Receiving the F-word: Feedback
We get a lot of people asking us about the ‘F’-word.
Feedback
Almost every question we get is about how to deliver effective feedback. And that’s a great question.
Often overlooked and at least as important…
How to receive feedback.
People who receive feedback well perform better. They learn and grow faster. They develop more meaningful and more beneficial relationships. Their careers thrive with allies to push them along. Feedback fills in our blindspots, provides motivation, and nurtures relationships.
Today I’ll focus on the corrective kind of feedback.
(I’m not a fan of the concept of “positive” and “negative” feedback. It’s all useful. I prefer “corrective” and “congratulations.”)
So, a brief treatise on taking it in… without shouting the famous F-word in response.
What to do when receiving corrective feedback
- Assume positive intent. Decide as a matter of personal discipline that the person speaking to you intends the best for you. Usually it’s true. Even when it’s not, you’ll be well served to act and think as if it is.
- Say, “Thank you.” Whether someone is giving you kudos or correction, the first relevant response is, “Thank you.” Especially if someone is giving you critique, they’re taking a risk to provide you with input.
- Seek to understand. Do you understand what the other person is saying and why? “You need to do a better job connecting with the audience.” That could mean so many things… It could mean: a)Tell stories that relate to their lives. b) Choose a topic that they care about intrinsically. c) Make more eye contact. You can’t do anything with their feedback until it’s clear and specific. Help the feedbacker get there.
- Reflect. Reflect back what you’re hearing. “I think you’re telling me that they audience was disengaged because I was looking at my notes too much.” And, ask for examples from your behavior that reflect the criticism they’re offering. “When you’re telling the story of client success, you were reading the story from your notes verbatim. That’s a particularly important time to be a bit more off-the-cuff, and work on bringing the audience into your narrative.”
- Try it on. And… Don’t argue. Seriously. Don’t argue. You can take all the time you need to “try on” the critique you received — consider what parts of it may or may not be relevant to you. Take on what fits. Let go what doesn’t. Move on with your life. Remember, there’s not much feedback you get that doesn’t reflect some bit of important truth — at least in how you’re coming across.
- It’s never about the thing. It’s always about the relationship. This is so important and powerful a principle, our entire “Fundamentals of Adeptability” workshop (the 2nd of 3) is built on it. Don’t let the facts get in the way of the truth. The feedback we receive is rarely just about this moment. It’s a piece of a larger relationship. Feedback is a trust-laden exercise, and by your response, you’ll either invest in the trust account between you, or you’ll take a loss in that account.
I know…
This is an admittedly short and simplistic take on a complex subject. And like most things interpersonal — it’s also SIMPLE. Simple and DIFFICULT.
And receiving feedback well will serve you perhaps better than any other single skill you ever develop. And it makes you a safe and rewarding environment for others. It makes you a leader.
Try it. Commit to a significant trial period. If you’re like me, your ego will shout bloody murder. It wants you to fight. Or to flight your way right out of there. Have you ever watched yourself deny the validity of a criticism leveled at you, even when you knew it was right on the money? I have.
It’s profoundly powerful to stand in calm and to thank instead.
____________
If you’d like more on effective feedback — give and take — check out this past episode of our podcast, Mighty Good Work. https://www.theyesworks.com/business/mgw-16-drive-learning-and-growth-with-elaine-lin-hering/
Why No Feedback Is Very Bad Feedback
We recently conducted a workshop on cultivating a high-performance, collaboration culture at HR West in Oakland. Here’s a teaser. Feedback is a critical component.
A Common Critical Feedback Error
At one point, a CEO in our workshop loudly bragged. “Here’s what I do. My executive assistant knows she’s doing a good job when she doesn’t hear from me. If she’s not doing well, I tell her exactly what she’s doing wrong. That works!”
That doesn’t work!
