As a Leader, providing continuous feedback is a critical aspect of steering performance, fostering accountability, nurturing team growth, and ensuring that work remains on track and is timely. But is feedback genuinely a gift?
Consider: When you give someone a gift, the intent, delivery, and the occasion are carefully considered. Whether it’s a birthday, graduation, or a well-done gesture, the context matters. Feedback demands a similar level of thought and intention, yet, regrettably, it often falls short. Observe the subtle cues when you approach someone with, “May I offer you some feedback?”. Does their body language radiate excitement and openness, or do you sense hesitation?
This conversation will touches on:
Understanding the genuine needs of your employees: The skill sets required to deliver timely, tailored feedback that aligns with their needs.
Navigating poorly delivered feedback: Strategies for handling situations where the necessary skills are lacking, and you are the receiver.
Building an effective culture of feedback within a team: Explore practical approaches and potential obstacles to creating a feedback-rich culture.
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Follow SAIT Corporate Training on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/saitcorporatetraining/?viewAsMember=true
Connect directly with Jennie and Craig on LinkedIn:
Have burning questions about leadership that you'd like us to address? Email them to leadership.questions@sait.ca and let your voice be heard.
As a Leader, providing continuous feedback is a critical aspect of steering performance, fostering accountability, nurturing team growth, and ensuring that work remains on track and is timely. But is feedback genuinely a gift?
Consider: When you give someone a gift, the intent, delivery, and the occasion are carefully considered. Whether it’s a birthday, graduation, or a well-done gesture, the context matters. Feedback demands a similar level of thought and intention, yet, regrettably, it often falls short. Observe the subtle cues when you approach someone with, “May I offer you some feedback?”. Does their body language radiate excitement and openness, or do you sense hesitation?
This conversation will touches on:
Understanding the genuine needs of your employees: The skill sets required to deliver timely, tailored feedback that aligns with their needs.
Navigating poorly delivered feedback: Strategies for handling situations where the necessary skills are lacking, and you are the receiver.
Building an effective culture of feedback within a team: Explore practical approaches and potential obstacles to creating a feedback-rich culture.
https://www.linkedin.com/smart-links/AQF5MmMFUHNWVA
Follow SAIT Corporate Training on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/saitcorporatetraining/?viewAsMember=true
Connect directly with Jennie and Craig on LinkedIn:
Have burning questions about leadership that you'd like us to address? Email them to leadership.questions@sait.ca and let your voice be heard.
This is the Leading Beyond Any Title podcast, your guide to transformative leadership. We're your hosts. Hi, I'm Craig Hess,
Jennie:and I'm Jennie Gilbert. Each episode of Breakfast will bring you weekly quick lessons and conversations about topical leadership challenges. You're guaranteed to leave with one big idea, two applied strategies, and three questions to consider that can help enhance your leadership every day.
Craig:We'll bring you insights on how to lead beyond any title and unlock your own leadership potential. And
Jennie:we both hope you enjoy this episode. Excellent. So welcome everybody, whether you are brand new to us or whether you are returning, we were trying to figure the number you might be returning for someone this 60th time, which is crazy, but we're very excited to see you in the room. We can see the number of people who are here. So thanks for joining us. Welcome. We haven't got there yet, but you will have noticed us talking about the chat, so on the bottom of your screen, possibly the top, depending on your setup for Zoom, there's two buttons to be aware of. One is the chat, that's why everybody's having a little chat right now with all the good mornings. And one is the Q and A. If you have a question as we run through today, you make Craig's life a whole lot easier if you could pop it into that Q and A, and he will try and track both of those, excuse me, to the very best of his ability, but before we get going, as is part of our rhythm, cadence, and importance to us, we'll stop for a moment to recognize The land that we are connected to and make some acknowledgements if you are looking at your screen, excuse me, if you are just listening to us, imagine the view from SAIT's main campus. If you do join us at any time as well, we're pausing to take this in. This looks like it might be a September day, but we're all wishing for that green to come back again somewhere in our near future. Craig, myself, and SAIT are all based in Calgary. We call it Calgary. It is known as Mackintosh, which is the meeting the elbow of two rivers. We're situated on the traditional territories of the Blackfoot Confederacy. Today, that encompasses our Indigenous people. from the Treaty 7 region. That is the Siksika, the Bikani, the Ghani, the Sutina, the Stoney Nakoda, and the Northwest Métis homeland. We also acknowledge all of the people who make their homes in the Treaty 7 region of Southern Alberta. If you're joining us from somewhere completely different, thanks for just taking a moment and recognizing where you are, where we've come from, where we're going next. Thanks,
Craig:Craig. Perfect. Thank you, Jennie. You're welcome. Before we jump in today's topic about feedback, we do want to highlight that February 21st and 22nd, we're going to be live in the Stangrad Atrium at SAIT for our third Leading Beyond Any Title conference. We're going live. We're spreading our wings a little bit this year. We're going a little bigger. We're going a little longer. We're hoping to fill a larger room and hoping that some of you may be able to join us. It'll be a great couple of days, 14, 15 sessions for folks to pick from ranging from leadership to project management to digital. Related skills, and we got some great sessions, some great speakers lined up. Jennie, of course, will be there. Folks like Gina Botello and Evan Weislake and Rod Miller will also be joining us in delivering session. Pop the link in the chat. If you're interested, please check it out and we would love to have you join us. I'm excited. Yeah. And if you do join us, please ensure that you provide us with lots of feedback about the event. And there's a segue. Nice. There's a segue for you, Jennie. Feedback. I think we probably all know what it is and what it isn't, but why don't we just start there? Let's kind of level set and define what is feedback. And why is it important?
