Feedback Is a Contact Sport - Building Resilience in Real Time with Todd White

What if the key to resilience isn’t grit - but great feedback?

In this episode of the Performance Quotient, Will Lindstrom sits down with executive coach and ClearPeg.com founder, Todd White, to unpack why resilience isn’t about perfection - it’s about taking your at-bats, failing forward, and listening well enough to improve.

Highlights:

•  Why annual performance reviews fall short - and what real feedback systems should look like
•  The power of “how” questions over “why” questions in high-pressure conversations
•  How to create psychological safety so mistakes become growth moments
•  The leadership shift from manager to coach - and how it impacts performance
•  Why feedback is a “contact sport” requiring trust, timing, and human connection.

Todd brings decades of experience coaching high-performing STEM and tech leaders, offering a clear path for organizations looking to transform feedback into a competitive advantage. 

If your company is scaling, pivoting, or navigating change - this episode offers practical insights on building resilient teams that learn quickly - and lead even faster.

Todd White is an executive coach founder of Clearpeg and a self-described recovering engineer. He's worked across engineering strategy. Hr. And global consulting before dedicating his focus to professional development. Today Todd has coached thousands of high performing professionals, especially in the high tech and stem fields, guiding them through pressure pivot points as well as leadership growth. He's the creator of the 5 pillars of professional development and is known for helping top talent, build clarity influence, and, most importantly, have behavioral fluency without losing their edge.

Connect with Todd at clearpeg.com or follow him on LinkedIn.

Seeking to align your leadership, culture, and capital goals - we'd love to hear from you. No sales talk - just a conversation about your challenges - book a call today. 

Transcript

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Introduction to Todd White

William Lindstrom 0:01

Welcome . Today we have Todd White joining us . Todd is an executive coach , founder of ClearPeg and a self-described recovering engineer . He's worked across engineering strategy , hr and global consulting before dedicating his focus to professional development . Today , todd has coached thousands of high-performing professionals , especially in the high-tech and STEM fields , guiding them through pressure , pivot points as well as leadership growth . He's the creator of the five pillars of professional development and is known for helping top talent build clarity , influence and , most importantly , have behavioral fluency without losing their edge . So , with that , I'd just like to thank Todd for joining us today .

Todd White 0:41

Thanks for having me , Will I appreciate it .

William Lindstrom 0:43

Yeah , absolutely . This should be a fun conversation . As you know , today's topic is all about resilience , which is becoming a greater and greater need within organizations , especially with all the market changes and all the noise and all the different types of things that impact how companies listen , to , adjust and recover from negative influences , as well as just structural influences or structural problems within the organizations . And so with that , I just thought I'd start us off with giving you the opportunity to define how you see resilience in an organization , because I think there's a lot of different opinions of what resilience looks like within an organization , especially from a leadership perspective .

Defining Resilience in Organizations

Todd White 1:24

Yeah , that's a hot topic , particularly in today's ever-changing market , ever-changing industries , all those dynamics . To me , resilience is being tough and getting your number of at-bats at hand . You don't just step into the major leagues and hit a walk-off home run . You've got to plan to get your at-bats , take your knocks , get your feedback and learn and stand on the shoulders of what others do or have done . I've reinvented myself at least five times . Probably a few more left in me , but you've just got to get in there and give it your best and then learn and get feedback . Feedback is king these days .

Todd White 1:58

I'm old school , so back in the day we had this thing if you build it and they will show up , that doesn't work anymore . You've got . We had this thing if you build it and they will show up , that doesn't work anymore . You got to jump out there , get on it , go get your bumps , get your bruises . Hopefully you've got somebody in your corner that helps you get back up . But resilience , it's literally getting your at-bats . Excuse me , but we're all going to suck when we first try something . But resilience is getting your at-bats , getting learning and just keeping on top of the game .

William Lindstrom 2:26

So you kind of touched on an interesting concept of feedback , because feedback has both a positive and a negative connotation within organizations . You know , typically the only feedback people get is their annual reports .

Todd White 2:34

I think what you're hearing is .

William Lindstrom 2:36

That's a joke . Yeah , I think what we're hearing from you is that in order to have those at-bats and to learn , you need feedback . So how do you see feedback and resilience and the leader's role in providing that to improve performance ?

Rethinking Feedback Systems

Todd White 2:51

Yeah , feedback . Personally , I love feedback and I hate feedback . Right , you want to pat on the back just how good you're doing and then you're actually looking for feedback . It's very tough to get it Like right now . I love feedback on LinkedIn or Facebook or anything else , but everybody's vying for your attention and you want to do this A-B testing what works , what doesn't work , what do people like ?

Todd White 3:13

Now we're into you got a thumbnail , you got a headline , you got a tagline . You're buying for people's attention and if you can't get their attention , you don't get any feedback . But in the corporate world or business world , like you say , you got these yearly performance reviews . Most organizations are terrible at doing that . Most people are terrible at building their case when the rubber meets the road on a performance review , particularly if you're doing it once a year . But you have this board or whatnot that's looking at the reviews and then they're going to allocate whatever their process is . I've never seen a really good one , but , as I tell any of the people I work with , you've got about 60 seconds for yourself or somebody else to present your case .

