236. The Gift of Feedback with Mick Spiers

Transform your approach to feedback with insights from Sue Anderson, the brilliant mind behind "Feedback Fitness." Discover how to turn feedback from a dreaded encounter into a gift that propels growth and success within your team. Throughout our conversation, Sue unveils her three-part framework—warm-up, workout, and cool-down—to cultivate a feedback culture that thrives on trust, consistency, and reflection. By personalizing feedback to meet individual preferences, you can shift perceptions and foster an environment where feedback is not only welcomed but also eagerly anticipated as a cornerstone of personal and professional development.

Join us as we recognize the collaborative spirit that powers the Leadership Project, celebrating the hard work of our incredible team, including Faris Sadek's outstanding video editing skills. With a focus on creating a feedback-rich culture, we highlight the importance of regular check-ins to build trust and psychological safety. Stay engaged with our mission and connect with us on various platforms as we continue to learn and lead together. Keep an ear out for our next episode featuring Jason Shepard, who will explore how embracing failure and learning can pave the way to success.

Chapters

• 0:01 Mastering Feedback Culture for Growth
• 9:55 Creating a Feedback-Rich Culture
• 14:19 Celebrating Teamwork and Collaboration

Transcript

Mick Spiers: 0:01

What is holding you back from giving the feedback your team truly deserves? Is it fear of how it'll be received, or perhaps uncertainty about how to deliver it? How does it feel when you're receiving feedback? Are you open to it, or does it make you feel defensive? Today, we're diving into these very questions as I reflect on my interview with Sue Anderson, author of feedback fitness, as she helped us understand how we can overcome the fear of feedback, reframe our approach and create a feedback culture that drives growth and success. Welcome back to The Leadership Project. Today is a solo cast where I'll be reflecting on the amazing conversation with Sue Anderson, the author of feedback fitness. If feedback is something that you've struggled with, whether giving it or receiving it, stay tuned, because I'm going to give you the insights from Sue's amazing framework that will help you overcome your fear of feedback, because you'll have a framework that you will know that you can depend upon. First off, let's talk about overcoming our fear of feedback. Now, let's be honest, feedback can be daunting, whether you're giving it or receiving it, but Sue shared something really powerful. We can overcome this fear by reframing the way we view feedback. Feedback doesn't have to be a judgment. It's not about pointing out all the things that you've done wrong. It's an opportunity for growth and improvement Sue. Put it this way, feedback is a gift, and if we're not giving it when doing a disservice to the people that we lead, imagine going an entire year without receiving feedback. Only do we hit with a performance review that tells you that you didn't meet expectations. That's unfair. Right. Reframing feedback as a gift allows us to embrace it with the right mindset. It shifts us from the perspective that feedback is a negative thing, something to avoid, to seeing it as a tool that can help us propel us forward in our careers, our teams and our leadership. If we're not giving feedback, we're robbing people of the opportunity to work on themselves to grow. You could say it's selfish if we're not giving that feedback, and if we're not open to feedback, we're also not going to go on the path of growth ourself. So start with reframing feedback. Feedback is not judgment. Feedback is a gift, and it's a gift that enables the receiver to be able to look forward and work on themselves. The next key outcome from the discussion with Sue is that not everyone likes to receive feedback the same way. Sue emphasizes that feedback is not a one size fits all situation. Think about the people you work with. They all have different preferences, different personalities and different ways of receiving information. So why would feedback be any different? Some people appreciate direct, no nonsense feedback. Others like to have some more gentle and reflective more of a detailed conversation around the feedback. Some people want feedback right in the moment, while others need time to process before they can receive that feedback effectively. This is where the personalization of feedback comes in. Sue's approach. Encourage us as leaders to ask our team members how they prefer to receive feedback. Is it something they want in private? Do they want concrete examples, do they want time to reflect before responding? Or do they like immediate feedback in an immediate conversation? We need to ask these questions up front so we can tailor our feedback to their needs. Don't assume that everyone likes to receive feedback in the same way that you do this is a big mistake that many of us are making. It's all about being intentional and understanding the way we give feedback can significantly impact how it is received. So take the time to work out and listen to your team about how they like to receive feedback, which is a nice segue to Sue's framework, the three part framework that it consists of a warm up, a workout and a cool down, a warm up, getting ready for the conversation and having a conversation about feedback the workout is the first. Feedback itself, and the cool down is the reflection afterwards. Now Sue introduced our powerful framework for making feedback more effective, and we walk through that three part process now. So the warm up that is about setting the stage for all of your future feedback conversations before you even dive into the feedback, you need to have a meta conversation. This is where you ask the questions, how do you like to receive feedback? When is the best time for you? What are your beliefs about feedback? This warm up conversation is crucial because it sets clear expectations for both parties. It's a conversation. It ensures there are no surprises, and sets the tone for a positive feedback culture between the two people. You're not just diving into specifics right away. You're building a foundation of trust and understanding before you get into the feedback. You the second part is the work feedback itself, the workout. The Workout is where that feedback happens, and just like a physical workout, feedback should be ongoing. It's not just a one and done. It's not the big annual performance review. It's about consistent check ins and consistent conversations. Sue breaks down the workout into three types of feedback, which I found really interesting, acknowledgement, evaluation and guidance. Let's break each of these down. Acknowledgement feedback, that's the one that most people are usually a little bit better at. Let's say this is where you recognize when someone is doing something well, it's about celebrating their wins and positive contributions. But it's not just about outcomes. It's about recognizing behaviors like how they