The absence of communication is indeed communication. The absence of performance input is indeed feedback. It communicates volumes. And here’s the thing…
You have absolutely no influence over what your silence communicates. You may think it communicates, “good job.” Not likely.
At the very least, it communicates a message that is far more complex than, “good job.”
And every time, it leaves lots of uncertainty. Uncertainty leads to fear. And fear leads to poor decision making and bad performance.
The Only Effective Feedback Is Deliberate Feedback
Check out this video.
And, please, Let us know what you think.
_______________
Deciding to give more input to your team is a great start. And not all feedback is created equal. We’re always happy to talk with you about what it looks like to be a skillful performance communicator. This podcast episode with Elaine Lin Hering is a great place to start.
Want an Adeptable team?
Five Cent Company Culture Upgrade
With just 5 cents, you can make a major upgrade to your company culture. And are you ready for the kicker? You don’t even have to spend the five cents. You can keep your money and still get the upgrade. Look in the sofa cushions, grab five pennies, and read on.
COMPANY CULTURE
There’s a lot of talk about the importance of company culture. There’s not a lot of clarity about what company culture means. At The Yes Works, we have a useful definition of culture:
A company’s culture is the set of contagious tendencies of behavior, language, and values common to the people working there.
Want to know the secret to this five-cent/free company culture upgrade? Thank you. No, I am not thanking you for your interest (although, thank you for your interest). That’s the secret. “Thank you,” is the secret.
Thank you is a behavior that reflects the attitude of the thanker and affects the attitudes and the behavior of the thanked and of everyone who overhears the thanks. In an environment of recognition and gratitude, people are engaged.
A so-called leader I once spoke to said, “Why would I say, ‘Thank you,’ to my employees for doing their job. I pay them. Their paycheck is my thanks.” He wondered why he had to constantly police people to insure they spent their time on task, and why there seemed to be a problem of petty theft at the office. He didn’t believe in a connection. “That’s how people are.”
Whenever I hear, “That’s how people are,” I know that’s a team that could benefit from a shot of Adeptability.
Another employer I met recently complained that her executive assistant said she’d like more feedback. “I don’t know if I’m doing a good job.” This employer bragged, “I told her, ‘You’re still here, aren’t you? I haven’t fired you. That’s how you know that you’re doing well.’” She added, “You can’t coddle people.”
You may find these exchanges cartoonish. The sad truth is, they’re painfully common.
You’re here, reading The Yes Works blog, so your culture and your leadership are doubtless light-years ahead of that. Let’s take it to the next level. Introduce or turn up the volume on a “Thank You” Culture.
“Thank You” Culture
The research shows that if you want performance, you should be thanking people. Non stop. Thank the people who work for you. Thank your customers. Thank your vendors. Thank the people you work for, and those whom you work with. Cultivate a company culture of thanks.
Why bother?
THE THANK YOU ROI
The reasons are simple:
- It’s polite. Don’t get a reputation as a self-centered boor.
- It’s good for relationships, and as you may have heard me say before, “It’s never about the thing. It’s always about the relationship.”
- We crave it. One of the top complaints people have about work, “My contribution is not recognized or appreciated.”
- It’s contagious. When we’re thanked, we thank. Thank a lot, and the thanks are going to propagate all over your company.
- It reinforces the behavior you want. Behavior recognized and rewarded is behavior repeated. Thanks encourage performance.
- Use it or lose it. Behavior not specifically recognized and rewarded fades away. It’s not because people are peevish. It’s the way our brains are wired. Thanks reward the centers of the brain that crave belonging — and those centers are powerful indeed. “Thank you” is the best kind of peer-pressure.
A management truism is, you reliably get what you measure. That’s true of ourselves as well as those we supervise, so we’ve got a tool for you. It’ll help you drive your “thank you” performance.
Five-Cent Thank Yous
Here’s the five-cent tool you don’t have to pay a dime for. It’s an easy and contagious company culture upgrade.
-
Put five pennies in your left pocket.
