Leadership Ripples with Leah Fink

38 - Balancing Conflicting Feedback in Leadership

• Leah Fink • Season 1 • Episode 38

Share episode

What if the key to becoming a better leader lies in balancing seemingly conflicting pieces of feedback? Join us as we uncover the nuanced art of navigating feedback from both your leader and your team.  We dive into exploring responsive leadership, looking at the specific situation, and how to use both self reflection and curious conversations in order to truly understand the best way to move forward. With the right perspective and approach, feedback can turn into a powerful tool for improving relationships, while offering opportunities for professional growth.

When you get conflicting feedback, do you know which feedback to prioritize?

If you want to know how to best support your team, while being responsive to your leaders needs, join us for this episode!

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 12:00pm 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:

Hello and welcome to Leadership Ripples with Leah Fink. Today we are going to be discussing trying to find that balance. When you get constructive feedback that conflicts between your supervisor and your staff team, who do you listen to and how do you decide how to move forward? Rr shares their story. Feedback has always been very important to me in my professional life. Even from my first job, I was always asking my bosses what I could be doing better. Over the years, as I've taken on more leadership roles, I found it even more important in trying to ensure I'm doing a good job for my team. Now, in a more senior role, I'm encountering a new challenge where I'm getting conflicting feedback from my team and from my supervisor. When interacting with my team, I'm not very critical and defend them to higher ups. I get a lot of positive feedback about this approach. As well as maintaining a great relationship with my team, I'm now getting feedback from my supervisor that I need to be giving my team more constructive feedback and that my defending them doesn't make my team look good. I don't want to change what I feel is working, but don't want to be seen as uncooperative from my boss. So thank you so much for sharing your story, rr. And first I just really want to appreciate your passion for feedback. I feel very much the same way and it really sounds like it has supported you professionally in your career as well as probably contributing to why your team feels comfortable with you, why you've created this healthy relationship and, on top of that, when you recognize that something isn't working, seeking some support, asking questions on how you can make that better. Those are all fantastic things to hear about. So we're going to look at this from two different perspectives today. We're going to look at it from what's happening with your team and then what's coming from your supervisor. And let's start with working with your team. So generally in leadership positions, when we find a strategy that works for us, we tend to stick to it. That's really natural right.

Speaker 2:

Previously, I'm guessing maybe even in your first leadership role, you found a lot of success by taking on this role of protector and non-critic for your team. How this is appealing to a staff team. I've both been in a position where I was that staff member feeling like my boss really had my back, like they would protect me from what was happening, and then, on the opposite side, I can empathize with you because I was in a role where I felt like I had to be quite protective of my staff team and like I didn't want to be too critical of them because there was a very challenging and complex situation happening. That was how I decided to respond. So it's, of course, very natural, very understandable, that you've made your staff team feel safe and it's probably that sense of safety that you're most trying to protect. That would be the hardest to lose and potentially most detrimental to damaging your relationship with your team if you shifted in a way that wasn't healthy. But I really don't think that needs to happen.

Speaker 2:

Regardless of the feedback you take and the direction you choose, it's going to be about your approach and how you change your seeing of this situation. So, understanding how this approach might be great. Obviously let's look at how it might not be serving your staff team, and first I always like to think about responsive leadership. So now we're looking at this particular team with this particular approach, and maybe the teams that you worked with before. This was a great approach because of those people and because of that situation.

Speaker 2:

Those people and because of that situation, maybe you had a team of people who were constantly checking in with themselves and they would be correcting any worrisome behavior before you even thought to give feedback. Maybe they were quite aware of bigger dynamics in the company and not too worried about them, but they kept their ear on the pulse and they made sure that they were adapting their behavior. Even at the same time you were protecting them, and maybe this just felt really easy with that. They were already doing some of this work. You didn't really need to deal with it, so you were good.

Speaker 2:

And maybe the team you have doesn't operate quite the same way. Maybe they're a little bit more oblivious to some of their behavior and what it might be affecting, and without that constructive feedback they would never know. Maybe their positions require more feedback because they're learning something new, or it's very different from what they did before, especially now if they're in leadership positions themselves, and maybe it's just they're so protected from feedback that's happening at the high level that they're getting stagnant in their growth and that doesn't support them in their professional career. So, like I said, this is why that responsive component is so critical, because what worked really well for one staff and team might not work for all teams and situations, even if the people say they're enjoying it and maybe it's just one or two staff that you need to change your approach with. Maybe it's most of the team is doing really well with this approach and it's a couple people that need a little bit more of that critical, constructive lens to be able to shift their own practice.

Speaker 2:

So you really want to look at your approach with these people and the specific circumstance that you're all in, and this is also a great time to reflect on your personal needs and perspective of the situation. So, for example, I know, like I said, when I was in a role where I felt like I had to take on this position of protector and non-critical, I knew that there was a very hard situation where my staff were extremely stressed New staff team, lots of learning, they were getting information from all angles and I was very hesitant to put a lot of critique on them when they were already in this really tough place. And in some ways, that worked because, again, I became this protector. They felt safe. And in some ways, it didn't work because there were some things that fell through the cracks or maybe built up more than they needed to because we weren't addressing them as quickly as I could have. So we have to be able to just be aware of what your needs are and how you see the situation, to approach that.

