Staying on Your Side of the Net: The Feedback Game-changer

One of my biggest takeaways from Stanford’s famous Touchy Feely class is learning to stay on “my side of the net,” which has forever change how I approach feedback.

The Net Model relies on the concept that in any relationship there are three realities:

1. My world (my internal intentions and feelings)

2. Your and my behavior (observed)

3. Your world (your internal intentions and feelings)

I know a lot about #1, especially if I pause to pay attention to my needs, my motives and what’s going on for me at any given moment. I also know a lot about #2 because I can observe both your and my behavior. The tricky one is #3. We often think we know what someone else is feeling or why they did something, but we definitely don’t know AS MUCH as they do about those things, and we cannot claim authority over someone else’s reality. In fact, we could be dead wrong.

What is The Net

Reality #1 is my area of expertise, and thus is on “my side of the net.” Reality #2 is shared because we both observed the same behavior. Reality #3 is your area of expertise, or “your side of the net.” When I attribute your behavior (shared) to your motivation (Reality #3), I am “crossing over the net.”

For example, if you show up late to our meetings (a behavior), it's natural for me to try to assume why you would do that, and guess at your motives and intentions (e.g. you don’t respect me, you are inconsiderate). While this helps me make sense of the world, it’s not that helpful for actually working out the issue with you.

Most feedback has low impact

When I cross over the net from my area of expertise to your area of expertise, my guess about your motives can always be debated (“You don’t respect me” “Yes I do” “No you don’t”). When I stay on my side of the net (my feelings and reactions), they are not debatable. (“I felt annoyed when you were 15 minutes late” “You shouldn’t have felt that way because it was unintentional” “Well that’s how I felt”).

Most feedback causes defensiveness

When you get on someone else’s side of the net, you are making assumptions about what their motives and intentions are, which is about who they are as a person. This is not only invasive, and thus uncomfortable for the person on the receiving end, it’s also susceptible to our assumptions being even slightly wrong. If you attribute an intention or a motive to someone else, you often over-simplify the situation and reduce them to a simple assessment (“You are inconsiderate”). Rather than focusing on working out the issue, the person becomes focused on building a case for why you are wrong about what they feel or them being a certain kind of person.

How to give feedback while staying on your side of the net

Fortunately there is an easy formula for how to give more effective feedback that reduces defensiveness and creates productive conversations about solutions. Frame the conversation in the following way:

“When you [insert behavior], the impact on me is [your feelings and reactions]”

For example, “When you interrupt me, I feel unimportant.” Woah. If this person cares about their relationship with you, they will probably be stopped in their tracks when they find out they’ve been making you feel that way. This gives them information and options, and if they come to the conclusion that their behavior is not having their desired impact on you, they may be inclined to change it.

Why staying on my side of the net is effective in building relationships

One reason why staying on your side of the net can help you build deeper relationships is that when you share more about your reality that is going on under the surface, you are making yourself a bit vulnerable. There is a host of literature on how vulnerability builds trust, but suffice it to say that if you open up a little bit first, chances are the other person will feel more comfortable doing so too.

When to NOT use the net model

Net model feedback is most impactful when both you and the other person are invested in the relationship. If you don’t actually care that much about how you make each other feel, then it's probably not worth the time and emotional effort to start that kind of conversation.

This doesn’t mean you should use the net model every time you want to express something in a relationship you care about. I once infamously used the net model on my now-husband shortly before we got engaged. In order to keep the details of the proposal a surprise, he had told me that the engagement ring we’d picked out wouldn’t be ready in time for our vacation. I confidently whipped out the framework I’d learned at Stanford and said, “When you didn’t get the ring ready in time I felt deprioritized.” Meanwhile the ring was of course ready and he was planning a private seaside proposal dinner with live guitar. Needless to say, he was not impressed with my clever framework.

A tool in your toolkit

Since it clearly takes practice to learn to use this kind of feedback well, start by practicing it in low-stakes situations and when you are feeling pretty calm. That way when you find yourself in a high-stakes situation with the urge to yell “you always do this” or “you are like that,” you can instead pause to (1) identify what you are feeling and impact on you, and (2) stay on your side of the net.