-
Every time you thank someone for something they’ve done, move one penny from your left pocket to your right pocket.
-
Every single day, make sure you’ve completed the transfer of funds from left to right. That’s 5 thanks a day. Better than an apple for company health.
Sound simple? It is. Still, it can be quite a challenge. We all like to think we’re gracious bosses and colleagues. Fact is, when the pressure is on, when we’re feeling busy and pressed for time, gracious may go right out the window. Saying, “thank you,” it’s only going to count — only going to deliver the benefits — if you’re received as genuine.
There’s a skill to finding and delivering a thank you that’s genuine even when you’re stressed, even when under duress. We’ve got some suggestions.
Here are a few guidelines from our Adeptability program:
- BE SPECIFIC. “Thank you,” even, “Thank you for your work,” is nice but gets limited ROI. Specific is far more powerful. “Thank you for double-checking my work to ensure we’re error free on this report.” That’s specific. That’s powerful. “Thank you for consistently turning your work in ahead of schedule. That keeps us on target for our clients and ensures we have a reputation for value.”
- TALK ABOUT BEHAVIOR. It’s not useful to thank people for generalities or for your interpretation of their attitude — “Thank you for being friendly. Thanks for being awesome.” Thank people instead for behavior. “Thank you for smiling at me this morning.” Thanking someone for being, “helpful,” is fine. Thanking someone for, “giving me a heads-up before the meeting that Greg might need the Klein Numbers,” is better. Not only does that make the behavior easier to repeat. It’s also more gratifying to hear. I know you mean it.
- CULTIVATE GRATITUDE. Nothing is too small to be worthy of thanks. Thanks for holding the door. Thanks for the paper clip. Thanks for hearing me out. Thank you for coming early to the meeting so we could start on time. Thank you for always doing what you said, or communicating in advance if there’s trouble. (Gratitude, by the way, is good for you — physically and psychologically.)
- DEBT ACCUMULATES. CREDIT DOESN’T. Did you miss all your thank yous yesterday? Get ten in today. Did you get ten in yesterday? You still owe five today. (Need proof that this idea that credit doesn’t accumulate is a practical principle of real truth? If you get a bonus this week, is it okay with you if your employer doesn’t pay you next week?)
- SPREAD THE LOVE. Don’t focus all your gratitude on your close-in teammates. Spread some gratitude to others in the group, and also to those outside your department. Together with your teammates, become the “Thank you” department. Build a department reputation for gratitude. Watch how easy it becomes to get things done across silos that used to be like pulling teeth.
BONUS
Are you crushing your thank you numbers? Here are a couple of suggestions for upping your game.
ADVANCED SKILLS:
- FORGET 5 CENTS. Go for 10. Go for 15. When you’ve cultivated your gratitude capacity, you begin to notice oodles of opportunities. It becomes an unstoppable habit. Spread this culture contagion even wider.
- TALK RESULTS. You’ll notice that some of the examples above don’t end with thanks for the behavior. They go on to name the result of the behavior. “Thank you for checking my work,” names a behavior. The likely result, “We turn in an error free product.” You can also build an Accountability Culture on this behavior-results type of feedback. Actually, you can’t separate the two. “Thank you for pointing out where I was failing to deliver.” Behavior. “I’m beginning to notice a tendency I have to gloss over that area of my work, and I’m taking actions to insure I remain attentive.” Result.
- PLANT AND FERTILIZE. Sometimes people hold back the behavior you’re looking for. Maybe they’re not sure you really want it. Maybe they’re uncertain their efforts will be recognized and received. Only getting a shadow of what you’re after? Try thanking people for the whole thing, even if you’re getting only the barest hint. “Thank you for your quality control attention on the whole project like that.” Even if they’ve only been scratching the surface, you’ll watch the behavior grow under a nurturing thanks. Thanking someone for their effort in building a new skill will drive and motivate more effort and faster improvement.
