Dating Exit Interviews

I was just at a book event hosted by E3. I thought it was a great event for a few reasons.

1. I think it is hard to draw a young crowd to a book event, and E3 did it very well. At another book series I was recently apart of, I was consistently the youngest person in the room by 30+ years. And I think cusp-y GenX/GenY individuals spend less time reading books than previous generations (I am sure there is a statistic out there, but I do not have it), and because of this a book event appears less exciting than other activities.
2. The topics of the books were diverse and still relevant to the audience, and the event.

One of the authors, Rachel Greenwald particularly sparked my interest. Her new book is titled Why He Didn't Call You Back; she is a best-selling author, dating coach, speaker, consultant, and matchmaker. She spoke very briefly about her book and the research she put into it. In those few moments she spoke about feedback, and the lack of it in the dating process. She mentioned that we receive feedback at work, we receive it from friends, but we don't receive it while trying to find our perfect match. Time and time again people go out on dates and have no idea why it did not go anywhere. The answer is because there is no feedback in the dating world.

Rachel's research uses exit interviews to find out what happened (specific language, questions, actions) on the date that 'scared' the other person away. I sat there the whole time nodding my head, thinking that she is spot on! From someone who is out there dating, and who also has a lot of friends 'on the market' we talk about dating all the time. And we ask questions like: 'Why didn't he call again?' and 'Where should I meet someone?' and 'How do I follow up if I had fun on a date?' and the list goes on and on.

We ask our girlfriends for advice, we ask our guy friends for advice, and we ask anyone who will listen for advice, because there is no feedback when you are dating. It gets very frustrating and we turn to anyone for answers. This is not the most effective way to gather information and it is more confusing with varied points of view. Because of the barriers to the source (hurt feelings, fear of rejection, unearthing unknown attributes) it prevent us from getting information directly; as a result we are confused and rarely get the appropriate feedback from the situation to make personal improvements.

Rachel Greenwald's exit interview strategy seems like an intriguing idea, it is a good way to gather the information in a way that is effective, and not directly aimed at the other individual. Whereas effective feedback is delivered to the individual, it is not easy to call someone and tell them why you don’t want to date them. I actually got a very polite call a few days after a recent date. I did not answer the phone, and the voicemail went something like this: "I had a really nice time on Saturday, and enjoyed meeting you. I wish you the best of luck out there dating." I replied back by text saying, “thanks- you too.” Sometimes both parties decide it will not work, and sometimes it is very one-sided. I had made up my mind that situation was fun, had a great date, and I thought he was looking for something different than I was looking for. But did I tell him this? No, because feedback and dating are not easy. The polite bow-out voice-mail/text was pretty close, without providing any real information to advance relationships or results.

Because of my involvement with feedback, I keep telling myself that my next partner is either going to love me or hate me for my newly developed feedback skills. After the book event, my new thought is that they are going to appreciate me for my feedback skills. I will just have to keep in mind the 5 best-practice steps for giving effective feedback so I engage them in the conversation and don’t scare them off by being honest.