Last week, a friend shared his soon-to-be-released record with me.
“I can’t wait to hear what you think.” he said. “Sure,” I smiled. After a brief silence, he looked me in the eye and said: “actually, if you don’t like it… don’t even consider telling me”.
Coincidentally, I had just learned that I should never give any negative feedback to him in a situation like this. I learned it thanks to cinema.
I enjoy following the thread on things that catch my attention. After watching Jonás Trueba’s Volveréis (translated as The Other Way Around), I listened to his interview with Javier Aznar. They mentioned Mi Diccionario de Cine, a book by Jonás’s dad Fernando Trueba. It seemed interesting, so I ran to a Public Library to borrow it.
The book opened so many doors. For today’s article I’d like to surface Trueba’s hilarious definition of a private screening (translation mine):
PRIVATE SCREENING. Being invited to a private screening is the only thing worse than being invited to a premiere. In private screenings, there is no escape, and you enter praying that you will like the film. If you don’t like the film, the norm is to say it’s excellent. If it’s just okay, you say it’s a masterpiece. And if it’s really good, you might even go to dinner with the author. This is not a test of cynicism. There is nothing worse than the sincere.
Those who go to the private screening and, with that wonderful virtue of honesty —which is puzzling, as it seems like it should be criminalized— exclaim at the end: “I’m sorry, but I didn’t like it.” Telling this to someone who has just finished a film they have been immersed in for the last few months of their life, sometimes years, and who still lacks the necessary distance to judge it with a minimum of objectivity, is one of the greatest displays of stupidity possible. In any case, private screenings, just like their siblings premieres, should be banned by law.
As always, Master Wilder found a solution to navigate these kinds of tests without having to lie or hurt anyone. It consists of shaking the author’s hand and saying: ‘That was a film!’
It got me thinking. A lot. Trueba was so right and yet it somehow contradicted some of my hard-learned lessons.
I work in an industry where honest feedback is appreciated and encouraged. Even worshipped. Kim Scott made a business out of her Radical Candor framework. Forbes or HBR run articles on the art of giving feedback. Liz Fesher has a TED Talk on the subject.
And I don’t disagree with the industry: I’ve seen first hand good feedback improving products, helping professionals grow. I’ve even taught some feedback classes myself!
So why do I consider both takes on feedback to be right and can coexist? And more practically: how do I know when to point out opportunities for improvement and when to stick with a hilarious “That’s a design!”?
After giving the question some thought these days, I boil it down to two factors. I call them timing and artiness.
Timing
First, there is the obvious practical consideration of time: is there time to improve the output of whatever we’re discussing? If there isn’t, then feedback will probably not help.
There is also the time in the creative process that we are in: are we coming up with divergent ideas, or converging on a solution? There is little point in optimizing paths that are going to be abandoned.
Artiness
On a whole different axis, I need to consider the balance between the goal of self-expression inherent in any creative practice, as well as external goals —usually commercial— of the project at hand.
Is my feedback going to impact the author (or team)’s will to express themselves and materialize a primitive idea, or other outcome that was hopefully made explicit at some point in the process?
As with any attempt to define the differences between art and design (here’s one, two, there, four of them I collected), finding an accurate position on this axis is more subjective and consequentially more difficult than assessing timing.
I have found a practical way to make sure that feedback is worth giving is whether I can focus on the outcome, and not the output. If I can discuss how certain goals will or will not be met by the work, then I know feedback will be useful.
Wrapping up
I often have an opinion. It’s not always worth sharing. I can figure out when it is by asking myself if we’re refining the work, if there’s time to act on it, and if doing so will impact a goal we had previously agreed upon.
That was an article!