Feedback Overview

Feedback is a sensitive topic and should be handled carefully. People often react based on agreement or disagreement with feedback. Many of us haven't been taught how to seek and accept feedback thoughtfully. It's important to lead with strengths when giving feedback. Asking employees how they prefer to receive positive feedback and feedback for growth is crucial. Encourage employees to seek feedback and have them initiate conversations about their own performance. This helps develop self-awareness and makes it easier for others to provide feedback. When it comes to feedback, feedback is a really loaded, loaded topic. I'm going to use a crass analogy, and I'm going to use this analogy, and it's the best way I know how to describe the value of feedback. I want you to think about feedback being loaded into a gun, and I know that's kind of a crass analogy. Let's assume it's a water gun, and you've got it safe. And you can't just keep unloading your gun and assuming that the feedback is resonating. We want to be careful with feedback. Feedback for people can cut very deep. Now there's the interaction of feedback. There's the giver, and there's the receiver. Most people do not receive feedback typically openly, thoughtfully, and professionally. Most people will react and accept or dismiss feedback based on agreement or disagreement. So when you coach somebody who has a negative attitude, and you're giving them feedback, and you know, you're exhibiting some negative tendencies, nobody really stops the conversation to say, boss, I just want to tell you, I think you're right. I just didn't know what my problem was. Now hopefully you're laughing a little bit. So the receiver, when we have receivers of feedback, think about this just for a second. Most of us have not been taught how to seek and accept feedback thoughtfully and professionally. There aren't typically semester-long courses in high school or college teaching such things. So we inherit this in the workplace. Now, number two, think about the Gallup organization. When Gallup does their research and they share, people engage and receive you eight times more when you lead with somebody's strengths, the good things that they're doing. Yet when we call people into our office in the corporate world, what is the employee's typical response? It's usually, uh-oh, what did I do wrong? Those two things are at odd with one another. Number three, the greatest advice we can give you when it comes to feedback is to sit down with each and every employee and ask them a two-pronged question. What's the best way to give you feedback of positivity? And what's the best way you would advise us to give you feedback where you have opportunities to grow? Notice what I said. Positivity and opportunities to grow. Stay away from the word constructive feedback, at least initially, because it triggers an emotional reaction. Feedback is a loaded gun. Now, I know that's a crass analogy, forgive me. When people unload their gun and they just unload and we say, ah, John, I'm so frustrated with you, and you do that three, four, five times and your gun is empty, people are probably not going to, at least that person, will not receive your feedback going forward openly, thoughtfully, and professionally. So one of the best things you can do, even if you have an experienced team, is to kind of wipe the whiteboard clean and say, what's the best way to give you feedback this year? Positively and where you have opportunities to grow. Number four, encourage your people to seek feedback. We've talked about this in other lessons. Have them perform what is called the listening chat. The listening chat is when you go up to someone and say, where am I serving you well as a teammate? What are two things I'm doing well? And what's an area where you would encourage me to improve? Where do I have an opportunity to improve? By them simply driving the feedback, they make it easy for other people to give it, and they start to develop their own self-awareness because they have facilitated and constructed feedback on their own terms. That is a foundational lesson that will help you with feedback.