What do you do when you know you need to give someone some constructive feedback? Join us as we explore the line between task-based and relationship-based feedback, and learn how to frame feedback in a constructive, respectful manner. In this deep dive, we discuss how feedback can be a powerful tool in enhancing relationships and fostering trust within a team. We'll also discover why it's imperative to create a safe space for open dialogue and understand the importance of self-reflection in this process.
If you would like to centre relationship as the foundation of your feedback, in order to make meaningful change, 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/
What do you do when you know you need to give someone some constructive feedback? Join us as we explore the line between task-based and relationship-based feedback, and learn how to frame feedback in a constructive, respectful manner. In this deep dive, we discuss how feedback can be a powerful tool in enhancing relationships and fostering trust within a team. We'll also discover why it's imperative to create a safe space for open dialogue and understand the importance of self-reflection in this process.
If you would like to centre relationship as the foundation of your feedback, in order to make meaningful change, 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/
Speaker 1:
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:
If you weren't here last week. This is our second part into the foray of an introduction to feedback. Last week we talked a little bit about why feedback can be so challenging to give especially constructive feedback and some of the reasons that that's a really valid experience to have, but also why it's so, so important as a leader to make sure that you are giving that feedback, and we also talked a little bit about moving away from the feedback sandwich method, and so today we're actually going to go a little bit more into what you can actually do with feedback that will make it more effective for you. So, to remind our listeners, if you didn't join us last week, we shared NT's story. She says I became a supervisor about six months ago and I'm now leading the team that I used to be a part of.
Speaker 2:
One of the things that I find hardest in my new role is giving my staff team feedback. These are people who used to be my peers. Some are still friends and some 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 felt really awkward. I did end up giving some critical feedback, but mostly I tried to be positive. How can I provide feedback without being mean? So again, thank you for sharing that NT. Like I said, going into part two here, and once again, it's very natural to feel some discomfort around this and you might even be thinking, yeah, you're going to tell me how to use feedback, I'm still going to be uncomfortable with it. That is possible. This may still not feel like the most comfortable thing in the world to you, and just keeping in mind that it is really really important for your relationships to have this feedback, to make sure that we are constantly strengthening our relationships with this instead of allowing maybe resentment or upset to build and fester and down the road, that relationship is not going to do very well.
Speaker 2:
We're going to start by just talking quickly about two main types of feedback and I'm going to define those as task-based feedback and relationship-based feedback. Now, if you've been listening to the show, you might remember back to one of our communication episodes where we talked about task-based and relationship-based communication In general, and feedback falls into a very similar category. So if you look at this spectrum of our communication, one side is task-based, so we're focused on what to do, what needs to be done. The other side is relational-based how are people doing, what's their experience? And our communication can flow anywhere in the middle. Same with feedback.
Speaker 2:
A lot of the feedback we give is, of course, task-based, because a lot of feedback, especially in an office setting, is about the things that we did or didn't do. And task-based can be fairly simple because it's about a very definable, concrete thing that happened or didn't happen. So, for example, you might think a staff member has not been following all the guidelines and expectations of the office. Those guidelines they're written out, they're concrete, they're clear what they are. They're pretty definable. And so task-based feedback could be as simple as finding that staff member or team member and saying hi, I noticed that you didn't follow this particular rule or guideline. Please read through the guidelines again and if there are any questions or they're not clear, come talk to me. That could be very simple task-based feedback and maybe that works.
Speaker 2:
Task-based feedback like task communication when people are on the same page. They're shared understanding, shared valuing. They might take that and go oops, I did miss those guidelines or I did miss those rules, and now I can correct my behavior and move on. But what happens when next week the staff's doing something very similar. They're still not following that guideline.
Speaker 2:
Well, now we're going to start making a lot of assumptions about what's happening for them. We might be asking questions of God. They're so stupid. How could they not understand how important this is? What could possibly be more important to them than following these guidelines? Are so critical and, of course, we don't know what's going on in their head. We might be making a lot of assumptions, like we talked about in previous episodes, but there is a reason for their behavior. Of course there is. Everyone uses reason or has something that's important to them, a goal for all of their actions, and since we don't understand that, one of the things we could do is speak to them and ask more specifically about their experience. We've talked about this previously.
