Dave Stahoviak (0:00)

Hello, everyone. You're listening to Coaching Skills for Leaders. This is episode number 10, recorded on October 21, 2011, produced by Innovate Learning, Maximizing human potential. Welcome to Coaching Skills for Leaders. My name is Dave Stahoviak. This is the show for leaders who want to develop their coaching skills so they can influence the success of others, their organization and themselves. Whether you're a seasoned leader or you're leading people for the first time, improving your coaching skills will drive your success and most importantly, the success of others. This week's topic is giving constructive feedback to others. Well, last week we looked at how to give positive feedback to others. And so this week I thought we'd take a look at the other side of this equation, which is sometimes a little bit harder, which is how to give constructive feedback to folks. But before even jumping in, I'd love to hear about how you utilized the process of giving positive feedback from last episode. If you tried it out and used the model and had an opportunity to give someone positive feedback and had a good result, or maybe even didn't have a good result, send me a message. I'd love to hear what it is you did and what results you had. So you can. And of course, you can also reach out to me with questions or comments about this show as well. And that number is 8, 7, 7, learn 45. So again, 8, 7, 7, learn45. And you can also reach me by email@feedbacknovatelearning.com so again, that's feedbacknovatelearning.com so look forward to talking with you over phone or email and learning about what you've been applying and also questions you may have about this topic, which is how to give constructive feedback to others. And this is something that gets a lot of us in trouble as leaders. I know I've made mistakes on this many times over the years and I've had mistakes made, you know, to me, when I was being led by others. And this is one of those things that when you are the victim of someone giving ineffective or poor feedback or not doing this in the right way, you tend to remember it for an awful long time. And as I was preparing my notes for this show, I was thinking back to some of the experiences I've had in the past of receiving feedback from a leader or manager and what went well and what didn't go well. And in particular, I remember an incident from just to show you how long these things stick in our minds from almost 20 years ago, my very first job was working in a fast Food restaurant when I was in high school. And I remember very distinctly one day I was working the early morning shift, and I was at the register up front and taking orders from customers. And there was a rule at this restaurant where you were not supposed to ever leave a cash register drawer unattended if it was open. If the drawer was open, you weren't supposed to leave it unattended. And that's just good business practice. You know, you don't leave money laying, you know, in front of people and in front of customers or anybody without it being secure. Well, I didn't really know of that rule and wasn't really thinking one day, and I remember I was talking with a customer. I had opened the drawer, I was giving them change, and something distracted me. I don't even remember what it was, but I turned around and I was talking to someone else about an order. And then I, you know, it was probably five or 10 seconds, and then I turned back to the customer and continue to give change. Now, nothing happened. But what did happen, nothing happened with the customer. But what did happen is that the manager had observed me do that and had observed me leave the drawer unattended and leave this money basically sitting out in front of the customer. And I had turned my back for five or 10 or 15 seconds. I don't remember how long it was, but it was not an excessively long period of time. And I'll never forget, the manager came up to me immediately and said, don't ever turn your back to a customer when you have the drawer open. We never do that. And I remember stopping because, first of all, I was really surprised that he would give me that direct feedback right in front of a whole bunch of other employees. And everyone in the restaurant heard it at the front counter. He did it quite loudly and directly. But the thing that really surprised me was that he did it right in front of the customer. And so not only did he make me feel very, very uncomfortable, he also made the customer feel very uncomfortable. And I remember the customer getting just a kind of a strange look on their face because of course, he was implying that the customer was about to have stole money from me. And so not only did he really make me uncomfortable, he also made people around me and the customer and everyone who observed that interaction very uncomfortable as well. Now, was the feedback necessary? Absolutely. I had made a mistake. I should have gotten feedback about that. But it was the way that the feedback was delivered that wasn't very helpful. And I still remember it 20 years later. I remember not liking that manager because of that one incident that one day. So it's amazing how if we make a mistake as managers and leaders, people remember that, particularly if we don't go back to correct that mistake. If he had apologized for it later or realized that mistake, that would have been different. But that never happened. And I remember thinking at that time, boy, if I ever get to be in a leadership role, I sure hope I figure out a better way to give people feedback. And so I'm hopeful today that this show will give you some tools to do this a little bit more effectively. And feedback is something that is such a hard thing to balance, because a lot of times we ask people to do things. We put people in situations where we've asked them to do something, and sometimes they don't do exactly what we expect them to do, and they have their own creativity about it. I think about this in regards to when we're giving someone feedback, we need to also first determine, is this something that's really essential, this feedback? Is it essential to give this person feedback on this? Is it's going to be a problem if they don't stop doing it this way, or is this just personal preference for me? Because we really destroy someone's motivation if we don't give them flexibility and creativity to do the work in the way that they would