Humans are too polite for in-person feedback to be trusted.

principle — attributed to Mark Brewster

At a SISO breakout, a Fortune 500 CEO told Brewster the session was awful. Two minutes later the speaker walked over and the same CEO smiled and said great job up there. Brewster has watched versions of this exchange for fifteen years. The mechanism is not malice but etiquette. The social cost of telling someone their work was thin, in front of them, in real time, is high enough that almost no one pays it. In-person feedback selects for what is socially survivable, not for what is true. The anonymous survey, completed at distance, is the only instrument that bypasses the politeness tax.

For organizers tempted to take floor reads and casual on-site comments as primary evidence. Particularly relevant when senior attendees give effusive praise to faces and tepid scores to forms.

feedback-loops, social-etiquette, nps, data-integrity