Speaker 2:
We're going to keep talking about how we can have those conversations and, in the case of giving feedback, we can also move to our own relational side of how we're interacting with that person, because the feedback of the task itself might not be meaningful to them, but feedback around our relationship may be, and this is a really great point that we can leverage, because people are relational. They care about their interactions with others, especially in this case, if we're leading this person, there's that extra piece of power, differential that's happening, so there's a little bit more vulnerability from them. They're probably more conscious about making us happy, so they don't want to hear that. Maybe, when they haven't been following these guidelines, it's meant that I've lost some trust in them. Maybe it's led to the fact that I feel I might need to treat them differently, or maybe I don't want them on my team anymore. No one wants to hear that and we tend to talk about you're not following the guidelines, not how it's affecting our relationship. So this is the first piece I really invite you to consider when you've given feedback, even task-based feedback, what is the connection to that person and is there a way to talk about it in terms of relationship? Because ultimately, this is what's going to affect your workday, their workday, their future with the company. Your future with the company is understanding this dynamic between us, because that is what it affects. It affects how we interact with each other. So that is one of the reasons it's so critical, as we're talking about feedback, that we do move towards this piece of how. Is it affecting not just the tasks of the office but the people in it?
Speaker 2:
This probably happens to a lot of people in their personal lives as well, maybe. To use maybe a classic example, you know a wife comes home from work. She sees her husband he hasn't started the dishwasher. He said last week that every time he was going to start the dishwasher he was never going to miss it again and she's starting to get mad. He hasn't started the dishwasher. Well, of course, this is again task-based. Maybe he doesn't see the value of the task. He doesn't understand the impact it's having on their relationship. She might be getting so mad at him she might be losing trust that he can follow through in pieces that are important to the home. Whatever that emotional reaction is, it's probably going to affect the relationship. When this behavior persists in a pattern. You could put this to any situation kids not cleaning rooms, wives not following through whichever kind of situation you want to put it to. This probably exists in your home life as well.
Speaker 2:
Where are we giving feedback? It's just about the activity, not how it matters to us. I see Shan has joined us. We have to be able to integrate our goals with the goals of another 100%, and the challenge with that, of course, being we know our goals pretty clearly and we might not know someone else's we're making again a lot of assumptions. We have to guess what their goals may be. So this is a great way, as you said, aligning those goals or integrating those goals with each other by creating that understanding. Next, let's start talking about what this could look like.
Speaker 2:
Now, one of the things that I really encourage people to move away from funnily enough for feedback is the back part of it, because when we talk about feedback, it's very easy to talk about the experience that we had that we didn't like with this person or with this situation. So we'll start saying you need to stop doing that, don't do that thing anymore. Or we'll go into details of well, you did this and you did this and you did this, and all of those were negative things. Now, that's not very helpful. In fact, a part we often miss with feedback is the feed forward part, which is what do we actually want this person to do? I used to coach skiing and one of the things you have to really work at is not just saying I saw a problem with your legs being together when you were skiing, when you were making those turns. You have to say this is what I want to see, and we often don't do that.
Speaker 2:
With our feedback in the office as well, we'll say stop missing those guidelines, stop not following those rules, instead of talking about which rules are maybe important, what action and behavior you would like to see moving forward. So this is one of the first things to do no matter what type of feedback you're giving, make sure you're very clear and specific on the action that you want in the future, not just what's happened in the past and we're trained to see that negative, and that is what we're going to focus on. And so bringing people into this forward momentum also brings us on side with them. We're no longer against them. We're now moving together forward as a team. Now we're getting to the actual part of what the heck do I say to this person that might have an impact on their behavior, Because that's what we're hoping to do.
Speaker 2:
We of course, there's tons of different ways you could approach this, but let's just start with two really simple statements that will serve you as a good baseline, and you could literally do all your feedback on these two statements if you wanted. The first one is one thing that you do that I really appreciate is it's a very, very simple statement, and this is where you want to again be specific. Just because it's positive, you don't want to say. One thing I really appreciate is you're so nice, really want to be specific. One thing you do that I really appreciate is I notice that when people are struggling with their tasks, you go over and you ask really great questions that help them get out of the answers. That is a very different comment, of course, to very nice. So, once again, specific and this is about reinforcing positive behavior. In fact, if you're one of those people maybe that was listening last week and you notice you're very uncomfortable with more constructive feedback, you can start yourself off gently with giving more of these statements reinforcing the positive things that you want to see, instead of focusing on more of those negative pieces.
Speaker 2:
We will actually be talking in future episodes as well about integrating this into culture and how important it is that we actually use way more of these statements the positive, affirming statements than just the constructive ones. And, like I said, that's about building it into culture, not doing that feedback sandwich method of just using a positive, a constructive, a positive to make you feel good. But we definitely do want to have these positive pieces. So one thing you could do I would really appreciate is and then, being specific, the other one you could use is one thing you could do that would really support me would be or one thing that you could change right now that would really help me, or our relationship would be. And so now we're talking about change, which inherently means there is a piece of previous behavior or previous action that was not supportive and we might have to talk a little bit about what that behavior was. But once again, a very small part of that and more focused on what you could do, that would support me, one thing you could change that would positively impact our relationship would be and again, this creates a very different discussion and a very rich tapestry.