Gratitude is an Adeptability Culture skill. It’s contagious. It’s productive. It’s not the only way to get exceptional results. It is one of the easiest and most sustainable ways to drive ever improving performance and productivity.
And it does a body good. Pass it on.
____________
Communication and collaboration are some of the hardest things to get right in any company culture, and the difficulty increases exponentially as you add more people to the team. Adeptability Training gets teams communicating and collaborating effectively as a matter of habit and mindset. Book a call today.
Set Expectations Like an Improviser
Are you in sales? Do you have a boss or have people working for you? Got people working with you? Do you work with people?
If you answered “yes” to any of these questions, there are people who expect things from you.
The question is, are their expectations consistent with the reality you are prepared to deliver? Will you meet their expectations, or will you disappoint?
Half the answer lies in what you deliver. The other half lies in what they expect.
THE INCOMPLETE SET
Last month, I placed an order with a marketing company. They told me, “Your marketing product will go live in no more than 30 days. Maybe sooner.”
That’s expectation setting. They gave me an expectation about timeline.
They also told me that I’d have a “success manager” assigned to me and my marketing efforts, and that I’d hear from that manager to get my input along the way.
They gave me specific time when I should expect completion, but no specifics about when I’d hear from the “success manager.” Because they left a gap in setting expectations for me, I filled the gap with my own expectations about what the interim timeline would look like. Because I set my own expectations about their service, they set us both up for confusion, disappointment, and anxiety.
Indeed, two weeks later, when I hadn’t heard from anyone, I touched base with the sales rep who brought me on board to ask how things were progressing. “The holidays have created a backlog. I’m sure you’re still on target. You’ll hear from someone soon.”
Cool. Reassuring. A little bit.
When I called again a week after that, I heard, “There’s a bit of a backlog because of the holidays, but I’m sure your release will happen on time.”
Less reassuring. Kind of vague.
When I heard from his colleague that same day, “I received your search landing page today, and you’ll see it for review in about an hour,” that truly reassured me.
Why?
THE COMFORT OF SPECIFICITY
Was it the tangible progress that reassured me? Because someone had seen actual work done on my project…?
Well, that was part of it.
A bigger part of it, however, is that the info they gave me was specific. It was not a general assurance like, “I’m sure you’re still on target.” Or, “You’ll hear from someone soon.”
I heard instead, “I’m currently looking at this specific aspect of our deliverables to you.” She said, “You’ll see it in one hour.”
It was nice that I’d see it so quickly. But, “tomorrow morning by 10AM,” would have been almost as good. It’s the level of specificity that gave me something to hold on to. My worries are gone. And I know when I should start worrying. I can directly compare the reality on the ground with the expectation they set for me.
IMPROV’S LESSON FOR SETTING EXPECTATIONS
What I’d like to impart to you is a bit of wisdom I learned by training as an improviser…
The more specific you are with others in your life — those who work with you, live with you, depend on you, employ you, work for you, buy from you, sell to you… whatever — the more specific you are with others, the more comfortable they will be.
And guess what, the less likely they are to irritate you as well. I think I got under my vendor’s skin a bit, by writing a few times to ask about the status of my order.
What would have saved me the worry that my order would be late? What would have saved my vendor the irritation of my, “Are we there yet?”
One thing would have saved us both the stress — practicing the improviser’s tool, “Be Specific.” Had they been specific, not only about the deadline for the finished product, but about the timeline of every deliverable along the way, I’d have rested comfortably and left them to do their work.
BE SPECIFIC
So, dear reader, the next time you find yourself in a situation where someone else is looking to you for answers about what to expect:
- When will you…?
- What will X look like?
- How will costs be calculated?
- What do you like about…?
- What are the metrics for success?
- Where can I find X?
- How can I attain X results?
Be as specific as you possibly can.