Speaker 2:

And finally, anytime I hear someone saying that they don't like that side of being critical about their staff team, I really love to invite them to reflect on their discomfort with being that kind of critical and the opportunity that you might be missing out on to help other people grow, and especially RR. You mentioned that you love getting feedback in all of your roles and now they are not having that opportunity if you're not giving that constructive feedback. And maybe you are giving that constructive feedback and it's the word critical that's impactful, so maybe that's great. But just really being conscious of how much it can support people to sometimes say those hard things, it can actually help strengthen your relationship because people understand that you're willing to share when things aren't going well and that you're still giving positive feedback, that you're still supporting that relationship and you really can elevate people's potential that way when it's from that place of caring but still making sure you're providing that.

Speaker 2:

Now that, all being said, we looked at some things to reflect on when you look at what you're getting from your team, and now we're going to look at what is coming from the supervisor, and in this situation right now, it's hard and I certainly don't have enough information from what you shared to fully understand it, and I suspect that you don't have all the information about this feedback either. So the biggest piece is we want to look at where this feedback is coming from, because it'll really help us address it, and it could be anything. It could be your leader's own personal stuff coming up that makes them want to speak out. Maybe in their experience it was most efficient and effective for them to deal with a staff team that way and they're trying to mentor you in this method that worked for them from this place of caring. Maybe they're feeling immense pressure from their leadership that things have to be done a certain way. Or maybe they're seeing the outcomes from your team and they're looking for different ways to try to improve that.

Speaker 2:

Right now we don't know. It'd all be assumptions, we're just making guesses, and this is complicated further by the fact that the higher up you go in leadership, the more information you have, the more context you have. So all of this could also be based on information that you have no idea about. You don't know what they know at all. Regardless of where this comes from, we need to know what's happening.

Speaker 2:

So the best thing you can do is have a discussion with your leader, thank them for the feedback and ask if they're open to some questions so you can really understand it and then use it better. And then, from there on, you just want to work to expand your understanding so you could ask questions like can I ask what prompted this feedback? Can you tell me more about the outcomes that you see negatively being impacted by my approach? What behavior would you need to see change so that you'd see the problem is solved? And you can tell them, of course, about your current approach, why you're taking it, the benefits that you see, and then ask them how they would protect that kind of benefit while still taking on this, the benefits that you see and then ask them how they would protect that kind of benefit while still taking on this feedback. And, of course, you can use a multitude of other questions that I'm sure will come up as this conversation continues, and I'm going to use this example just for a moment to also speak to how important it is that we do have these conversations, that we do get feedback that's non-anonymous.

Speaker 2:

Now, of course, anonymous feedback is very helpful, especially when there's a power dynamic for people to be able to share their true feelings, maybe challenges that they're having, and, at the same time, could you imagine what would happen if this feedback was anonymous? If RR got this feedback from a leader in the organization and is now trying to handle this sense of pressure that they need to take feedback from a supervisor and also not knowing what this feedback means, why they're giving it, what exact behavior change they need? Because, like most feedback, this feedback is more about the behavior they want to see stopped than specific ways they would like to see things change. And so just a reminder to everyone out there consider thinking about how you can keep safety for people to share feedback while making sure that when there is feedback given, you are able to address it and ask those important clarifying questions. And if you have questions about how to do that, please reach out, because I'm always happy to have that conversation, this all being shared.

Speaker 2:

Now you have some things to consider for yourself. There's two things I want to make sure that you consider as you're thinking, potentially, about changing your behavior with your team if you do decide that, and the first is how you're going to communicate this. You definitely want this to be clear and clear. Make sure that your team is really aware of what's happening and where this is coming from, so you could share your learnings from this situation, some of your conversations, some of your reflection, let your staff team know and then let them ask questions and share their perspective.

Speaker 2:

If this is a one way thing that you just say, hey guys, I'm going to be more critical now, I'm going to give you more constructive feedback, and that's a good thing, they're probably not going to have the opportunity to really engage with that and feel committed to it themselves. They might feel a little bit thrown off, and so make sure that you give them that chance to engage and understand where this is coming from. And then you also want to be aware of the speed of this change, because this is something that both might be uncomfortable for. You might be a little bit more uncomfortable for them if they like the status quo and if you go from no constructive feedback to constructive feedback five days a week, it's probably not going to go over well. So make sure that you start slowly, take some time, that you're balancing this with specific, positive feedback, and if you want to know more about how to give really good feedback you can listen to some previous episodes of the show about that and you want to have that good sense of how you can approach this once again in a way that will strengthen your relationships, based on your approach, instead of damaging them or harming them.

Speaker 2:

So, rr, I hope that gave you some good ideas, some great things to ponder on. I really look forward to continuing our conversation so we can have an even more in-depth exploration of this Make. I've answered all your questions and, as a reminder, if you do share your story with the show, that's what I love to do is provide that session after so we can ensure that you get everything answered, and as a great way of saying thank you, because we love being able to dive into these stories so we can all grow together. Thank you so much for joining us today, for reflecting on your own leadership and considering how you might be giving feedback and, as we close, remember to ask yourself what ripples are you going to create this week?

Speaker 1:

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