Speaker 2:
So if I were to talk to that staff who was maybe having some challenges following the office guidelines, I would say one thing you could do to support me is, once again, I want a very specific behavior. Sit down with me and have a conversation. We'll read through the guidelines together and see what makes sense, what doesn't make sense. That would be a great specific ask, and I'm talking to this again from a place of relationship. So it's one thing we could do is sit down and have this conversation, because I've found it really hard to connect with you and trust you, because I've noticed this behavior. That's relational, that's talking about. Here's an impact it's had on relationship. Here's an action that would help me move forward and strengthen. And then the flip side of that is you want to be asking these questions as well. Once again, we'll be getting more into that. It's really important as leaders that we be asking these questions of our staff, of how we can support them. But at least as a start, when we're talking to them about things that we would ask they do, that we are using this very relational way. So, very short piece of speaking to the behavior speak about what you would like to see moving forward and use very simple. You'll notice these are non attacking statements. It's not you did this and you did this and I didn't like this. It's supportive. Let's look to the words the future.
Speaker 2:
Now, at the end of giving feedback, or as a piece of giving this feedback, also, let's make sure there's some time for discussion. It's really hard when you just get a piece of feedback thrown at you and you don't know what to write it. Suddenly, there it's over. Maybe you didn't have a chance to ask questions, maybe you know you're going to struggle with that feedback, but the conversation's already done. How do you say that? You just maybe know or feel like you're about to set yourself up for failure. So when you're coming to someone with feedback, make sure you're giving them some space that you can process it. You can ask them questions. You can encourage them to ask questions.
Speaker 2:
One of the great things, too, with this relational feedback is it can become more about a discussion and understanding each other than about a specific way that you want to see change behavior. A specific way to see change behavior might not work for that person. There might be a very legitimate reason they're going to struggle with that. If you just tell them the feedback, walk away. Maybe it's not specific, there's not that chance for questions. What are the chances of them succeeding with that feedback? Probably not so high, whereas when we can actually have this chance, like Shan said, to integrate, to make this more of a conversation, make sure we're aligned in our goals and move forward together.
Speaker 2:
I also want to bring up one other piece around how we structure this whole feedback conversation which I wish was talked about a little bit more, and that is simply before we start any of these conversations task-based, relationship-based that we could do a much better job at getting consent and that doesn't have to be very complicated. But think of maybe that time when you were really, really stressed and you were having a horrible day and you just learned something. That is not great, and now your boss comes to you and tells you some really critical feedback. You're just trying to take it in. Maybe you're overwhelmed, maybe you're already emotional. It's really really hard to take that feedback and it's really hard to think that this person might care about you because it felt maybe very abrupt or maybe very harsh because of that.
Speaker 2:
So it's really easy to just check in with someone and say, hey, there was something I was hoping to talk to you about, some feedback I want to give is now a good time for that, and you have to be okay with them saying no. Now, because of this power differential, they might not say no even at first, and it's a bit more about building that trust and making sure they know that it's okay. And ultimately, what if they never said yes? What if they didn't consent to this? Well, that's probably going to have some long-term impact on the relationship. There may be a consequence to the relationship, but if we start making this a conversation where you do need to agree that you're willing to listen to someone, it again shifts the energy and how people show up for that conversation, not to scare them off, not to try to intimidate them, but to say, hey, are you in a good space for this?
Speaker 2:
Once we get that consent, like we talked about, we can go through a small bit of what happened that we're hoping to change, the impact it had on us in the relationship, and then a nice specific piece of how they could move forward in a way that would support both of you connecting better. Like I said, this is a big topic. I've been trying to really narrow it down for these episodes, so it would be a bit more concise, but we will be talking more and more. One of the upcoming episodes will be about integrating this and creating a whole structure around your culture. So feedback isn't just something's gone wrong, I'm going to go find that person, but actually constant reiteration of what is working well and how we're reinforcing that, making it very easy for people to not just be self-accountable but hold each other accountable. Hold you accountable, for you to hold them accountable, building a whole system around that NT.
Speaker 2:
I hope this has now gotten a little bit deeper into your question. Still lots to go, so I look forward to our conversation after this. As a reminder, if you do submit your story to the show, I follow up with you with a session, because we don't use identifying details here and I certainly want to make sure your question is answered as thoroughly as possible. If you would like to submit your and share your story or questions with the show, you can do that. The link for that is in the description and if you would prefer to listen to the show in podcast form, it comes out every Friday at 9am. The link for that is also below and you can find it on any of your favorite podcast apps. I want to thank you again so much for being here today, for having just these really, really important discussions about how we're connecting with each other, how we're communicating on these different levels. Thank you, cheyenne, for joining and joining the discussion with me, and we will see you all next week.
Speaker 1:
We hope you enjoyed the episode. Make sure to subscribe, comment and connect with Leah at meetleahca.