want to do it. And case in point, if you've ever rented a car, you go and you pick up the vehicle. And anytime I've rented a car, you know, you have to return the car with a certain amount of gas, or you end up paying an ungodly amount of money for to refill the tank. And so I always try to make sure to refill the tank up to whatever point it was where I rented the car. Now, when I filled the tank for a rental car, I always put in the cheap gas. And I think that's based on my conversations with others. That's pretty standard practice. I put in the cheap gas because, you know, I want to certainly be responsible with the vehicle, but it's not my car. And so I'm not that concerned about really putting, you know, going above and beyond the minimum that I would need to do to take care of it. And ideas are really the same way. And performance is the same way is that, you know, the minute we give someone feedback about how they're doing their work or how they're doing something, we really, you know, we take away some of their commitment to be passionate about what they're doing, and we have to do that. If they're doing something that is not working, but if it's. If it is working or it's just a style difference, we should be careful about when we're giving feedback because we don't want to destroy someone's motivation for the work that they're doing. I think that Marshall Goldsmith, who's one of the top leadership coaches and executive coaches in the world right now, captures this beautifully. In one of his more recent books, that's called what Got yout Here, Won't get yout There, Marshall Goldsmith warns against the habits of leaders, adding too much value and stifling the motivation of an employee's independent ideas. So he says, when we start improving an employee's idea, you have improved the content of the idea by 5%, but you've reduced the commitment to it of executing the idea by 50% because you've taken away the employee's ownership of the idea. So when we give someone feedback, we may be helping them to approve their idea a little bit, but we may be drastically reducing their commitment to the idea. So step one on giving feedback, particularly giving constructive feedback, is does it make sense to even give the person feedback on this? So here's a helpful guide. The helpful guide is to divide feedback into a couple of categories. So category number one is figuring out, is this a minor issue or is this a major issue? So here's how to figure that out. If something is a minor issue, it means that the way someone's doing something, the way they're communicating something, the way they're working their way towards the. The final objective of whatever they're trying to do, that this minor issue that's come up is not going to really substantially affect the overall work product, the overall deliverable, whatever it is that this person is working on or doing for you or the organization, that this minor issue isn't going to be something that's going to dramatically affect that. So let's look at that first. So let's say we have a minor issue with something or some. Some action that someone's taken or some behavior that they're exhibiting. So this kind of further falls into two subcategories. So let's say it's a minor issue and the person is already aware of it. Well, if they're already aware of it, then all you need to do as a leader is just, if it comes up, ask them what they plan to do to resolve it. So really empower the person to take ownership for the issue and to have some dialogue. And this is where you can Put your coaching skills into practice and ask questions. Do some brainstorming. If they ask you for help, by all means, jump in and help however that you know, however you can. But have them take the action to resolve it. So ask them what they plan to do. You can talk ideas with them, but put the onus back on them to say, okay, well, what do you plan to do? What's going to be your first step? So that way the ownership stays with them. Now, let's say it's a minor issue still, but they're not aware of it. They're not aware of the issue. They don't see this little bump in the road coming in a couple of days. My suggestion is in general on these things, let it go. Think back to the rental car. You know, every time we try to, you know, anytime someone's idea doesn't become theirs anymore or the action that they're taking is no longer theirs, then their motivation to execute it goes down substantially each time. If someone is working on a project, if they're working on or exhibiting a behavior that isn't the way you would do it, or it may cause them a minor issue in a couple of days or in a week or in a month, my advice, for the most part, let it go. That's going to ensure that someone stays committed to what they're doing. You. Yeah, we're all going to run into obstacles. People need to be able to run into obstacles and to figure out how to resolve them. That's part of the leadership process. That's part of the learning process. And so if we as leaders jump in every single time that people are going to hit a minor obstacle, first of all, we completely will, in many cases, really reduce that person's ability to think creatively and to think on their own. And, and secondly, we don't teach people how to resolve situations when they come up. So, you know, it's great if you're. I should say it's great. But, you know, if you're the leader and you're always resolving issues for people, I mean, that may work temporarily, but what happens when you're not there that day? What happens when you move on to a new role in your organization? What happens when that person moves on to a new role in their organization? What have they learned about how to resolve situations and issues as they come up? So I really would encourage you, as a leader, is to really consider if indeed it's a minor issue and it's not something that's going to substantially affect the project or the person's development path or the result that the customer is going to need to get, let it go. Let it go, see what happens. And then when it does come up, if the person asks for help or asks for advice, by all means, jump in. Help, you know, help them figure out what it is that caused the issue, help them to strategize about how they might solve it, but ultimately let them take care of it. That way they have ownership over it. Now, of course, the other side of this is if it's a major issue, that's a different