06 - Providing Feedback is Hard

Wondering why providing feedback as a leader feels like walking a tightrope?  We are about to unravel the complexities that often make the act of giving feedback a daunting task. In this intriguing episode, we delve into the fears and insecurities that plague us, and start to touch on why some feedback methods we may have learned are not as effective as they could be.   

If  you would like to create meaningful change, while actually strengthening your relationships, you should give this a listen! 

To have your questions answered on the show, submit your story here: https://allthrive.ca/share-your-story

Leadership Ripples with Leah Fink is live every week at 5:00pm MST.  Please join us to get answers to your leadership questions! https://www.linkedin.com/in/leah-fink-all-thrive/

Transcript

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Navigating Feedback Challenges as a Leader

Speaker 1 0:00

Every action you take as a leader has a ripple effect , starting with your team , going out to the organization and even out into people's personal lives . Here we offer you the chance to learn from real life stories of leadership so you can gain a deeper understanding and level up your own skills From communication to culture , to power and equity , to feedback , to resolving conflict and more . Join us and make sure you're creating the ripples you want . Welcome to Leadership Ripples with Leah Fink .

Speaker 2 0:31

So today the topic is feedback . Now , this is a really big topic even to introduce with this first example , so we will actually be doing this as a multi-part episode , so please make sure you tune in next week to listen to the second part of this as well . Ntshares for question . I became a supervisor about six months ago and I'm now leading the team that I used to be a part of . One of the things that I find hardest in my new role is giving the staff team feedback . These are people who used to be my peers . Some are still my friends and some of them are older than me . It makes me really uncomfortable to say anything critical to them . I just did my first annual performance review and it was really awkward . I did end up giving some critical feedback , but mostly I tried to be positive and I did my best . How can I provide feedback in the future without feeling mean ? Now ? Thank you for sharing your question , nt , and you are not alone . I certainly understand where you're coming from . Providing feedback can be very daunting and it sounds like , on top of that , you're still navigating this shift in power dyna from being a peer with your staff team to now being in leadership position . That is complicated on its own and we will be doing a future episode talking about that as well . I'm going to actually start by sharing a situation that I also experienced with feedback Back when I was in a supervisor role at an addiction and mental health program .

Speaker 2 2:05

One of the questions we would ask new staff , or potential staff as they came in , was how do you like to receive feedback ? Often , people would talk very passionately or very excitedly about how much they like getting feedback . They want to know what they're doing well , they wanted to know in ways they could grow , and when they weren't doing things in the ideal way , they talk about this . They'd be really excited , and then we'd ask the second part of the question . The second part of the question was how do you like to give feedback ? Those same people who were just really excited about receiving feedback kind of hesitate a little and say oh well , I'm not the most comfortable giving feedback . That seemed kind of strange , doesn't it ? But these same people who were so happy to get feedback were hesitant in giving it . This is a trend I see a lot in my own work now . This is actually fairly common as well . Let's go a little bit and focus today on why giving feedback is so hard .

Speaker 2 3:11

The first piece about this is we are relational . We care about other people . If you remember , back to one of our earlier episodes , we were talking about spectrums of behavior . We can sit along different places on these spectrums . One of the ones you could think of is this spectrum of being truth focused or being more harmony focused . Telling the hard truths or keeping the peace is another way . You could say that A lot of people I would say a majority of people do tend to sit a little bit more on this harmony focused side .

Speaker 2 3:41

That makes a lot of sense . Once again , we're social people . We like to bond , we like to make people happy . That's very natural . In fact , when I talk to a lot of organizations and they look at where their organization is on this as well , they'll put their organization more on this harmony focused piece we have all of this focus on . We don't want to rock the boat . We don't want to make people upset . We want to be more harmony focused .

Speaker 2 4:04

Of course , if you are more harmony focused , it can be harder to say something that might move away from that harmony , to say something that's potentially constructive to someone and might shift their view or shake them up a little bit , and a lot of our experience and perspective around this , I'm going to say , comes from previous negative times that we received feedback in a not so healthy way . I think most people have had an experience where maybe they felt belittled or embarrassed by the way they were given feedback . It was given , maybe in a public setting , in a way that felt very hurtful and of course , when you've had that experience , you want to protect other people from having that negative experience . You don't want to be the one who hurts someone like that because you know how horrible it felt . Now the flip side challenge to that is most people don't know how to give feedback in a positive way , in a healthy way , because the only examples they maybe had were these negative ways or ineffective ways , and so that's all they can use in the future . Of course , when they start getting tools and you start working with people and they know how to give that feedback , they're more likely to not only give in , feel confident with it , but also have more of an impact .

