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What's up, guys? Welcome back to Build. And today I want to talk about how to deliver peer feedback. You might be thinking, well, Layla, why do I need to learn how to develop or how to give peer feedback if I am the leader? And the reason is, is because if you don't know how to teach people how to get peer feedback or deliver criticism to each other, then it's going to be very tough to grow your team, because if you're the only source of feedback that people have, then they're going to be attached to you and dependent on you for their growth. And so the reason this is top of mind is because it was actually really interesting. And this always seems to happen. This is really where most of my podcasts come from. I had multiple teammates come to me in the last few weeks and give me feedback about people who report to me from people who report to them in every instance. Immediately I'm like, oh, shit, okay, I'm going to have to give this feedback. And then I go, no, no, no, no. What the fuck? It makes no sense that I developed this habit of being the monkey in the middle, delivering feedback to people when I didn't even see what happened. I wasn't there, and I don't even have the context. This happened in my last company gym launch. And I remember when I realized that nobody on my team knew how to give each other feedback. I remember, like, actually having the feeling like I was in middle school again, and it was like kids telling the teacher and then the teacher having to pull the kid aside. And here's the thing. If people work for you, most likely they're grown fucking adults. They are grown fucking adults. If you can learn how to give people feedback, so can they. And so what I realized when I felt like I was the middle school teacher, you know, regulating people, fighting on the playground, is that the more that you do that, the more your team is dependent on you, the harder it is to grow your team and grow people at the same time. There is no better source of reinforcement or feedback or criticism than immediate. And the reality is, is that if people are waiting on you to give them feedback, to deliver criticism, to communicate to them about their performance, then they might be waiting a long fucking time. Because I don't know about you guys, but I have every department roll into me. I can't watch everything that every leader does. That means that I can't give them as much feedback as the team grows. And this is definitely something that I have noticed with people that have been on my team since you know, we started the company, say, three years ago. You know, some of them have said, like, I would love more feedback from you. And I'm like, oh, no, I actually don't have more time to give more feedback to people because I have more people who report to me. I have more skip levels and there's more people on the team. And so my time distributes to more people. As we're growing, as I'm doing more hiring, as the team and objectives we have expand, what that tells me is that it's not that they need more feedback from me, but they need more feedback in general. This is probably what you'll notice on your team, which is if you grow and you don't teach people how to deliver feedback, then they're going to rely on you to get the feedback and then it's going to stunt growth because you don't see everything they do nearly as much as other people that are in the day to day working with them. So that is my argument for why peer feedback and delivering criticism as a peer is so freaking important. Here's the thing, people hear this. And the reason, let me tell you this, the reason why people on your team go to you and give you the feedback is because of that little resistance that they feel when they notice something, which is, okay, well, if I tell the person, it's like a. It's an effort, it's a conversation, it takes energy to do it and it takes skill. And so they're going to have to exercise skills that maybe they don't have a lot of. And so there's a few different things you need to think through, which is, one, does my team have the skill to effectively deliver feedback to each other? Two, what could go wrong? And then three, am I tolerating too much? And because of that, I'm robbing them of the opportunity to develop this skill. And those are all three pitfalls that I see when it comes to making this actually work. So I want to talk through this with you guys because I actually put together a training for my team on how to deliver criticism to each other. And I want to walk through it with you guys because I just wrote it and I was like, fuck. This would be very valuable for people, especially people who are leaders, who have growing teams and organizations. And so I want to give you no fluff how to deliver criticism. And again, you can use this. Like, maybe you're listening to this. You're like, I actually suck at doing it myself. Great, then this can help you too. You can also have Your team listen to it so that you can all start not sucking together. So let's define terms, okay? First, I want to say something which is criticism is not inherently negative, okay? Criticism articulates the difference between the actual and the ideal, okay? So it's like if you have a range of how somebody performs or how you want a task done or how something is rated, right? It's like, where do they fall within that range? What would make it higher or lower? How do we make it higher or lower? That is criticism. It is clearly pointing out a discrepancy. It's not saying somebody's bad. It's not saying somebody sucks, okay? And that's why criticism. It seems to get a bad rap because what people actually do is they insult each other, okay? People insult each other and then call it criticism and then say they hate criticism. And so we've all given criticism a bad rap when criticism is actually