Jennie:I knew you were going to ask me that question and I don't really have an answer. It feedbacks information. It is information that we receive. It closes the loops. I think being in a conversation, but it doesn't have to be spoken. I can get feedback. Like leaders often say, Oh, nobody gives me any feedback to which the answer potentially is rubbish because there's feedback everywhere. So we get feedback verbally. And feedback, non verbally at its rawest form it's information and the next step is what insight can we get from that information in order to grow or learn or develop or continue the conversation? How's that? It's good.
Craig:No, and it's, it's a simple question, but I think it's important to start there to basically make sure we know where we're branching off from. And why is it so important though? Why, why are we even talking about it this morning? Why have we got a few hundred people that have joined us to hear about feedback? Why do you think it's such an important topic that's drawing such interest?
Jennie:Because we need it. Really, you can't grow. In all learning, there is some kind of feedback. We're caught, quite disastrously caught in, I think it's probably a paradox in that we want it. Most people will say they don't get enough of this, even though on the whole, it is really poorly done. If you look at the continuum of where we've been with feedback, right, it started pretty much with brutality. It would go way, way back before, probably before Canada was even called Canada. And then We moved into this sort of period where feedback was top down. One person did most of the speaking. There was an awful lot of punish, shaming, manipulating. In order, really, where it stemmed from is, Here's what you can do to please me. That's what feedback was. And it wasn't delivered with any, let's just call it care and consideration at this point. And now we get to a stage, there's a whole ton in the middle, I think most people are probably caught in the middle, but we've also got this next level of feedback that's appearing, which actually says, let's not give much, in fact, we've talked about him before, but Marcus Buckingham will say, nobody wants your feedback, what they really want is your attention, and that changes the conversation completely, so there's your continuum from one desperate end to one very progressive end, I think most of us are caught in here trying to do better, And sometimes getting that
Craig:fair enough. So what does good feedback look like if we're doing this right? And I am thinking there's a few, got a few notes here. I'm just going to lay out where I think we may go today, right? And where does, what does great feedback look like? I think we could talk about that for, how do you give it? How do you receive it as a leader? I think it's something else that is really important. How do you provide feedback upwards? If you're an individual contributor or if a leader that you're a leader that needs to provide feedback upwards, positive versus corrective feedback, if I can call it that, you might correct me on whether that's the right term for it or not. How do you, when do you feedback for the team versus an individual, et cetera. And how often, something you said in there is, do we hold on to it and use it as this great gift and this great motivator? So, I can see by your reaction that we're going to have some fun with this, but why don't we start with, what does good feedback look like?
Jennie:Okay, because we had about 10 questions there and I'm like, whoa, where are we? I know,
Craig:I'm not sure I haven't written down. I, don't, you didn't remember
Jennie:them all? Well, let's talk about, let's talk about what's Which is good. Okay. So feedback is a gift. I've seen it attributed to Simon Sinek, but I've heard lots and lots of people say it. And my response to that, there's a few people I actually think who were actually at our gifted giving that we ran in November. We did this big conversation around how do you feel when you receive a gift? And the answers are vast, but feedback is rarely actually a gift. If you think about the thought and the process that goes into buying a gift for somebody, And then how do you feel receiving a gift? Okay, we have got to be on top form for it to be a gift. I think what we mean by feedback is a gift is in the end we appreciate the information that we got to allow us to grow. What does good feedback look like? There's so many different versions of an answer to that question. And I think a lot of it lies in the planning of giving you a feedback. And the other part, before we can even dive there, is what kind of feedback are you giving? Because if you would like to give some feedback to me, you can give me feedback on how I execute the job that I do for you. There may be another conversation where I got it wrong, and we need to have a performance conversation. By the way, Thank you for not putting constructive and criticism in the same sentence because those two don't live next to each other ever.