Expectations are like bowling. When you’ve got a seven-ten split, you can’t expect to knock down both pins by simply rolling the ball down the alley “that way.” You’ve got to hit the seven pin just so, in order to send it spinning into the ten. That’s a specific task.
So is communication. You’ll be rewarded for your specificity.
6 Ways to Speed Up During Year-End Slowdown
It’s natural to slow down this time of year. The days are shorter, and we’re biologically programmed to slow down. There’s a break from Christmas through new years when many businesses all but shut down. We’re all thinking about family and friends — as we should. And we’re surrounded by so many messages about ending, that it’s hard to think about what’s continuing and what’s starting anew.
The holiday season is a full time. Good cheer, family, vacation, celebrations, feasting. Many of us look back at the year that’s ending and evaluate where we are compared to our dreams for ourselves and our companies. Many look forward to the coming year and start to resolve to change.
Unless you’re in retail, business tends to slow down, too. Productivity slows. Sales slump, especially B2B sales. The pace of everything seems to wind down along with the year as if preparing for a hibernation. And after New Year’s, many businesses take a while to gear back up to their usual operating pace.
After the holidays, people stumble back in from their family trips and too many cookies. They look around the office as though it’s a familiar location from long ago. They blink in the fluorescent light, and they’re just not sure how to get started again.
Sound familiar?
Diminished productivity and lost momentum add up to lost revenue potential. Can’t cancel the holidays. Wouldn’t want to. So I hope my improviser’s mindset can help you and your team enjoy the holidays fully, and keep and even accelerate the speed of business.
Here are 6 things you can do over the next few weeks to keep the pace up now, hit the ground running in the new year, and improve the vitality of your team all at once. Improvisers look for opportunities to keep the action moving.
1. Express gratitude
In keeping with the season’s traditions, thank people for their work. To have the greatest impact, Be Specific.
- Name specific behaviors. Like this, “Carla, when you go out of your way to help a client…”
- Name specific events as examples. “Frank, you took the initiative to call Jerry over at ACME Widgets because you’d heard through the grapevine that they were having trouble with…”
- Name specific results. “Beth,we keep happy clients and get more referral business because you…”
- Name a specific desired future. “Thank you, Alan. Please keep doing that.”
If you do nothing else on this list, express gratitude this way. Gratitude is a prime motivator, and boosts engagement and productivity all by itself.
2. Shore up relationships
If sales and service activities are slowing down because of year-end, you and your team can reach out to clients, vendors, peers, competitors, colleagues. Reach out to anyone who’s important in your business, and express care (including gratitude). Have lunch or coffee. Attend holiday parties, and go deeper than typical small-talk.. Connect with people on things that matter to them — family, career, dreams, hobbies. Strengthen relationships, and reap the rewards in the new year.
3. Survey what you’ve built
Your team has accomplished a lot this year. Often, though, we just keep plowing forward, looking to the next project and the next task. Take a moment. Take a whole meeting. Look at what you’ve done together, and give each other a pat on the back. Even if you’ve taken a beating this year, you’re still standing. Take pride. If you can’t take pride, give pride to one another. A sense of accomplishment can bolster resolve and accelerate growth.
4. Plan for next year
If you haven’t begun this already, you’re behind. Plan for next year. What are your goals and targets? What are your metrics for success? How will you reach them? Be specific about actions you and your team will need to take. Begin to make assignments and map out responsibilities. Include your team in the planning process. Rather than allowing big goals to intimidate you and your team, frame the plan as an inspiration. And let people begin to take action.
5. Plan for the first week of January
Before everyone leaves for Christmas, gather your team to plan for your return. Set deadlines for the first Thursday that people are back. Include activities that require collaboration and accountability. Give people some work they find fun to jump into when everyone’s back. That way, when January 2nd rolls around, people will come in bright-eyed, eager to work. Gather very briefly on the morning of the 2nd to give people a high-spirited reminder of the plan. Then connect that plan with intrinsic motivators like pride in their work and the gratitude of their colleagues and clients.