how we fucking get better, okay? An insult, right, is when you compare something or someone to something aversive, right? To something negative. It's when you say something, it's just like, if I were to say, you're an asshole, you're rude, you're. That's just saying you are a negative. It's labeling somebody. It's making somebody feel bad, and it's not fucking helpful. It does make you feel good sometimes, though. I'm sure some of you listening to this, you just like to insult people. I have seen it too many times not to say it. When it comes to insulting people, it's basically saying you don't even identify range. You just say, it's either low or it's low or it's low and you suck. And I think the most traditional, and I use this example all the time, is like, I was watching Selling Sunset. Yes, I watched Selling Sunset. I remember Mary was the manager, and she was yelling at Christine, who was one of her workers. And Christine clearly has stirred up drama in the office, but I think that a really proficient leader would have been able to wrangle her in. But instead, Mary, who was, for some wild reason, made the manager. She's like, I just need you to just stop. Just stop acting like this. And she was like, acting like what? And she's like, you're just. You're just being a fucking bitch. You're just a fucking bitch. I just need you to stop. She insulted her. She didn't give her feedback. The reason a lot of people do this. I'm just gonna put this out there. And if you put yourself into this camp. This is some tough love, but you lack skill. It takes less skill to insult somebody than it does to critique somebody. You might lack skill, your team might lack skill. The goal of me making this podcast is so you can actually get that skill. Because a lot of the times people confuse criticism with insults and then they're like, why are my teams not changing? Why are people not adjusting their behavior? It's like, well, because you insulted them, you didn't critique them. And so the question is like, do you want to make people feel bad or do you want people to get better? Insulting will definitely make people feel bad. So if you're a malicious motherfucker, insult somebody because you'll make them feel bad and ensure that they stay stuck and keep doing the thing you don't like. If you want somebody to get better, you learn how to critique them. Let me give you some actual examples of how to deliver criticism versus an insult. Criticism sounds like Johnny. The goal is to make 100 dials a day. In the last six days, you made 60. What can I do to help you get to 100 dials a day? Sarah, you ran the class in 45 minutes. But it's a 60 minute class. Next time, let's make sure we take the full rest break. So we make it a 60 minute class pointing out discrepancy. Right? What's the ideal 100 dials, a 60 minute class, point out discrepancy, tell them what to do next time. Notice that there's a pattern here. Whereas an insult is when you compare somebody to something negative. Sarah, you only ran the class for 45 minutes. You're making us all look bad and you're embarrassing me. Okay, that just makes Sarah feel bad. She doesn't know what to do to make it better. Johnny, you remind me of Ted, who never worked hard enough to stay on the team. He lost respect from everyone. Hit the dials. That's not going to help anybody improve. That's just going to make people feel bad. Now, I will say this, which is there are 0.1% of top, top, top performers who can take punishment and can take insults and can do well with it. But I would also argue that they secretly resent you and they will stab you in the back one day. So there you go. That being said, if you want someone to get better, you want to learn to deliver criticism. If you want someone to feel bad and stay suck, insult them. You might be listening and thinking, I don't know why my spouse doesn't change. And then you think to yourself, okay? Think about all the things you say to your spouse. You never take the trash out. You're so messy. You promised you would do this. I thought you'd be home at this time. Why are you never home on time? You're never home on time. You're just like. Just like insulting your spouse doesn't work. Neither does insulting your peers, right? So feedback about what somebody didn't do actually misses the whole fucking point of criticism, which is to direct somebody on what to do. And the implicit assumption actually justifies this chronic negativity, which is why some of you get reputations with other people for being less than pleasant or complete assholes to work with. Yeah, you give it to them straight, meaning you act like an ass, and then you expect them to change. You're like, I was being direct. It's like, yes, direct means direct them what to do. Not being direct as in direct with an insult. Okay, seriously, like, being direct means you tell people what to do, not you tell people what they are and label them with negative associations. And I see this more often than not in peer to peer feedback, because oftentimes people have less skills when it comes to delivering the feedback or the criticism. And because there's less supervision and there's usually less authority in the relationship, there's less respect. There's less riding on how you deliver this. People are a little ruder when they deliver the criticism. They tend to let a little bit of the spice out. Let's talk about how to not let the spice out and instead help your teammates get better. How do you deliver criticism? Well, one criticism has to directly tie to behavior under their control. Okay? So it's behavior they can control, not behavior that they cannot control. The second thing is that people need to know what the critique means because they have a baseline skill, right? So if you tell someone you did this thing poorly, do this next time. You also have to make the exception that they have the