Signal vs Volume Tracker: Feedback Lands Louder Than It Was

This one is for the leader who got one offhand comment in a meeting on Tuesday and was still replaying it on Friday. It comes from The Part That Doesn’t Fit, the work I do with leaders whose wiring runs a little different, and it is a tool called the Signal vs. Volume Tracker.

Here is the idea underneath it. Every piece of feedback has 2 sizes. There is the signal: how important it actually was. And there is the volume: how much space it took up in you. For a lot of people, those 2 numbers roughly match. For some wiring, they do not. A small comment comes in and lands at full volume. It takes the afternoon. It takes the drive home. It shows up again at 2 in the morning. The comment was a 2. The response was a 5. That gap is not a character flaw. It is just how some wiring runs.

So the tool. It takes about 5 minutes. First, list 3 to 5 recent moments where feedback stuck with you. Criticism, praise, an offhand remark, a look across the table. Second, rate each one twice, 1 to 5. How big was the signal? How big was your response? Third, mark the ones you are still carrying right now. There are no right answers, only your own ratings.

What comes back is a map of the gap, showing where the volume is louder than the signal, a read on what carrying it is costing you, and one thing to do this week. The pattern is usually plain the first time you see it laid out. The comments are not the problem. The volume and the signal are just not connected to each other, and nobody ever showed you that you can measure both.

Then the move. Pick the one event with the biggest gap. Write the signal down in one plain sentence: what the comment actually said, and nothing more. Then decide what, if anything, it asks you to do. If the answer is nothing, you are allowed to set it down. Most weeks, the biggest gap turns out to be a comment you have already repeated to 3 people.

The comment was the size it was. You get to decide how much room it takes up.

The Part That Doesn’t Fit. Working with your wiring, not against it. www.thepartthatdoesntfit.com