Craig:Let me cross that off the list.
Jennie:And then the third one is Feedback on how you experienced me. Now, that's really that's the hardest conversation I think and in all three of those before we even open our mouths What is it that you're talking about? And I think the most important one, what's your intent? Because in a lot of feedback as it currently is, it's a huge tension piece. And our intent is I need you to be more like me because I do okay here and I want you to do it like me. That's not a great intention and nobody wants to be like me. Where are you going with that conversation? What's your intent is a really important one. But also, who are you serving with that? If you're just serving yourself and making yourself feel better, there's a lot of people out there who think feedback's part of my job, so therefore I must give it. Okay. Probably not the best conversation either. If you serve, how you're serving that person is to elevate them or elevate the issues. All right, now we're on track. And then the next part is how are you going to deliver that message? There's a starting piece. There's so much more we can go into that.
Craig:Yeah. Your comment about intent, I think is so good. And I, I wonder how often, um, if you just think about the average leader on the average day, how often is feedback just so average because you don't stop as a leader to think about the intent, right? It's, is it, is it reflexive? Or are you actually noticing something and thinking about why you want to talk about why you want, like there, I think in that piece alone, there could be so much that just makes feedback so much better and comment in the chat here. Yes. What is your intent? You need to be clear in your own mind of what you were doing.
Jennie:And, and there's another piece in there too, clearing your own mind, yes, and are you the only one that thinks this, because we see people and we see actions so differently and where you are looking at that elevation, the aim is to make it better, the aim is to help, then is that just the story you've created for yourself, or are you basing this on one thing that you've heard? Or do others think it too? And so, let's say you receive some feedback on what Jennie's been up to in the classroom. When you think about that, like, when was the last time, if you were to give me that feedback as my leader, when was the last time you ever saw me in a classroom? It was a while ago. And so, base that off one person. Now you're learning, you're thinking, it's not shared, and you're not going to be able to be very helpful in that conversation. Whereas if you can have a conversation previous with somebody who is with me all the time or has been a lot. We've got different perspectives on it, and that's not, you can't do that all the time, but I think even just that awareness that I'm seeing it this way, they will see it such a completely different way, but there are other perspectives in there too. We realize how quickly we don't carry meaning in our feedback. We make it difficult for the person receiving to understand. The message that they need to get.
Craig:Yeah, you're talking the situation you're talking about there when you are hearing something from somebody about somebody else. I have to admit that is one of the places I've always struggled in my role as a leader. And for the most part, if back to what, unless there's something. Unless there's something that involves, as HR would call it, an investigation. I typically don't, I typically have shied away from trying to provide feedback based on hearsay. I, for me, to effectively provide feedback, I think it has to be something that I've either seen, felt, or observed myself. I think that, I don't know if that triggers anything for you. But then as we go from that, I want to get back to the three types of feedback that you spoke about. The execution, the performance and the experience. So take it from
Jennie:there. Let's, let's just finish one loop and then we'll go to those three. So if it's like on here, say The question is, okay, I appreciate that I'm hearing this from you. Have you spoken to the person involved? And so what we want to, that sort of continuum of feedback where we have brutality down here and the other end up here, in the middle there is that peer to peer feedback and peer to peer feedback is fantastic when, but you have to have that culture of feedback for that to happen effectively. So that would be my part to that. Going back to those three different types. What did you ask me? I can't remember.
Craig:Just see if we could double click on those a bit. You talked about what type of feedback are you delivering? And again, for me, it just triggered. It's like the intent piece. If you don't stop and think about your intent, how often do leaders really stop and think about what type of feedback they're delivering? Right?