skill to do it differently next time. Third is that fast and frequent feedback loops work best. So delaying the criticism by a week or by weeks or till the end of the quarter or just whenever the fuck your boss forces you to do it, that doesn't really work well. Fourth is you want to make it personal. You want to tie it to their behavior rather than a group's behavior, right? So like, if the whole sales team gets punished for one person's bad performance, Right? Or gets critiqued based on one person's performance, that's when you see a leader who's tone deaf or Even a peer who's tone deaf. And lastly is, you want to tell them what to do instead rather than what was bad. So let's do a tactical example. Let's walk through something. Okay. My team on the portfolio side, we now run these workshops a couple times a month. And so I have team members who just work with our portfolio companies that have learned how to present, how to speak, how to have executive presence so they can present at these workshops. Some people had more baseline skills to get good at it fast than others. And so for some people, maybe they struggle along the way. And so I saw peers trying to give each other feedback. And I'll walk you through how I would put that into this example. If I'm giving feedback onto somebody as to how they presented, I would give a critique to them about how well they knew the slides, not what was on the slides, right? So I had somebody saying to one of the peers, you know, when you say this, like, it sounds like. And I'm like, why are you giving them feedback about the slides? Which. Everyone presents the same slides. They don't have control of the slides. They only have control over how well they know the slides or how well they present the slides. If I'm going to give someone feedback on their presentation, I'm going to do it on delivery, not content. The second thing is, if I told someone it was delivery, and if I'm saying they need to, quote, improve tonality, I can only tell them they need to improve tonality if I'm sure that they even know what the fuck tonality means, right? Imagine somebody tells you, you know, to improve your dance skills, you really need to learn how to, you know, dance on your toes. And you're like, okay, I don't have the skill. I'm not a fricking ballerina. So, like, what does that instruction mean to me? I have a whole new skill I have to learn to make that work. If I'm telling somebody to improve tonality, I only do that if I know that they know what tonality means. The third piece is I would give the feedback to them the day of their presentation, not a week later. Okay? So I would give that feedback after they wrap up at the event or at the workshop. I would say, okay, cool, I'm going to give them feedback at the end of the day rather than I'm going to sit in my hands and wait until the next time I talk to them, because it's going to be way more effective to give it to them immediately. Fourth is, I would only speak to them about their presentation, not address the group as a whole. This is one I see a lot which is like, let's talk to the team about getting better at, you know, one of the teammates, it was about six months into this, you know, said, let's talk to the team about how they can get better with their presentations. I'm like, who needs to get better? It's like two fucking people. So let's just talk to those two people, right? Rather than, like, let's take an hour from everybody on the team who has nothing to do with this. That's not fair. That doesn't make sense. It's pretty tone deaf. And then lastly is I would tell somebody what to do next time rather than what sucked about this one, right? So I would say, hey, next time you present, here's the one thing that I think that you could do to make it an 11 out of 10 rather than, hey, this time you really missed the mark here. Okay, well, what the fuck do I do next time? We want to give people instructions. How could this translate into a very short script that you could use? Okay. I always go back to share the facts and state the truth. Okay, why do I go back to share the facts and state the truth? Because a lot of people like to share how they feel and share their subjective opinion. Guys, I don't know how long I'm going to have to harp on this. Somebody's performance and what to do to get them to be better. Telling them that they made you feel bad, telling them they hurt your feelings, telling them that you felt disrespected, it really doesn't matter. I understand the need to feel heard, but it will not help them improve. And once I realized this, I was able to help my teammates get better so much faster. I always assess myself. Do I want them to feel bad or do I want them to get better? Me telling them how they hurt my feelings with their actions is irrelevant to them improving. This is like, where most people mess up is they're more concerned with somebody feeling bad than somebody getting better. Especially when peers are delivering feedback to each other. And so if you have peers you need to deliver feedback to, you need to hold yourself accountable for not indulging in your feelings and not, you know, saying that you want to help them when you actually just want them to admit they were wrong, admit they did something bad, or basically kiss your fucking ass. Okay. Instead, you want to share the facts and state the truth. I'm sorry I'm getting violent about this, but, like, it makes me Upset when I see people say, I'm going to give someone feedback and instead they just like give them an emotional fucking dumping. And then that person feels like shit and then they don't get better. And then they associate getting this terrible, you know, beating from this peer with the event. It's bullying. Honestly, somebody can do something and they can totally have not a thought of you. A sentence in their mind has not even appeared about