story. So minor issues, if people are aware of it, we'll have some dialogue. Maybe how they plan to resolve it. If they're unaware of it, let it go for the most part. But if it's a major issue, a major issue is something that we do need to approach as leaders. We do need to give people feedback on. What's a major issue? Well, a major issue is anything that either currently is or has the potential to derail the entire project, the person's career, potentially, it's going to have a major impact on the business, the organization, the customer, or has a likely potential to do that. And many times as a leader, you are the person who has had more perspective and experience in knowing what types of things fall into that category. So you have to make a judgment call as a leader and determine what are things that are major issues. And the reason that this is different than a minor issue is with minor issues, it's okay for people to learn from their mistakes because the credibility of the entire organization or the entire project isn't on the line with the major issue, though. We don't want to let people fly off a cliff. That's not helpful for you. It's not helpful for them and their commitment and their engagement with the organization. And it's certainly not helpful for whatever result you're trying to get to your customer. And so it's essential that we really do step in when it's a major issue. And again, two subcategories of this. One, if the person's already aware of it, then as a leader, we want to spend a lot of time here asking questions and, and helping brainstorm how they're going to resolve the issue. And notice I said they are going to resolve the issue, not how you're going to resolve the issue. So we want to still keep the ownership for whatever it is with them, to give them the responsibility to start to take action that will help them to really continue to learn and continue to have ownership over something. When a situation gets tough. But by all means, as a leader, we should be there asking questions, brainstorming and helping them figure out how they're going to resolve the issue. Now of course that works if they're aware of it, but sometimes they're not aware of it and sometimes it's a major issue coming up and the person just doesn't see it or not aware of it. And in that case, we do absolutely have to step in as leaders and give feedback and redirect behavior. And so a three step model that I'd suggest for this three E's to remember is, is expectation, example and empower. So expectation first is to when we're giving someone feedback, we're hopefully giving them feedback on their not being, not having met an expectation that we have set either for the project or with the customer or with their behavior, whatever it is. So we need to restate what that expectation is first. If someone's not meeting our expectations, we first have to compare back to what the expectation was on the front end. So we want to start with that. Here is my expectation for this project. Let's revisit that expectation and talk through that. Here's what I expect, here's what the customer expects, here's what the organization expects. So absolutely important step one, revisit what the expectation is for this behavior, this project, the situation, whatever it is that you're giving that person feedback on. That's a major issue. Got to start there first, then transition to example. So an example that you've observed as to why that expectation isn't being met. We want to provide an example because if we just tell the person that they're not meeting the expectation, they may not know why, they may not make the connection as to why they're not meeting that expectation. So it's very appropriate for us to give at least one example and, and if we have multiple examples, that can be helpful for the person to see a couple of examples of how they are not meeting that expectation. And then step three is empower. So let's work with that person to figure out a plan to empower them to resolve it. So again, even here, even with a major issue where they're not aware of it, we want to certainly restate the expectation, give an example or examples. But then we want to have ownership still stay with that person to how are we going to, how are you going to resolve this? And of course, as leader, giving examples, brainstorming, coming up with ideas with them as far as how they can resolve the situation. But Ultimately, we want to empower them to take the action going forward to see how they're going to ultimately resolve the situation. Now, whenever I go over this three step model with folks restating the expectation, giving a couple examples, and then figuring out how to empower that person to resolve it, one of the first questions that I always get from leaders is, well, what do I do if I didn't, there's no expectation, or I didn't set the expectation up front. I can't revisit an expectation that I haven't communicated to them well. My response is always, well, how are they supposed to know the expectation then? If you've never stated the expectation and they don't know what the expectation is, how could they possibly be meeting it? How could they know it? So if you find yourself in that situation as a leader where you're trying to give someone feedback and you want to revisit the expectation and you realize you've never communicated the expectation, it's really a hard place to be giving people feedback about that. So this is a good reminder for all of us as leaders that we need to set our expectations up front with people first. Now no one is perfect at doing this. I know I certainly have not been as a leader. So if we find ourselves in a situation where someone's doing something very different than we expected and we've never communicated what the expectation was, before we even start giving a lot of feedback, we need to really approach that person and say, hey, you know, and I know I've said as a leader before to people, hey, you know, I, I've seen you doing this and I realized that I never communicated my expectations for what this should look like. So I'd like to take a couple of minutes to just share with you my thoughts on what my expectations are for this particular situation, for how to handle the situation with this, with this client or this customer or this other employee and talk that through so you can meet my expectations. And generally speaking, people are pretty open to that. You