Jennie:There may be more than the three types, but there seemed the easiest way to do that. So the execution of the job, this actually is, is quite difficult too. And let's flip a little bit. Leaders go say, Oh, I always ask for feedback and nobody will give me any. And actually probably what happens is, let's say I'm your leader and I say, do you have any feedback for me? And that is such a difficult question to answer. Normally what you hear is blah, blah. No, you're doing fine. Because there's no focus or clarity or intent behind that question. And yet the leader gets to tick the box and say, no, I've asked for feedback. I'm good. And, you know, a quick step into that one, one that lots of people like to use is in a one on one, what do you need me to stop doing, start doing, and continue doing. That, that's really easy. And lots of people buy into that, but I think the key is if you are asking for feedback, execution of the job, what is it that you want to know? And so if we could focus that question, it might be along the lines of Craig, you were in my presentation the other week. What did you see that I may have missed that would help me elevate my performance next week? That's not brilliant, but what I'm doing is I'm allowing you to zone into one area. And the intent is improve the performance. That makes it easier for you to help me in that conversation. I think the other thing was executing the job. This is not a leader's job solely. There is absolutely nothing wrong. In fact, I think it's brilliant when employee asks a leader for feedback without the leader having to come to them. And the leader's asking their team as well, so it's moving all the time, sideways, peer to peer, up and down, and it becomes much easier. We haven't said it yet, you've gotta have that psychological safety on your team, and that's a culture piece that takes time to build. Yeah,
Craig:so that's for execution of the role. Performance and how you experience me.
Jennie:Right. So performance, this is the, there's an issue. Something's happened and you're not happy with my performance. Let's put it that way. The first thing I'm looking at my beach wall. I'm like, I'm sorry. So some people I've seen this before. This is Susan Strong. It's not funny. Susan Strong and fierce conversations. I believe it's also, is it Susan Scott? I don't even remember, but fierce conversations. She uses the analogy of a beach ball. So when something happens in performance, Craig, you see it from this perspective and you arrive at the conversation with that perspective. And I see it from this perspective and they're both really different. And at the time when this conversation happens, we have two truths, two perceptions, two realities. And the key within there is that we both think we're right. Now the problem that happens in most cases, remember we're on a continuum, some people have got beyond this, but some people are very stuck in this, is if you're my leader and you've been promoted because you were good at your job, not because of your ability to work with people. And I have an issue in something that crops up in the work that I do. You've been there, seen it, done it. So you are full of advice and perspective and all those good things. And this feels good. There's a little bit of power right here. And so as you arrive at that conversation, you have plenty to say. The voice share in most of those conversations is 80 to the leader, 20 to the employee. And when you stop and think about it, who's doing the work? It was me, whose job is it, or mine, who was there, me, whose career, if you want to go down this road, me. Why are you talking? Really come in, start the conversation, but just what have you observed? What is it that you're seeing and what is it that you're missing? Could I miss something that there's an issue and then give me some space in the conversations? Could my, I
Craig:was going to say, I love that. And there's somebody mentioned it in the chat here, Tom earlier, sticking to the facts. Right? Yes. Jennie, this is what I saw. Yes. Did I not see something? Why did the outcome end up the way it was? Because that's not what we were looking for. And I think to your point, wait and stop and then listen.
Jennie:And here's the, the part though, okay? So most cases were face to face. Some cases were like this and you hear the term all the time, don't take this personally. This is personal. No, you're, this is their work, you're face to face. It is personal, but the part that helps is when we stay task orientated, task focused, then it doesn't become a personal attack. Now, language is going to be really important, because if you come in with, you should, you must, you didn't do this, you didn't do that, you is a silent blame in any way that it's used. And my cautionary tale in there is people say, Oh yeah, okay, so if I'm saying you should, or you must, I'm secretly doing this, and 90 percent of people here probably heard me say don't should on people, that's rude, period. However, what do we switch to next? I think we could do better. Hey, this is the other part of good feedback. I'm an adult with a skillset and you're an adult with a skillset. Don't say we, if you don't mean we, if it legitimately is we great, but you can't disguise a you with the we, because now you just lost credibility in the receiver's eyes and brain.
Craig:Yeah. I was, it's funny because as you were going through the you at the start, I was thinking A potential way of going about that would be we didn't get the outcome we were looking for here, which perhaps works because in theory, if you were on the same team trying to deliver the same result and there's a performance issue that didn't or performance wasn't met, we truly didn't get the outcome that we were looking for. I don't know, it might be semantics. Maybe I'm playing with that a little bit, but I'm just thinking it might be a different way of starting that. And I think the other piece for me that is always important and perhaps it comes up in the how you experience me, but when we're talking performance, I know the, I feel, or I think is a tough one as well, because how do I manage? Yeah,
Jennie:that's interesting. I'm sitting on the fence with your we.