show up in meetings or how they handle difficult situations. I'm going to interject at this point and say, This is where we need to be really specific. What was it about the way that they went about these things? Otherwise, you know, just saying someone that's just done a presentation, although it was a great presentation, that doesn't help them be specific. Say, I really like the way that you framed at this point, or I like the way you blended that story into your presentation today, and I really like the way that you paused and gave the audience time to reflect be very specific about the feedback, so they know what to do with it, whether it's the acknowledgement feedback or some of The constructive stuff that we're about to get into, the more specific, the more useful that feedback is going to be. Also make sure that you're acknowledging the effort. We've spoken on the show before about the difference between a growth mindset and a fixed mindset, and as Dr. Carol Dweck has put it, we know that if we're not careful with the way that we give feedback, we might be accidentally reinforcing a fixed mindset. If you tell someone, oh, you're just a natural at this, it reinforces that fixed mindset. If you only talk about the outcome, it reinforces the fixed mindset. Whereas, if you give them feedback about how they overcome obstacles, how they really put themselves into it, how they you could see that they were learning and growing as they went along, and you praise the effort as well as the outcome, regardless of whether it was a good outcome or bad outcome, recognize the effort will help them to develop a growth mindset. The second type is the evaluation feedback. This is where we assess how the person is performing against expectations. Are they meeting, exceeding or falling short of the goals you've set for them? It's not about someone being good or bad, it's just being clear and specific about where whether they're meeting expectations or not, similar to the acknowledgement feedback. It's not just about the outcomes. Again, it's about the expected behaviors. So the evaluation feedback will be telling someone how are they performing against the expectations of their job, which will include outcomes, but it will also include behaviors. So if you've got a set of values that you are holding dear in the organization, that you value collaboration, or you value a speak up culture, or whatever it is that you're looking to create in your organization, the evaluation feedback is also about whether people are meeting, exceeding or not meeting, behavioral expectations in the culture of the organization, as well as their outcome expectations. And the third type is the guidance feedback. This is where you're giving people practice. Steps for improvement. It's not just about pointing out what's wrong, but giving clear advice as to how they can do better, even if they're doing good. What would great look like? For example, instead of just saying, your report needs work, you could say, I'd suggest focusing on the section to make it more concise and consider this structure to improve clarity so you're giving a bit of your own experience, your own mentoring. When you're giving this guidance feedback, each type of feedback plays an important role in a balanced feedback conversation and a set of conversations in the time that you're with each other. By using all three, you ensure that the feedback isn't one sided and it's constructive and actionable. The third step in the process is the cooldown. The cooldown is just as important as the workout itself. Once feedback is given, it's important to check in. Are they processing the feedback? Well, how are they feeling, and what meaning are they giving to that feedback? What you don't want here is for two people to walk off from the conversation with a completely different understanding of what was just said or what was just agreed. To emphasize that this process should be ongoing check in one minute after the conversation, then one day later, then one week later. The continuous feedback loop not only ensures that the person is fully integrating the feedback, but it also helps them to build trust and psychological safety with you. It's also an opportunity to improve the way the feedback is going so coming back to the warm up again, where you spoke about, how are we going to do feedback, the cooldown is also a time where you can reflect on, did it work? What went well in the feedback process? What didn't go well? Will we make some subtle changes to the way that we do feedback in the future between the two of us, and this is where leadership is truly tested. In how you create an environment where feedback becomes part of the culture, a learning part of the culture, not something to fear. So here are the key takeaways I took away from Sue, reframe feedback. Stop seeing feedback as something to fear. See it as an opportunity for growth. See it as a gift. Personalize feedback. Not everyone likes feedback the same way, so take the time to ask your teams how they prefer to receive it. Use the three part framework, the warm up, to set expectations, the workout, the feedback itself, and the cool down to make sure that the feedback landed the way you were hoping it would, and to continually improve the way that you're doing feedback. And use all types of feedback. The three types acknowledge their strengths, evaluate their performance against expectations, and give little guidance of improvements, your experience, your your their leader, you've probably been there before. Don't be frightened to share a little bit of yourself when you're guiding improvement, as long as that doesn't become some form of micro management. Feedback is a critical part of leadership. It's how we grow as individuals and how we grow our teams, by reframing our approach to feedback and using a structured framework, we can create a feedback rich environment that drives success and strengthens relationships. In the next episode of the leadership project, I'm going to be joined by Jason Schappert, and Jason is a serial entrepreneur with a great track record of success. But here's the thing, on the outside it looks like success. On the inside, it's a series of continuous failing and learning failing and learning failing and learning until it works. So we're going to have a deep conversation about learning from failure and having the resilience to keep on going and making little pivots until you get the success that you're looking for. Thank you for listening to The Leadership Project mickspiers.com a huge call out to Faris Sedek for his video editing of all of our video content and to all of the team at TLP. Joan Gozon, Gerald Calibo and my amazing wife Sei Spiers, I could not do this show without you. Don't forget to subscribe to The Leadership Project YouTube channel where we bring you interesting videos each and every week, and you can follow us on social, particularly on LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram. Now in the meantime, please do take care, look out for each other and join us on this journey as we learn together and lead together.