for feedback, what we call pulling feedback.
Pulling feedback establishes you as a continual learner and puts the power in your hands.
The most challenging situations are actually the ones that call for the most skillful feedback.
But it doesn't have to be hard.
Now that you know this four-part formula, you can mix and match it to make it work for any difficult conversation.
"Look at me!"
That phrase turned me into an eye-contact coach.
I'm the mother of Ivan; he's 15 years old.
Ivan has autism, he doesn't speak, and he communicates through an iPad, where his whole universe of words exists in images.
He was diagnosed when he was two and a half.
I still remember that day painfully.
My husband and I felt really lost; we didn't know where to begin.
There was no internet, you couldn't Google information, so we made those first steps out of sheer intuition.
Ivan would not maintain eye contact, he had lost the words that he did know, and he didn't respond to his name or to anything we asked him, as if words were noise.
The only way I could know what was going on with him, what he felt, was looking him in the eye.
But that bridge was broken.
How could I teach him about life?
When I did things he liked, he would look at me, and we were connected.
So I dedicated myself to working with him on those things, so we would have more and more eye-contact moments.
We would spend hours and hours playing tag with his older sister, Alexia, and when we said: "I caught you!"
he would look around for us, and at that moment, I could feel he was alive.
We also hold a record for hours spent in a swimming pool.
Ivan always had a passion for water.
I remember when he was two and a half, on a rainy winter day, I was taking him to an indoor pool, because even on rainy days we'd go swimming.
We were on the highway, and I took the wrong exit.
He burst into tears and cried inconsolably, nonstop, until I turned back.
Only then did he calm down.
How was it possible that a two and a half year old didn't respond to his own name, yet in the middle of the rain and fog, where I couldn't see anything, he knew the exact route?
That's when I realized that Ivan had an exceptional visual memory, and that that would be my way in.
So I started taking pictures of everything, and teaching him what life was like, showing it to him, picture by picture.
Even now, it's the way Ivan communicates what he wants, what he needs and also what he feels.
But it wasn't just Ivan's eye contact that mattered.
Everyone else's did, too.
How could I make people see not only his autism, but see him the person and everything he can give; everything he can do; the things he likes and doesn't like, just like any one of us?
But for that, I also had to give of myself.
I had to have the strength to let him go, which was extremely difficult.
Ivan was 11 years old, and he went for treatment in a neighborhood near our house.
One afternoon, while I was waiting for him, I went into a greengrocer, a typical neighborhood store with a little bit of everything.
While doing the shopping, I started talking to Jose, the owner.
I told him about Ivan, that he had autism, and that I wanted him to learn to walk down the street by himself, without anyone holding his hand.
So I decided to ask Jose if Thursdays around 2pm, Ivan could come and help him arrange the water bottles on the shelves, because he loved to organize things.
And as a reward, he could buy some chocolate cookies, which were his favorite.
He said "yes" right away.
So that's how it went for a year: Ivan would go to Jose's greengrocer, help him arrange the shelves of water bottles with the labels perfectly lined up on the same side, and he would leave happy with his chocolate cookies.
Jose is not an expert in autism.
There is no need to be an expert nor do anything heroic to include someone.
We just need to be there -- (Applause) (Applause ends) Really, no heroic deed -- we simply need to be close.
And if we are afraid of something or we don't understand something, we need to ask.
Let's be curious but never indifferent.
Let's have the courage to look each other in the eye, because by looking, we can open a whole world to someone else.
(Applause) (Cheers)
Have you ever felt lonely?
The urge of wanting to connect with people, but you seem to have no one you really would want to contact?
Or, it's a Friday night and you want to be with others, but you have no energy to go out, so instead you sit at home all evening, watch Netflix and feel more alone than ever?
You feel like a monster between humans that know how to function.
This is what loneliness felt like to me.
So I'm an artist, and I process my emotional world by sharing my feelings through my art.
If you share your feelings with someone, and they understand and share those feelings too, you create an emotional and deep connection.
This is why you can be surrounded by hundreds of people, jump from one candidate to the next, but still feel lonely.
It's because these deeper connections haven't been made.
I was an always-happy child.
I think we nearly have no single photo of me where I don't smile broadly or laugh or joke around.
And this went on until ...
well, it's still the case.
But I had many friend groups up until, as a young adult, I moved to another city for my first job as a comic artist.
And like so many young, thriving people all over the planet, I concentrated all my energy into my work life.
But, if you spend, like, 90 percent of your daily capacity trying to succeed at work, of course there is nothing left to take care of all the other important aspects in your life, like your human relationships.
Nourishing friendships as an adult is work.
You need to be consistent with connecting.
You need to be open, you need to be honest.
And this is all I struggled with, because I tend to camouflage my real feelings by trying to appear always happy and trying to make everyone else happy, too, by trying to fix their problems.
And I know a lot of us are guilty of this, because it's an easy way to not think about your own issues.
Isn't it?
Hmm?
Hmm?
Hmm?
(Laughter) OK.
The turning point came when I fell into an emotionally abusive relationship just a few years ago.
He isolated me and left me feeling more alone than ever.