Speaker 2 5:22

The other piece with this , too , is you might not just be worried about having a negative impact on people . You could also be worried about them retaliating , as it were , or saying something negative back to you . Some people do have a fairly aggressive reaction when you tell them something that may be against what they previously knew or believed , and it can be daunting , if you are anti-confrontational or you're worried about that aggressive approach , to think maybe this person is going to say something negative back to me as well , and , finally , we can have a lack of confidence , just in general , about what we're giving feedback about Now . Next week , we're going to be talking about a couple different types of feedback , and one of them is task-based feedback , and that's really easy . The assignment needs to be on my desk at 9 am . It wasn't on my desk at 9 am . That's something very concrete that if a leader knows that , it's pretty simple to say this is the problem , this is the solution . Get the report on the desk .

Speaker 2 6:19

When I say to the other piece of feedback , though , is more relational . It's around how we communicate our habits , our ways of being and interacting potentially , and in that realm , people can feel more unsure you might think well , who am I to be able to say this about someone else's behavior or actions ? Who am I to interpret how they acted or to tell them a better way to do this task . That might have a little ambiguity to it , especially if you're in a position , maybe like anti , where you might be giving feedback to someone older than you or more senior in the company . All of those conditions can also make it a little bit more daunting to say , well , do I feel like I have the confidence in my own knowledge and ability in this area to give that feedback ? So all this comes together , of course , to who we're giving feedback to . Now , we're actually fairly trained in our society when we are in roles with less power . So , as a staff member , as a student , that we expect to get feedback , we're fairly trained from this from an early age . You go to school . Your teacher gives you a report card that grade your projects . That is a type of feedback that they're giving you . So we're trained into this .

Speaker 2 7:34

This can both be challenging and , in some ways , comforting to people who have less power in a situation . Let's use your staff team for an example . Now there is , of course we've talked about in previous episodes a vulnerability . When you are in that position , there is someone else who is able to influence and make decisions around some part of your life , maybe your ability to work , to get promoted , to keep your job , any of those pieces . It can be vulnerable to be in that staff position . This is on even on a physiological level . Your brain reacts , and if someone is going to tell you from their position of power as a leader that you're doing something wrong , that can be quite powerful . It can impact us . We can feel very vulnerable with that . Now , the other side of that , though , is it's even more vulnerable sometimes to not know what's happening .

Speaker 2 8:25

It's a strategy that many people have learned when they're in those positions of less power to make the person who has more power happy . You want to please them , right ? That's a great way to keep yourself feeling secure , and a lot of people go to that . I know myself I do . You can call that people pleasing , but in reality , what it is is getting a sense of safety by knowing the person who has some control over my life is pleased , and when we get feedback , we can know that a little bit better . If someone tells me , when they're my leader , that they want me to do something different , I can then do that thing , make them happier , and I have the security of knowing that that is the case .

Speaker 2 9:04

So when we don't give feedback as leaders , we not only limit a staff's ability to do better work , right to live up to expectations and be accountable for their work , but we also , potentially , are making them more nervous , because most people also have an experience where someone has not given feedback . Maybe they've started to treat them differently because there's some resentment growing , maybe they stop communicating with them . Whatever those pieces are , it can build up and build up . Or maybe suddenly they come out of nowhere and now they're giving something quite harsh , without these previous steps of the feedback that they could have given . In the moment and I have unfortunately seen some pretty bad examples too of leaders not being comfortable with this . You know executive leaders who will task someone to go give feedback for them because they're not comfortable with it themselves , or leaders who will say positive things and write out positive things to the staff they work with , but then to other leaders or to myself as a consultant , they will complain about that staff and all the problems they're having . So I really , really encourage you if you're a leader , you're not feeling super confident or you're not giving regular feedback in a healthy way . That is something that's absolutely critical for you to do

Feedback Sandwich Method

Speaker 2 10:17

Now .