know, people don't want to get tons and tons of feedback about something, you know, not meeting expectation that they never knew about. That's not fair for us to do as leaders. So the onus comes back on us. If the expectation hasn't been made in advance for whatever reason to state that expectation that then if the person still isn't meeting the expectation after that, then that's where we step in and give feedback and give examples. But we have to start with that expectation first. Now you may have noticed that there Is something missing in this model? It's the say something nice first before you give constructive feedback. One of the things I hear all the time, and as many leadership books and management books over the years, is to start with, with say something nice first up front with people. And I have a little different philosophy on this than I think maybe most people do, is yes, you do need to say something first if you don't really have good rapport with that person, if you've never given them feedback before. So say this is a brand new person in your organization and you've never given them feedback. And all of a sudden on day one, you've got to give them some tough feedback on something. By all means, say something nice first. Find something that they did well and point that out and use that to enter into the conversation. Because you don't want to just jump in without ever having any rapport with a person and start giving constructive feedback in the first sentence. That said, I think that's probably about 5 or 10% of situations that leaders find themselves in. Most of the time when you're leading someone, it's someone that you hopefully have some amount of rapport with. Hopefully you have a relationship with already, and hopefully you have some base level of trust with that person already. And hopefully, if you're listening to this show and you're concerned about coaching skills and becoming more effective as a leader, you're probably someone that's already doing this to some extent and building good rapport with people. So for the majority of the people who are listeners of this show, I would say if you have rapport with someone, don't spend a lot of time up front or even at all, giving a bunch of positive feedback first and working your way into constructive feedback. And there's three ways, there's three reasons that that can really backfire on you. First of all is many leaders fall into the unfortunate situation where they only give positive feedback when they're about to give right before they're about to give tough feedback. And I mentioned this on the last episode a little bit. So that's not a good place to get to. Because what happens is that as people get used to you doing that and only giving them positive feedback and then giving negative feedback right after it, they start to just ignore the positive feedback. And they don't perceive it as sincere, even if you mean it as sincere. They don't perceive it because right away they've become programmed to like, okay, he's just giving me positive feedback, or she's just giving me Positive feedback because they're about to say something negative, they're about to say something constructive. The other thing that gets people into trouble with saying something nice first is often the leader doesn't provide any evidence of that. So we talked about this on the previous episode as well, is that without evidence, you don't have a lot of credibility. So if you say something nice first, like, oh, you know, good job, I really like how you're doing this. Now, one thing you're not doing well, that's not really that credible because it doesn't provide any evidence. But here's the other thing that can get you in trouble, too. Number three, is that if you start off with positive feedback, you can't. Oftentimes leaders will have the tendency to then glide over the real issue, the really reasonable, the real reason that they're giving people feedback. And this can really get you into trouble as a leader because you say something nice upfront and maybe you say even a few nice things up front, and then you say the thing that isn't working, and the person comes away from that interaction saying, wow, I heard three or four good things and I heard one negative thing. I guess I'm doing pretty well. And unfortunately, the leader in many cases didn't perceive. Didn't want that person to have that perception leaving the meeting. They wanted that person to really get the feedback on the constructive area. But because they gave so much positive feedback up front and kind of fluffed things up that the person walks away thinking, well, you know, I'm doing great. And unfortunately, the leader has a belief that. That they gave the constructive feedback. So both parties end up not communicating with each other. So for all of those reasons, I really suggest that if you're going to give someone some constructive feedback and you have some rapport with them and you've talked with them before and you have some relationship with them, don't start off with the positive in that interaction. Say the positive thing another time, another hour, another day. By all means, give people positive feedback. We Talked about the 75%, 25% rule in the last episode. We want to give people positive feedback. We want our preponderance of feedback to be positive feedback, to continue to engage people and empower them. But when we're giving constructive feedback, let's keep that feedback constructive so people hear that feedback, and so it is something that resonates with them. They remember it, and they're able to take action on it. If you found this model helpful today, I really encourage you to also check out an article on our website called when to Start. Friendly with Firm Feedback. I'm going to put a link on the show notes and the show notes for this episode are episode number 10. You can find those on our website@innovatelearning.com so I'll have a link to that article as well. Hey, if your organization is looking to improve the coaching skills of its leaders, give us a call. Send me an email. We might might be able to help. You can reach us at 877-learn-45 and that's also the place to send comments, questions or feedback about the show and Our email address feedbacknovatelearning.com Hope this was helpful to you this week. As always, have a great week and I'll look forward to talking with you again next Monday. Take care everybody. Sam.