Negativity, Feedback and "The German Disease"

We live in a world that is addicted to feedback or rather the idea of feedback. We’re constantly told by companies to ‘Let us know’ what we think of their products, the media regularly seems to find the most ill-informed people to ask about their deranged opinions for news segments and even some toilets implore people to share their opinions on their “experience”. I suppose like most modern ills, we should blame social media for opening the doors to the world of asinine opinion sharing, but long before Facebook and Twitter, we had customer satisfaction surveys. The idea of feedback is obvious; how do you know how people feel or what they think unless you ask them? Supplying feedback in these ways is actually quite simple, sometimes it’s as easy as pressing one of five different faces on an electric board, filling out a form or more directly ranting at some poor intern who’s running a corporate Twitter account. Actually giving feedback to a human being, however, is not as easy and in Germany it can be the start of some serious problems.

Watching Germans give each other feedback is the closest I will ever get to watching gladiators beat each other senseless in the colosseum. It can be brutal. Germans generally don’t have any qualms about offering their honest opinions, especially when it’s requested. Interestingly, brutal honesty in these moments is expected, negatives are delivered bluntly and at no point will anyone consider softening their opinions for the sake of someone’s feelings. Even the UFC lets fighters tap-out. Easily one of the most dangerous things a non-German can do is ask for the ‘honest opinion’ of a German colleague. If watching Germans give feedback to each other is a brutal fight between equals, watching most non-Germans getting feedback from Germans can be like watching a naked person fighting a tank.

Germany isn’t alone in their desire to share the unvarnished truth (the Dutch and the French take a similar view), but conflicts tend to arise as soon as people from these cultures mix with the rest of the world. There are myriad examples of how giving direct negative feedback in China and India is an awful strategy, given that these two specific cultures communicate indirectly and have complex relationship dynamics, but this is often also the case for English speaking cultures as well. For example, search for approaches to feedback in the UK or US and the first piece of advice is almost always to say something positive. Sometimes such advice will be followed by suggestions to use the ‘Feedback Sandwich’ (positive, negative, positive) so as to deliver your negatives between two reassuring slices of positivity. The problem, of course, is that sometimes there are no positives to mention. What tends to happen is someone will make up some positives or try and turn something into a positive in order to simply deliver some negative points. Saying “You’re always on time” or “You are really prepared for meetings” doesn’t really help when between the soft pillows of positivity, you’ve also mentioned “You’re not meeting your targets and are liable for disciplinary action”.

I’ve come to admire the German way of doing things, perhaps it’s because I’ve integrated or I’m suffering from Stockholm Syndrome, either way I find the honesty of the Germans I work with to be rather useful. I don’t want unnecessary positives, especially if I’m really ballsing  it up, that’s just infantilising. I much prefer to have the clear short sharp shock of negativity, which I find helps me to improve. Maybe I’m just a masochist. It’s fortunate that I feel this way though, as in Germany feedback is a binary, either there are negatives or there are positives, and there are always negatives. If I’m looking for positive reinforcement, I’m better off phoning my mother.

The trend towards the negative is practically the German condition, to the point that rushing towards the negative is often considered “The German Disease”. There are many who theorise as to why Germans seem so attracted to the negative, but I think the origins of that particular social trait are beyond my understanding. What I do know is that negative feedback models seem to begin in the German education system, where often the only indicator a student has done well is the lack of negative feedback. However, just as English speakers will reach for positives to share, so Germans will search desperately for a negative. For example, when a friend of mine was training to become an English teacher, she was required to give a lesson in front of her boss. As nerve shredding as that seemed, I was fully confident she would ace it. My friend had spent a long time in the UK, had married someone there and was as native an English speaker as you could ever wish to meet. When the time came, she gave the lesson and waited for the feedback. There was only one point of feedback after her hour of teaching: ‘You have an accent when you speak English’. I was honestly dumbfounded.

All this negative feedback might sound rather tiring, and honestly sometimes it can be. The only time I find the desire for negative criticism abrasive and unnecessary is when it joins with another German trait, that of unsolicited feedback. Generally, feedback at work or in education comes from people who you know, trust or at least have some relationship with. Sadly, in Germany, there is a section of society that believes there is only one way to do things and that way is highly subjective and is often offered without asking. From people complaining about how a stranger chooses to butter their morning Brötchen, to the correct way to clothe a child, some Germans feel they are self-appointed guardians of all correctness. Their opinions are not only important but are in-fact Infallible and therefore must be shared with anyone seen doing something incorrectly.    

Focus on the negatives might seem like a rather pessimistic view, but I’ve come to see the “The German Disease” as Germany’s secret to success. Although it can sometimes cross the boundaries of acceptability when it comes to personal interactions, improvement does require motivation and motivation can come in many forms. Being constantly underwhelmed or seeing every dark cloud with an equally darker, turd coloured lining might be the easiest path to continuous improvement. Saying how great everything is might feel good, but it does seem to allow people to rest on their laurels. In Germany, there are no laurels, there’s no rest, there’s just a long list of things that need to improve.