Craig:That's good. Because there's a question here that says, so if not you and not we. What are some better words we should use? Okay,
Jennie:so, yeah, okay, so
Craig:You, you and we started this conversation, so you and we better fit and wrap
Jennie:this thread up. You, you mentioned it earlier, you, in that, here's what I see. What have you observed? What have you heard? So, I, Jennie, I can see, oh, let's use honor positive. Jennie, I see this feedback that's come in via email. And I think this is the best feedback that we've received in, Months. Hey, so where we're at, this is your perspective. This is what you have. Okay. I see this. I've seen, I've read this email today. I think this is the best feedback that we've had in months. I am delighted. I'm excited. I'm thrilled. Now, that emotion, I am one word, is really important because that's where I make the connection to you. So back to your, what is good feedback? Good feedback has a connection in it. If you don't tell me how you feel, it's just information. And if we're dealing on the, the, the less fun side, Hey, I'm frustrated and disappointed and guilty. I feel guilty. And the, the key in that is you're not telling me how to feel. I get it when I hear that. If I hear you say, I'm thrilled with this. I'm like, whoa. Okay, cool. This is good. So the first part in there is, all right, I see this. I think this. I am thrilled or excited, whatever it might be. And then, what's your request here? I'd like to send this out to the team. Are you okay with that? And you can do that from a, here's the issue piece. Okay. Jennie, I see X. I know from our notes that we were aiming for Y, that's a we in there. I see X, I know from our notes, the conversation was about achieving Y. I'm concerned that this will affect our metrics. I'd like to have a conversation as to the process, the pipeline, whatever that might be, or I. Now in there, there is no blame. There's no shame. There's no cruelty. There's no judgment. Either, which are all usually those little things that creep into poorly given feedback and there's the vehicle for a conversation to follow.
Craig:Yeah. And to, to your point that you've made here many times before, everybody on our team, not everybody, shouldn't apply an absolute. People are showing up to work, they're adults who are there, who are trying to do this is an entirely different conversation if you think you actually have somebody on your team who's actively sabotaging or going a different route on purpose, totally different conversation. So in theory, there really is no, there is no judgment in, in how the outcome ended up being. It is all about trying to find out why the outcome ended up being the way it was. Perhaps it's a skill issue, perhaps it's something else, perhaps something else came up that was entirely out of that person's control. So, I think that, that line of questioning, trying to stay focused on the facts, really paints a nice pathway to go down.
Jennie:The two things for us to remember is if you're giving me feedback, then the feedback has to benefit me, not you. And we put this on a slide for the resources later. It's now measured by what you say. It's totally measured by what I receive and what I do with it. And so it needs to benefit me in that conversation. It's a really good place to start from. And I often talk when we're expanding this conversation in the classroom, if this is our classic tension, there's nothing to stop us standing side by side, which is what the I version does and looking at it and. I've said this before on here too, I would call that feed forward because that's literally what we're doing. We're feeding forward to elevate and grow. Okay, so
Craig:now to get to the personal one, or the most difficult one you were talking about there, because I think it's going to tie in well with a question that we have here. The whole piece around feedback about how You experience me,
Jennie:discuss. I'm going to make it four, Zach. Sorry. I heard somebody say this the other day. I wish I could remember who it was. We have to remember. When we give our feedback, basically it's our opinion and our job isn't to give our Amazon review on your body or something. And I'm like, Oh, that's clever. Four and a half stars. Yeah, there you go. And, and what you'll give four and a half stars to might not be my version either. So this is the one where we have to be really, I wouldn't say the word careful, but I just thoughtful or thinkful, whatever you like in there. In that. What is it that you're looking for? What is it that you need? And how are you going to ask for that? And I think in this area really joins into the need to catch people doing it right. So in our continuum that we started with, this is the sort of, this is quite a progressive approach. And it sounds funny when you say it out loud, but we are so conditioned to look for what's wrong. And we're so conditioned to look for weaknesses and we do a beautiful job. We call them opportunities because that makes it sound better. Rubbish. Okay. And what if we looked at how to catch people doing it right? And so I might say things in that experience piece, like, Craig, I heard you say, I don't know, a phrase to our team the other day in a meeting that showed your appreciation for the team. And I need you to know that appreciation goes a long way, and I am wondering if we could hear that more often, right? That's how we experience you. And when we catch people doing it right, because for the most of the minutes when I say, can I give you some feedback? They're worried about where their job stands next and what's coming and what did I do wrong? And actually, if we get into the habit, a couple of cool things happen. When you get into the habit of catching people doing it right, and what's good, is you start looking for it, and there is a lot of that out there. And I'm not saying we ignore it when there hasn't been compliance. If you work in a job where there is a process and a way that there's a matter of life and death, I'm not talking about that. When we're in that situation where we can catch people doing it right, and we put more energy into that, A, we feel good. That's a lot of dopamine and oxytocin and all the other stuff. And you start to see the good in people, and that's where connection and trust and relationship get built. Then, when there is that moment, and you have to have the harder conversation, Jennie X, the aim was Y. That's much easier because we've built everything that we need to build to be able to have that conversation and that kind of leads us to The part that how we receive it, it takes a meaning as well. So we should probably talk about that soon too.