6. Express Gratitude
Did I mention that already? This is something trained improvisers do easily and readily. They notice resources, structures, and people that support them. They acknowledge people who have their back.
Improvisers know that constant feedback drives behavior. Feedback is the material that all relationships are built from.
Company Culture By Design
Company culture ain’t a list on the wall. It ain’t platitudes spoken at team meetings. Company culture ain’t even a prevailing attitude that everyone on payroll adopts after they’ve drunk the company Kool-Aid.
“Want to create a productive, lucrative, and personally rewarding culture in your company? You can. Create the contagion.”
Gotta Understand What Company Culture Is
So what is it?
Company culture is the set of contagious behaviors and attitudes shared among the people on your team (and reflected in your clients and vendors as well).
It’s a system of beliefs and behaviors instilled into the zeitgeist of your company. Everybody’s doing it and steeped in it. The indoctrination began during recruiting. Culture is shaped by the stories we tell within a community. It’s the behaviors that have become habitual and automatic. Culture’s details are selected by reinforcement and by disincentives and by benign neglect. Company culture is the behaviors that people exhibit even when the heat is on, they’re under stress, and people are getting under their skin. And company culture can be shaped. It can be changed. It can be trained.
But it can’t be memo-ed. And it can’t be policied. And it can’t be employee handbooked. It is profoundly influenced by behaviors in the C-Suite. But, Company culture is not simply a top-down thing. It’s an all around thing. Think the C-Suite can’t have it’s culture slowly changed from the bottom? Think again. Culture, by its very nature, is definitively contagious. Think of a Grateful Dead show. Imagine Burning Man. Think of a Donald Trump Rally. The people in those environments don’t behave that way — for better or for worse — at home. They get swept up in a powerfully contagious culture wave. That wave is influenced by the behaviors and the stories that surround them.
Sold?
Want to create a productive, lucrative, and personally rewarding culture in your company? You can. Create the contagion. Behavior is contagious. Belief is contagious. Any person at any level can introduce a new contagion. Don’t believe me? What phrase or figure of speech do you use now, but that you didn’t before a co-worker started saying it in your presence. What stories are told in the break room that have you and your colleagues nodding or cheering? That’s an illustration of the contagion of culture.
Gotta Know What to Do
What are the behaviors that lead to a productive, lucrative and personally rewarding culture? Here are some:
- Give feedback to your direct reports and peers that is:
- Frequent
- Specific.
- Timely
- Organic
- Compassionate
- Heavily congratulatory
- Corrective when needed
- Focused on the future
- Contribute thoughts and ideas freely.
- Respond to others thoughts and ideas by furthering the discussion (never shooting down).
- Focus on purpose and on actions that need taking.
- Observe and inquire about the non-verbal cues of others for greater clarity and communication success.
- Observe and choose your own non-verbal communication for greater clarity and communication success.
- Offer solutions, not complaints.
- Welcome change while respecting tradition.
- Speak about clients and coworkers with compassion and appreciation.
- Replace time wasting conflict between people over who is right with effective conflict between ideas so the best ideas are found and forged.
- Tell stories that cast others in a good light, and in which you are not a victim of circumstance.
- Manage and supervise in ways that help your people manage fear — to feel less fear, and to act with freedom in the face of fear. We call this a “Got-Your-Back Culture.”
More than the sum
These are the behaviors that awaken the elusive SYNERGY we hear so much about. Synergy is not a mythical unicorn or a woo-woo concept from beyond the pale. Synergy is real. We’ve all experienced it. And, it’s attainable. One way to get it… the skills and techniques of Adeptability Training correlated to the work you do.
______________
As G.I. Joe used to tell me at the end of each episode… “Knowing is half the battle.” The gap between what your people know, and what they do… fear. If you’d like to build fear-busting Adeptability culture in your company, click to book a call.