Feedback Questions

The speaker suggests that leaders and coaches should encourage a definition of successful feedback acceptance. They emphasize the importance of receiving feedback openly and thoughtfully, understanding that it provides an opportunity for growth. The speaker suggests asking questions to help individuals accept and seek feedback, creating a positive relationship with it. They mention that people have been conditioned to see feedback as negative, so it's important to also invest in recognizing their strengths. The speaker advises framing feedback in a way that avoids defensiveness and encourages reflection. Overall, the goal is to help individuals develop a positive mindset towards feedback. Now, when it comes to feedback, I would also encourage you as a leader or someone coaching to ask people or facilitate with people or prescribe to people a definition of successful feedback acceptance. Receiving feedback openly and thoughtfully with reflection, truly understanding there's an opportunity to understand perception versus dismissing or agreeing with feedback based on agreement or disagreement or something like that. I would really encourage you to develop a definition of successful feedback reception. Then you can ask questions. What are you going to do to successfully accept that feedback? What if the feedback taught you perceptions of opportunity to grow? On a scale of one to six, six, you love feedback, you seek it on a regular basis, or one, you can be a little bit defensive. What do we need to do to move you towards a six? They typically answer somewhere in the middle. Feedback is something that can cut very, very deep, as stated earlier. So when you are coaching people, the questions become really critical. So when we ask a lot of these questions, like what are you going to do to successfully accept feedback? What are you going to do to seek feedback? On a scale of one to six, what the questions do is they create a framework for them to develop a positive relationship with this thing called feedback. See, here's the funny thing. Recently, I did a presentation in front of 200 people, and I asked people, if you're an employee and your boss called you into the office in the corporate world, and they said, I need to see in my office right away, write down what your response would be if you were a typical employee today. I had everybody write it down, and then I said, if you answered something to the effect of, uh-oh, I must be in trouble, I did something wrong, stand up. All 200 people stood up without exception. So when you have that, it really teaches you that we've also conditioned people to think it's always constructive. So remember to invest in the good things that people do, and also to invest in the areas where they have opportunities to grow. If we use things like, well, John, I want to give you some constructive feedback, at that moment hearing those words, he might go into an emotional state of defensiveness unnecessarily, and may not really hear the feedback fully. Ask what questions, frame it out with what are you going to do to successfully, what's the value of the feedback, what are you going to do to seek it professionally, how will the feedback help you as it relates to your motivator, and so on. So start to get people to create a more positive relationship with this thing called feedback.