Craig:So it ties in, I think it ties in a bit with the question that is here and that is, as, um, what's the best way to manage receiving negative feedback? So that's where, what do you advise if you don't agree with the manager's feedback? Um, how do you handle feedback that isn't constructive?
Jennie:Yeah, they're caught down here. It happens. It happens a lot. So in, in every feedback that we receive, it's cool way to think of it. There is a truth. Okay. Because there's two truths, two perceptions, two realities. That's what we said before. So in everything that comes to you, there is a truth. So can you find. The truth that's in it, and then it's all information. So the next question is, what are we going to do with that truth? Now we all have blind spots. We really do. So I am a fan of, if you have the relationship or you have the conversations, I'm a fan of that clarity part, if you've been sideswiped by this and maybe it is a blind spot, but at this point you're like, no, I don't believe this. So if I was in that reaction, then it's okay to say. All that's new information to me. Could I have an example or two of where this has cropped up or where this has come from or what led to this feedback? And the key, when you ask that question is that when you've asked the question, stop talking and let them give that back to you. Because the more you can attach it to an actual behavior that's half person, the more you might let, I didn't see it like that. That's not the way that I look at this. And that's an important part too. I do this all the time. When I get given feedback, I want to tell my side of the story. I want you to know what my intentions were and what I was thinking, and I am still okay. If you're not happy with that, or there's something to talk about. But I need to be heard so that you understand, and that's where the conversation happens. But that's really difficult because it takes courage sometimes to have that conversation. And it feels like I'm retaliating. I'm not. I just want to be heard and understood the same as everybody else. The same as you do in offering me that information. Yeah, it's,
Craig:it's, I love what you said there about the, that's new information. What a great response. It's how do you, in that moment. When you're receiving that feedback that you don't agree with, your, uh, your amygdala probably gets triggered, your blood pressure starts going up, you're not happy, your emotion is taking over, and so how do you actually react to, and react to your emotion, and remember to stay calm and look for that phrase in the moment, I think that's where these things can break down, and if you are the recipient, you're the recipient. Of that feedback, I think there's probably two things in there is one, what is the actual content and two, how was it delivered? What was the tone? What was the message? Because there's to your point, feedback isn't just the words. It's the body language. It's the tone. It's so there's two pieces in there. Can you break apart the way it was delivered? If you don't agree with that from the actual content that was delivered.
Jennie:And if you're caught in a mix of hijack. No, because the whole point with an amygdala hijack is you've lost your cortex. You've lost your sensible brain. And so that's why we often get that fight response and then the conversation just escalates. There's a lot in. That management piece, and it doesn't take long for the cortex to catch up again. So we still have the emotion, but we have the outcome brain in there that says, if you do this, it's going to happen next. And like what you said in, how's it being given? What was the message? How is it delivered? And I come back to, too, who's giving you that message? And my mom used to say to this to me when I was growing up, I'd be really, I don't know, in a flap about something. She said, Jen, just consider the source. And the source of that is really important because if I respect the person who's giving it to me and I have a relationship with them, then my trust is, they're not looking to throw me under the bus, they're looking to help me. Whereas if it's coming from someone who has really, from my perception, like this is, the problem with communication always is it's perceptions in there, 100%. If I don't have a relationship with them, let's say they're talking about me in a classroom and they haven't been in a classroom with me for eight months, I'm going to find that harder to take. So looking for what's the truth in there, that's the kind of conversation where I'm going to need to ask a lot more. Okay, so how did this come about or what was it that led you to give me this feedback? And the other thing too, when you're receiving feedback, and this is tough, but the words thank you are really important. Because in most cases, most. It took some degree of courage to have that conversation and you are sitting in an awful lot of situational humility. So getting the words thank you out sometimes are really hard. Yeah,
Craig:and I like what you touched on there too about receiving or giving that feedback isn't necessarily easy. This isn't something simple for leaders to do. We're not wired to provide corrective feedback on a regular basis. That's why leaning into focusing on the positive, finding them doing something right, I think is such a brilliant approach because In one way, it coaches, it coaches to that behavior repeating, which brings me to a question around timeliness, frequency of feedback. There was a comment in the chat around the best feedback is delivered, scrolling back up, I missed it. The best feedback is delivered in real time, in the moment. Yes. What if that's not possible? So this is a typical Craig multi part question. Paying attention. Okay. What if it's not possible? Two, what if you have a leader who constantly provides feedback? There's, we've got a question in here. How do you manage someone who provides continuous feedback? Unimprovement. And I'm interpreting that as always the timeliness. What if it's not possible to be in the moment? And then what if you're just receiving it too much?