Speaker 2 10:17

We are going to be getting way more into that next episode , but what I want to start with for this episode is actually something that I would not recommend and this might be controversial because this might be something you use . But I really hope that as a society , we start moving away from the feedback sandwich method . I've also heard this called the Oreo . Some people refer to it as the , let's say , poop sandwich in terms of getting feedback . Now , because it's been taught a lot , a lot of people use it , but it's not actually that effective for the feedback itself and it definitely doesn't tend to have a positive effect on the strength of the relationship with the people you're giving feedback to . So the reason is or a couple of reasons is that most managers decide to rely on this when they have something constructive they want to share with their staff team . So maybe a staff is doing something that's not as ideal and they've decided , yes , I want to give them some feedback . Well , no , leaders want to be the bad guy . They want to feel nice and they want to feel supportive . So the feedback sandwich , or the Oreo , is really about me , as a leader , feeling comfortable to give that feedback , because now I can say , oh well , I still like this person . So I have this detailed piece of critical feedback I want to provide , but I'm going to pad it with nice things on both sides so I'll feel good .

Speaker 2 11:39

The challenge is usually that piece of critical feedback is , first of all , much more detailed and feels more real , because that's the reason you want to talk to this person and then sometimes it feels like we've just tacked on these positive things , so it might sound like you're a really hard worker . When you wrote that last report , you didn't include enough information about our outcomes and you need to format it better Next time . We need to go over it together before it gets sent out . Your technical writing is good . So we had this longer piece in the middle with more detail and the action that we wanted , and had some pieces of action , which is great , and then these little pieces of oh , you're cool , I like you , which is really what a lot of this ends up feeling like . So if you were to say that , as a feedback provider , though , you might feel pretty good about yourself . Maybe think to yourself well , I gave two positive pieces of feedback to one critical piece , so I probably made the staff member feel good and I didn't feel like I was being mean .

Speaker 2 12:34

Meanwhile , what do you think the feedback receiver was feeling with this ? Well , they all know about the Oreo method as well and they're probably thinking about why you gave this feedback . You gave it to them for that constructive piece that they wanted to work on . So , first of all , you hear these shorter , potentially pieces or less detailed pieces of positive feedback . We're not very good often at giving very specific positive feedback and their brain because we have a negativity focus and it was probably more detailed goes to that constructive piece and that's what you're going to dwell on , because that is how our brains work . We focus on the negative . That's very natural as well . So now we've kind of ignored these positive . We focused on this last negative piece . We hear the last positive piece .

Speaker 2 13:21

We're not going to remember the positive pieces and , on top of it , we might even feel like they're not genuine , because we know that our leader said them in order to be able to cushion this piece of constructive feedback . So we either don't remember them , don't believe them . All we're focused on is the negative . Am I really getting a lot out of it as a feedback receiver to have heard that feedback ? I would argue not so much , and it's actually potentially going to decrease my trust in a leader , because I might think they're making up positive things , they don't really believe them because they felt like a secondary choice with that . So there are better ways to do this , and that is the purpose of next episode .

Speaker 2 14:01

We're actually going to go into the two types of feedback . We're going to be talking about some different things to consider when giving feedback . We're going to be talking about how you actually build feedback into your culture for a maximum impact , because feedback shouldn't just be these one-off scenarios where you give something critical or something constructive or even positive . We want to actually build a whole system into how we interact , because the ideal is you can actually talk to your staff and say here's a situation , let's talk about it , let's solve it , let's move forward in a way that's super healthy , everyone feels respected and you actually strengthen that relationship . So , to reiterate from this episode , though , feedback can be hard , it's very natural for you to feel challenged by this , but as a leader , it is absolutely critical that you do not shy away from it , that you engage with it , that you learn the skills you need to be able to give this very important information .

Speaker 2 14:59

Thank you so much , nt , for contributing . I know we did not get through , obviously , the entirety of answering your question today , so I look forward to you joining us again next week . As a reminder , if you want to submit a story , we would love to hear it . You can share that at the link below and if you do share your story and we use it on the show , you will actually get a complimentary session so we can make sure I fully answer the question without identifying details , putting it onto the show and as a thank you for participating . If you would like to join the show , live to ask your questions , make comments , please do . The link for that is also in the description below . I just want to thank you so much again for listening , for reflecting and doing this important work and I very much look forward to seeing you next week .

Speaker 1 15:43

We hope you enjoyed the episode . Make sure to subscribe , comment and connect with Leah at meetleahca .