Feedback – The Single Most Important Tip

In Coaching for Talent Development and Employee Engagement, we make clear distinctions among feedback, coaching, and difficult conversations in our training. In the last newsletter, we reviewed these differences, as shown in the graphic on the right.

Feedback needs to be both developmental AND positive. If we’re seen as too critical, our employees come to see us as impossible to please and they become frustrated and discouraged. At the other end of the spectrum, if our feedback is only positive, employees start to question our honesty or candidness. Research varies, but our belief is that you should have at least three positive feedback instances to one constructive feedback instance.

Sounds like a lot, doesn’t it? It IS, especially if you haven’t been providing positive feedback in the past. Start catching people doing things right and telling them! That’s positive feedback!

And consider this one most important tip when providing negative feedback: Shift your mindset and your words to focus on the future. We call this “developmental feedback” as opposed to “constructive criticism” or “negative feedback.” Is our goal to use situations to emotionally beat up our employees? Or is our goal to use situations to help develop our employees?
Instead of thinking, “How do I tell Bob that his overcontrol of conversations in that last meeting shut everyone down?” think, “How can I use the last meeting as an example for helping Bob develop the skill of including others into the conversation for future meetings?”*

Instead of thinking, “How do I tell Jill that her initial draft is difficult to follow, and filled with errors and typos?” think, “How can I use this initial draft to help Jill make her NEXT initial draft more polished?”

Here’s a conversation with Bob that uses the situation to focus on the future:

“Bob, I want to talk to you about inviting conversation in meetings and how that can generate great ideas and buy-in. In the meeting we just were in, you presented a super idea and then controlled the conversation by discounting many of the points raised by your peers. After Jean and Mary brought up their thoughts, you were pretty vehement in discounting their what they had to say. This then shut down others from bringing up their thoughts. Did you see how this might have happened….”

“…So keep bringing up great ideas! And to make it even better the next time, invite others to provide their insight and then paraphrase their thoughts so they can see that you really heard them. Sound good?”

Here’s a quick future-focused developmental feedback session we could have with Jill about the sloppy draft:

“Jill, I had a chance to read your initial draft and really appreciate how quickly you got it to me. As I read the draft, I wondered if you rushed to get this in front of me too quickly since I ended up reacting to things like typos and unclear sentences rather than the content. To make it even better the next time you provide me with an initial draft, you may want to print and proofread a hard copy before giving it to me; you’ll catch a lot more changes if you review a hardcopy edit and we’ll be further down the process.”

Note that in each instance, my feedback was less about what happened in the meeting or the typos that I found on the report, and more on what Bob or Jill can do the next time to make it even better.

By focusing on the future, we remove some of the sting that may come with examining — and arguing over — the details of the past.

(*Note that as managers, we may NEED to have a difficult conversation with Bob about his overcontrol in meetings if it is persistent or flagrant. And we may NEED to have a difficult conversation with Jill about her ongoing sloppy, error-filled reports. However, a difficult conversation is different than developmental feedback, which is more informal and you’re anticipating a fairly receptive ear from the employee.)

In our next issue of the Coaching for Talent Development and Employee Engagement newsletter, we’ll share with you the SINGLE most effective tip in providing feedback. And, I’m guessing it’s something you HAVEN’T heard!

The Whiz Kids – Lessons in Leadership (Part 1)

As I mentioned in my letter from the editor, I am a book collector, more specifically, I collect signed books. One of my favorite authors is James Michener who wrote such classics as South Pacific and, my favorite, The Drifters.

A few years back I purchased a copy of The Whiz Kids. Michener had penned a tribute and had signed the copy that I had purchased. The book is about the 1950 Phillies, a young upstart team that capped a Cinderella season by winning the pennant from the heavily favored Brooklyn Dodgers in Ebbets Field on the last day of the season. The book is obviously a baseball book rich with anecdotes and stories from baseball players and Hall of Famers.

The book is written by All-Star pitcher Robin Roberts, arguably the best right-handed pitcher in Phillies history. Right up front Roberts attributes the success of this team at this time squarely on the team’s leadership.

“Manager Eddie Sawyer and his coaches, simply put, let us play. The only pressure on us, was to try to win each ballgame on the playing field. We had no other pressures, other than to perform to the best of our ability. And he kept it simple. So we had very little to worry about except playing ball. As a result, we played hard, but we played relaxed. We were not concerned about being second guessed, and thus we did not perform looking over our shoulder.”

“No one with the Phillies ever questioned the pitch, even a poor pitch. They knew that you were not intending to give up a home run. If you hung a curve, they knew you did not mean to hang it, that you were trying to get the batter out.”

“It makes it so much easier to pitch without the added pressure of worrying about someone questioning your pitches. It means as a pitcher, you can relax and concentrate on executing and trying to get the hitters out.”

“In retrospect, it was uncanny how Eddie’s leadership style got the best out of us. The Whiz Kids played hard, all game every game. Our effort to win games was remarkable. We were, for the most part, very young, and we appreciated the opportunity to play in the big leagues. And he seemed to understand that, and he created an atmosphere that allowed us just to concentrate on playing the game to the best of our abilities.”

“As I have visited with my teammates on the Whiz Kids over the years, I've been amazed at how appreciative we all are at the way we were just allowed to play without any distractions or complications or constant meetings. And when we were traded to other organizations, we all had trouble adjusting.”

“If we had not won the last game of the season in Ebbets Field to take the pennant, perhaps no one would remember the Whiz Kids. But we did win, and it is how we won under Eddie Sawyer's direction that, to me, makes the Whiz Kids’ story one worth telling.

Our role as leader is to coach and develop our team, and then let them play!

The Whiz Kids – Lessons in Leadership (Part 2)

And Now for Something Completely Different

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