Jennie:So our brains work the closest. Let's say you're reinforcing version of feedback. If you're reinforcing the closer that conversation can be to the actual behavior, our brains do best with that. We can make the connection that said is never, ever too late to thank somebody for the job that they've done. That's a slightly different conversation, but that's important. There's always a piece in there. If I'm angry, if I'm carrying unpleasant emotions, the ones with a high intensity anger, frustrations, those kinds of things. I'm not going to do very well in this conversation. Generally speaking, an emotion is just chemicals, and it can't last longer than, I think the magic number is 18 seconds, might be less than that. That's all an emotion can last for. So if you're angry, and then you're still angry, and then you're still angry, you're reattaching to what it is that's making you angry. So, before you go in, label that emotion, what is it that's making you feel angry? Now you're probably moving towards an intent in a conversation. I honestly don't think that you'll be any better at that conversation the next day than you're going to be today to have it. And the other part is, if it's People don't get tringry for no reason. There's always a passion and a reason behind even our unpleasant emotions. There's information, there's data, and that conversation is much better served as close as possible so the person can understand, but watch your language carefully because anger and frustration, the unpleasant will lead to the blame and the shame, and that's not going to be a great delivery. So there's a tiny piece there. Now I've forgotten the second question already. Continuous.
Craig:Oh, if you're, if you're, if you have a leader who, yeah, leader who just continually providing feedback.
Jennie:So. It does tricky because what that is constant information, and actually what we end up doing is just switching off. We're not paying attention because it's constantly coming. And that leader probably thinks they're doing a great job on helping them and giving them feedback all the time. And what they're just giving is information all the time. And we're not gaining the insight from it. So this could be a how you experience me conversation. It's harder. It is going to depend on your relationship with that leader. And I think that the angle, the way to have that conversation is, you know, understanding yourself. And how you absorb information to gain insight, and then can you put that into a conversation? Now, it depends on the context, it depends on the job, it depends on the relationship with the leader. But when I hear a constant stream of information through the day, I find it hard to focus on the actual task in hand. And I'm concerned as I want to deliver the best performance for you, would it be possible to have a one on one connect where we talk about stop, start and continue or something like that, and then, and set that up for that conversation?
Craig:Yeah, and I, I think that's the route you almost have to go is to try, as we've said here many times before, have the conversation. If you can. It's going to, yeah, it might be uncomfortable to tell your leader. You're giving me too much feedback, right? Or I need the feedback in a different way. That might be uncomfortable. Giving that a shot, I think, probably has to be, I don't know the specific situation, but assuming you're working with a rational leader, right? Odds are it's gonna happen. Perhaps go in the right direction for you. One final thing I wanted to get to before we wrap up, because we're coming up on time. And I want to go back to it because you provided me with some feedback with your body language to the comment that I made around leaders who hold on to feedback because it's this great gift and reward and motivator. I think the corollary of that is that it's somewhat tied to this idea of we can't give feedback, positive feedback. All the time. It's like everybody gets a ribbon for participation kind of thing. What's your thought? The thoughts are somewhat tied together in my mind, but Yeah, so.
Jennie:Go for it. Go for it. So, it's really curious. Never are we talking about a ribbon for showing up. And, we're not really talking about information on your day job. Like, your adults with, and your skills. But, What we are talking about, and I really like this idea, catch people doing it right, and remember the ratio of 5 to 1, 5 positive to 1 negative. The highest performing teams operate, I think it's actually 5. 6 to 1 on the research they've done in the business world. Longer lasting, better marriages, five to one, five positive to one negative. And so I don't see any harm in offering that positive reinforcement, catching people, doing it right, appreciating the good. We've talked about them before, those power You don't use a power thank you in every thank you that you have, but when you need it, it offers impact. And if our approach is that, feedback might well be a gift. Because most of the case, most of the time, if you say to me, feedback is a gift, I'm like, nope. Because we just, we deliver it. Awfully, and we mishandle it and we've learned to mishandle it. So if we get a much better grip on what we're doing and we approach it slightly different, it's not my opinion and it's useful and it's going to help, then I think we could do better with that. Fair
Craig:enough. All right. It's my point to give you some feedback and say, we have to wrap up. We have to move along. You've done a great job. I've really experienced you very well today. Thank you, Kate. Some days I think I'm funny.