how this would affect you. And they can do it because you are not the fucking center of the universe and it accidentally affects you because you're on a team. You know, if the quarterback doesn't make the touchdown, it affects everybody. Was he thinking, oh, I'm going to fucking, you know, make sure she loses today, I'm going to lose so that she loses? No, Right. He was just focusing on his own performance and you just happened to be there and it affected you negatively. They didn't mean to. Or maybe, maybe they have a stomach ache and they looked at you the wrong way. Like, we just make way too many assumptions about why things are personal to us, especially as peers. And so if you hear me and I sound passionate about this, it's because I'm fucking sick of it myself. Like, Jesus. Like, let's just fucking work. Share the facts and state the truth, right? Here's an example that I actually put for a teammate because they had somebody who basically showed up 30 minutes late to a meeting that they requested. And they were like, layla, I feel disrespected by this person for showing up to the meeting late. And I was like, I totally understand that. Don't tell them that, let's do this instead. One, state the facts of what happened that's under their control. Hey, on Monday you showed up to our meeting 30 minutes late. Part two, instead of focusing on how that made you feel or why it's bad, tell them what you would like. Next time. Next time, if you're running late, could you let me know that morning? Or maybe just send me a slack to warn me. Step three, ask them if they agree or disagree. Is that fair? Step four, reinforce the right behavior immediately. The next time you have the meeting, send the message, hey, thanks for letting me know that you're running late today. Really appreciate that. You see how that makes somebody better, right? You see how that could help? You see how that tells somebody what to do next time? You see how it's not blaming, it's not making people feel bad, it's not taking things personally, right? It's just trying to help everybody as A group get better. So here's why most people get this wrong one. They get super nervous and they backpedal and they just give them a shitty shit sandwich instead. And so they're like, oh, yeah, so you did so great on this part. Let me just. Oh, my God. This. And you did so great. And, oh, maybe next time you just also do this. Yeah, okay. Okay, cool. I gotta go. If anything, you've just fucking distracted them with the compliment you gave them first. Like, truly, the shit sandwich is distraction at best. It does not actually effectively deliver a feedback to somebody or deliver a critique. That's the first mistake people make. So don't think that this share the facts and state the truth needs to be put into your shitty shit sandwich, okay? Take it out. Deliver it by itself. The second way this goes wrong is you assume this is what people always say. Like, I don't know if I have enough rapport. I don't know if we have enough trust. I don't know if. Do you have rapport with your scale? For real? Like, when you step onto the scale to weigh yourself, do you have rapport with the scale? You're like, how does. What is this? The scale is a feedback tool. It critiques you. It gives you feedback. You don't need to rapport with it if it points out an obvious fact. Okay? So if we properly state the facts and tell the truth, we are the scale to our teammates. You don't need rapport. You definitely need rapport. If you're going to yell at somebody, you definitely need rapport for. You insult somebody because they're going to go say that you're a complete fucking asshole unless they like you. So in that case, you're looking to have rapport because you're trying to give somebody a beating. Okay? I mean that metaphorically. And then lastly, and I already said this, you care more about them knowing your feelings are hurt than them improving. But you lie to yourself and say that you want to help them get better when it would be easier if you just admitted that you wanted them to suffer. Guys, this sounds cold, but I've been doing this for a fucking decade. The amount of y'all, the amount of people who are like, oh, yeah, I'm just gonna give them a little feedback. Nope, not today. We're not doing this shit. Not playing this fucking game, okay? You say you want to give them feedback, but I can just feel you seething. I can feel the rage in your skin. Like, you need to calm the fuck down before you deliver this feedback. If you are a little bit spicy, then sometimes you need to wait a second to cool the fuck down before you deliver feedback to that person and just admit to yourself, hey, you know what? I do like to punish people a little bit. You know, when somebody does say it feels disrespectful, I definitely like them to feel bad. Just fucking admit it. You are human. That is normal to feel. But we don't have to act in accordance with those emotions. Okay, I just want to say, like, I don't know somebody who doesn't feel that way. Even the best leaders are like, yeah, when somebody completely disrespects me, whether they meant to or not, I get mad and I am mad at them and I want them to feel bad, but I don't act in accordance with that. So the tldr to all of this, we want to critique people, not insult people. When we do that, we tell them what to do instead, rather than what they did wrong. And we do that by stating the facts and telling the truth and fucking our feelings. Okay, fuck your feelings. Follow the plan, Share the truth, state the facts. And that, my friends, is how you deliver feedback. And if that one felt a little spicy, it's because I feel that one of my soul today. So with that, I hope this was useful to you. So I hope you have a great walk. Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday, whatever day of the week it is, and I will catch you on the next one.