How to Give Feedback to a Yellow—If You Have the Patience
Giving feedback to 'Yellows' takes patience and tact: these personality types embrace change when it is their own idea but resist external criticism.
THE IDEA
How to Give Feedback to a Yellow—If You Have the Patience
Yellows are great at many things. Among their great attributes is their love of change. Ideally, they’d change things all the time. You would think that accepting feedback can be a way to start changing the things that need to be improved. In particular, negative feedback is a great way to find out how to raise your performance to a higher level. But this isn’t quite the way it works with Yellows.
In fact, that isn’t how it works at all. When it comes to change, Yellows are certainly in favor of it, but only if they came up with the idea themselves. Criticism from the outside isn’t always well received.
Janne, a good friend of mine, is a phenomenal entertainer. There isn’t a group he can’t amuse, given enough space. His stories are usually fantastic, and during dinner out they come, a whole succession of jokes so that he has everyone rolling in the aisles. One joke after the other, and the whole thing is extremely entertaining. Janne is truly funny, no doubt about it.
But—and it is a significant but—he dominates everyone else in the room. No one else gets a word in edgeways. If you try, he stops and drowns you out, because he doesn’t see you as a partner in a conversation but rather as his audience. After a while, the laughter falls silent and things start to get uneasy. Those of us who know Janne understand that this is due to his desire to constantly demand center stage, while, for others, it takes more time to see through him.
At a dinner party once, it went so far that people started talking about Janne behind his back. I felt bad for him, so I decided to take the bull by the horns.
When to use it
Giving performance feedback to a creative team member who is resistant to suggestions
Providing constructive criticism to a friend who dominates social interactions
Coaching a colleague who is enthusiastic but needs to improve their listening skills
Offering input to a leader who embraces innovation but only if they conceive it
FROM THEORY TO EVERYDAY LIFE
In practice
Janne the Entertainer
Janne is a naturally funny person who dominates conversations with a stream of jokes, leaving no room for others. When friends try to give feedback about his monopolizing behavior, he dismisses it because he did not originate the idea to change. Yellows resist external criticism and only embrace change they initiate.
A MOMENT TO REFLECT
Put it to work.
How can you frame feedback to a Yellow so that it feels like their own idea?
What strategies can you use to encourage self-reflection in someone who resists external input?
How do you balance honesty in feedback with the need to maintain a positive relationship in a personality dynamic like this?
CONTINUE THE CONVERSATION
Source texts
- Surrounded By Idiots (Thomas Erikson)