Jennie:And we all do too. Yeah, for sure. Just in case, we didn't talk about discounting the positive, which is fairly important, that's another conversation, but please, if somebody catches you doing it right, don't discount the positive. Okay. So if by chance, and there is definitely a few in the many of you in this room, you haven't come across this before. We finished with one big idea, two things that you can take and use today, next week, over the weekend, this all works in our personal lives as well as our business lives, and three questions. And it is truly three questions this week. So the big idea for this week, and when we're talking about feedback, if you hang out with me for any length of time, you're going to hear me say feed forward, the, just pay attention. And to that end, what are you noticing? Ties beautifully into catching people doing it right. But it also gives us that information, that fact, that evidence from our perspective. Remember it is just that, when we notice. And a lot of us walk around a lot of the day not paying attention at all. There's my first one, pay attention. Now two things that you can take away. We've talked about this, so I love it when these two tie in together for the next, I don't know, set yourself a timeline. Can you catch people doing it right? Start looking for it. Talk about it everywhere you head for coffee. After this, somebody pause your coffee. Catch them doing it right? If they've served you nicely. If they don't, then there you go. But if they do, that's worth a mention. You'll make them smile and that's not too bad either. We can do it in the workplace, we can do it in our homes, and the sincerity in that conversation travels a long way, and you're also tacking up your 5 to 1 in that ratio. Second thing, this is a harder one for us to do, especially if you're the leader. And you're in a feedback conversation, stop talking. Now there's two forms of wait, both are very useful. First one, why am I talking? We talked about that a little bit in that it's not your job. You weren't there possibly, etc. Ask what happened or what got us here and then stop talking and let the person give you their perspective, their reality. The other one is what am I telling myself? And this is a part we didn't have time to dig into this Craig, but we create stories all the time. And we create those stories most times based on past experiences. And they're not always relevant. Pause. Is this a story that you created about the other person or about the situation? Are you creating anxiety around it? Sometimes. Hey, do you need to be right? Or do you need the relationships? All good pauses for us to have in those conversations and then three questions to take away. And what question will you ask to whom today? So if you're somebody who's never ever asked for feedback, don't just ask for feedback, turn it into a good question. Hey, what do I do in our daily connections that stops you from achieving what you want to achieve in the day? What do you need me to continue doing? What is it that you like about the way that we work together? Uh, second question, who could you appreciate in the next 10 minutes? Here's my Friday challenge. We will be, ooh, we might be nine minutes, but you've got a few minutes before that nine o'clock meeting. Send someone a text or a Teams message. Appreciate, catch them doing it right. And then be really careful. A lot of feedback is simply opinions. And you'll know if you're opinionated. When in a voice, or even out loud, you're shitting on people, or them, you should, they should, we must, you must, all of those are opinions on Overdrive. Take a little peek at your own and see what's going on. And as always, if you have questions, there is our very special email address and you will reach Craig or myself at the end of that. So if you have a question, why not send one to us and we'll do our very best to answer that. All yours, Craig. Thank you,
Craig:Jennie. Wonderful. Folks, as always, thank you so much for engaging. Thanks for being with us today. We appreciate it. Jennie, I appreciate you. We will be back on Groundhog Day. And I guess we will do that session over and over again. Uh, no, we won't, but, uh, thank you. And again, if you feel like joining us in February ticket sales have gone live for our leading beyond any title conference, have a great weekend and take care of everyone. Bye bye. Thank you once again for joining us on the Leading Beyond Any Title podcast. If you'd like to stay connected and receive more updates from us, please follow SAIT corporate training on LinkedIn. Stay in the loop with the latest insights and valuable content through the link
Jennie:in the show notes. Additionally, don't miss out on the opportunity to experience Leading Beyond Any Title live. Sign on for our webinars and experience the podcast before anyone else. Finally, make sure to rate, review and subscribe wherever it is that you listen to your podcast. Thank you again for listening.