It was the lowest point in my life, but it was also my wake-up call, because it was the first time that I really felt loneliness.
Many others put their feelings into their art.
There are endless books, movies, paintings, music, all filled with the real emotion of an artist.
So, as an artist myself, I did the same.
I shared my feelings.
I wanted to help people cope with loneliness.
I wanted, yeah, to make them understand it, to really experience it through my art in the form of an interactive story, a video game.
So, in our game -- we called it "Sea of Solitude" -- you are a person named Kay, who is suffering from such strong loneliness that her inner feelings -- the anger, the feeling of hopelessness, worthlessness -- turn to the outside, and she becomes a monster.
The game -- well, Kay -- is actually a representation of me and the path I went through to overcome my struggles.
The game plays, actually, in Kay's mind, so you walk through a world that is flooded by her tears, and the weather is changing by her mood, how her mood is changing.
And, well, the only thing Kay wears, the only thing, is her backpack.
It's the baggage we all carry throughout our life.
And Kay doesn't know how to cope with her emotions in the right way, so her backpack becomes bigger and bigger until it bursts, and she finally is forced to overcome her own struggles.
In our story, we present many different manifestations of loneliness.
Loneliness through social exclusion is very common.
In our game, the brother of Kay got bullied in his school, and he just wants to hide and fly away.
And we portray him as a huge bird monster surrounded by thick fog.
The player has to actually walk through his school and experience, really feel the harm, that the brother had been through, because for a long time, nobody really listens to him.
But the very moment friends and family start to listen, the first step towards overcoming this form of loneliness had been made.
We also show loneliness in relationships, like when parents just stay together for the sake of their kids but end up hurting the entire family.
We put the player literally in between the two parents while they are fighting, and you get hurt in the middle.
They don't even see that their daughter, Kay, is right there until she breaks down.
We also show loneliness through mental health issues, with the boyfriend of Kay, who suffers from depression and shows that sometimes it is most important to focus on your own well-being first.
The boyfriend also tends to camouflage his feelings, so he appears like a lone, shiny white wolf.
But the moment he starts to interact with his girlfriend, Kay, the mask falls off, and we see the black dog beneath it: depression.
Sometimes we put on a smile instead of dealing with the issues at hand, and that can ultimately make it worse, affect the people around us and damage our relationships.
So Kay herself we portray as ripped apart into her basic emotions.
Some help you, some are trying to stop you.
Self-Doubt is a huge creature, always telling Kay how worthless she is and that she should just give up.
Like in real life, Self-Doubt is blocking the path, and it seems impossible to overcome it.
Destroying the omnipresence of Self-Doubt is a slow process.
But in the game, you can slowly, like, shrink her, so she turns from self-doubt to actually healthy doubt, and you can finally trust her advice.
We also show Self-Destruction.
It's a huge monster always lurking nearby under the water's surface.
Self-Destruction is actually the main antagonist of the game, and she is always trying to drown you in the ocean of tears.
But, when she actually drowns you, you wake up just a few moments [before], and you have a chance to progress again.
We wanted to show that we all go through hardships in our life, we all do.
But if you at least, like, stand up and try to move forward, you are very likely to make it through your struggle, step by step.
Joy is something that Kay cannot really embrace or touch.
It's always something in the distance.
We portrayed Joy as a child version of Kay, with a yellow raincoat, so she is invulnerable to the ocean of tears.
But Joy can also turn into obsession and start to be actually harmful for Kay, like when she starts obsessing over her boyfriend.
Joy will not turn back to normal until Kay realizes that her happiness should not depend on anybody else but herself.
So our monsters appear huge and scary, but if you overcome your reluctance and approach them, you soon see that they are no monsters at all, but just fragile beings that are simply overwhelmed by what life perezdonald@example.net.
All of those emotions, be it self-doubt or even self-destruction, don't completely vanish in our game.
The key message is to not only chase for joy or happiness but to embrace all your emotions and bring them into balance, being OK with sometimes not being OK.
Everyone has their own loneliness story to tell.
This realization changed everything for me.
Being much more open with my emotions and concentrating much more on my private life, my friends, my family.
When we released the game, literally thousands of fans wrote us, all sharing their stories with us and telling us they felt not so alone anymore just because they played our game.
Many people wrote us that they felt hope for a better future for themselves for the first time in decades.
Many wrote us that they seek therapy now, just because they played our game and felt hopeful to overcome their own struggles.
Our game is not a therapy.
It's not meant to be a therapy.
It's just my friends and me sharing our stories through our art, video games.
But we are so deeply thankful for every single message that people feel better, just because we shared our story with them.
So ...
I didn't completely overcome my urge to help others.
But I don't want to overcome it anymore.
I love it.
I just needed to bring it to a healthy size, so it doesn't stand in the way of deeper relationships anymore, but even help me to connect with people.
So, if you have an inner monster that is born out of negative emotions, it is not only the goal to kill that monster but to understand that we humans are complex beings.
Look at what part of your life is so big that others fall short.
Look at what emotions you barely feel or maybe feel too much and move towards lowering those peaks.
Most of all, it's about understanding that all the wide range of emotions and struggles makes us what we are: humans.
Thank you.
(Applause)