Hero Feedback is personal, relevant feedback that does not put you into a defensive position. Fun. Hero Feedback was developed as part of Temenos, yet works very well independently of it.
“With Hero Feedback you can communicate pure love without packet loss to a person you don’t even need to know very well.” – Örn Haraldsson, Coach at Sprettur, Iceland
“I still don’t have friends here. Now at least I have heroes.” – A developer in a company where I introduced Hero Feedback.
How It Works
Hero Feedback is very simple, and easy. Pick a person you want to give feedback to (or pair up and share it both ways). The feedback has five parts, three of which are given not to the person in front of you, but to a hero of a story that the person reminds you of. That way it becomes funny, and optional: the other person may find the reference useful, and resonating, and accept what you say about the hero for themselves. If the reference doesn’t work for them, it’s still interesting, and fun.
You are the Obi Wan for me by Betsy Weber
Intent and Outcome
We rarely take the chance to tell other people what we think of them. Doing that is usually scary, as everyone who’s had to give feedback (for instance as a boss, in a regular way) can attest… We’re afraid to hurt the other person, and avoiding that we have a hard time getting our improvement suggestions across. We then retreat to being blunt, using the occasion as an excuse to be impolite—and feel bad about it during and after the fact. Hero feedback is free of judgement. You don’t want to use it for reasoning about the value of another person, to argue why the get a pay raise or not. You can use it to open an honest conversation about somebody’s performance, and to create a loving frame for the topics you want to talk about. It’s a very appreciative way to offer another human being options for improvement.
The fun of using the story you ideally both know gives you a chance to summarise a holistic view of the other person. It’s very quick, and effective. It can help you create a trusting space for a crucial conversation.
Steps
- Appreciate the pace of movement of the other person through her life.
How do you perceive the pace at which she chooses to live her life? - Pick a hero (archetype) from a story you know. Make up a story if you want. It helps if the other person knows the story, and it’s not necessary for this to work, as you
Explain how she reminds you of that hero. - How is that hero successful in the story?
- How does the hero sabotage his success?
- Appreciate the deepest connection to the human being you’re giving this to.