William Lindstrom 3:55

I agree with that on that one that it's not fair . So I guess , my question to you is that if you had to redesign how feedback is provided outside of the annual performance report , which is largely a function of level setting , paid for the next upcoming year bonuses , but how would you actually redesign or rethink feedback from a leadership perspective , and how would you rethink it Like ? What's the frequency , how often ? What type of information would you share , particularly in shaping someone's ability to learn , grow and be resilient in the organization ?

Todd White 4:27

To me , feedback needs to be as close as possible and as real-time as possible . Everybody's different in a level of feedback that they will take , receive on board . But you're lucky if you have someone that you report with or have relationships with that has enough interest and wherewithal to engage with you and provide you that feedback . It's a learned process . Everybody can learn with it . But most people are terrible at giving feedback . Most people are not very good at receiving feedback . It takes time , energy and you have to put in the effort . But I find feedback is paramount . But I think all of our leaders need to be . They need to be developed and trained .

Todd White 5:07

How to provide feedback you need to get as close as you can to is a bit of a cowardly position . You get the best chance to give feedback is right when it happens . That's the most valuable point , and how you position that feedback makes a difference as well . Everybody's got a different personality , a different proclivity for how they like to be engaged with . Some people you can just be very , very direct with feedback and they love that . Others , you have to understand their personality , their traits , present it to them in a way that they can digest it and take actions to improve it .

William Lindstrom 5:51

When you talk about that , I mean there's some concepts of when people receive feedback . They fall in the category of feeling ashamed or they feel if they did something wrong . So how would you to get it a little bit more practical or a little bit more tangential to a moment can you provide , like , how would you shape that conversation ? Or how would you coach a leader to shape that conversation so it doesn't come across as shame and instead it comes across as learning and opportunity

Making Mistakes Acceptable

William Lindstrom 6:18

.

Todd White 6:19

Well , it starts with how do you engage with the conversation . If there's a situation that's happening and I walk in as a leader , director , vp , what have you ? And I go hey , why is this going on ? Why did you do this ? Why did you do something else ? I've immediately put people on the defensive when I engage with them and say , hey , help me understand what's the story here . How did we arrive at this decision ? Did we arrive at this decision ? It seems maybe we didn't . Or seems , if you go with a lot of how did we get here ? It seems like you're not putting people on the defensive and when you go in with a whole lot of why ? Questions or in a conversation now you're running at breaking that speed with products and services . But when you go in and you start , well , when's this going to be done ? Why is it here ? You put people in a very reactive mode and you push on them . To a certain extent they're just going to . They'll break policy procedure , whatever it happens to be , just to meet whatever you seem to be demanding .

Todd White 7:13

I prefer to go in and ask how did we get here ? What's the story ? How can I help ? What have we tried so far ? Where are we what's our next best move ? Again , coming back to the baseball analogy , if you watch professional sports players , you have a pitcher and they throw the walk-off , home run or whatever . They don't just lay down and cry like , okay , what's my next best play , what's my next best pitch ? We're all going to make mistakes . You get your at-bats , you learn from those and it's next play , next play . Hopefully that gives you a little bit of an idea , but to me there's not a 100% foolproof way other than being self-aware , having some sensory acuity and recognize what worked one time . You have to get your at-bats with . Feedback is another way to look at it . What works for one , what works for the team , what works for the client ?

William Lindstrom 8:02

I think what you're saying is I hear where you're going with that . I guess my question is it sounds like you have to make failure a part of the process , because if you're using the analogy of at-bats , a really good batting average is almost 300 . How do you create the environment where mistakes are acceptable and okay with , especially when you just as you brought up , where you're trying to make sure product gets out the door , you're trying to reply to customer demand , you're trying to shift , so how do you make mistakes okay ?

Todd White 8:33

That's not always an easy one to get at , but to me that comes from the very top . It has to be established from leadership that we need mistakes for what's going to build us . It's what's going to build our resistance . We're going to become accustomed to failing fast . Learning from our mistakes , getting up and pivoting , massive imperfect action is what's ultimately going to drive change , and we have to learn how to surf that .

Todd White 8:58

Failures are the norm . We learn more from failures than we do anything else . We remember our failures more than we do most anything else . But you have to have people engaged and they have to feel safe that they can fail . You don't want people to fail foolishly and you want people to learn . I think that's the main thing . Hey , we failed . What did we learn ? How do we make a better move next time ? And then give them feedback and guidance ? You know , as leaders , we're going to fail as well . We're going to be challenged , we're going to make mistakes , we're going to make the wrong decisions and I think there's plenty of data out there that says our troops , our teams , whatever they appreciate leaders that will make a decision , even if it's the wrong decision . They know they've got a clear direction and they pivot and adjust as they're moving forward .

William Lindstrom 9:44

When you give someone feedback because I'm trying to connect the dots between resilience , feedback and as well as mistakes , because I think there is triangulation there but when you give someone feedback , what do you expect them or what should they do with that ? In other words , how do they report back what they heard and what they learned so that you know that feedback is being positively impacting or is positively applied within the organization ?

Todd White 10:09

The thing that I look for , just like right now we're doing audios . The audience will pick up , but we have a camera going home . We've got feedback in a two-dimensional space here with what we can hear and what we can see . In an ideal world , I can get feedback in a real life interaction , but what I'm looking for with feedback is acknowledgement . I'm looking that like we've been talking here for

The Leaders as Coaches

Todd White 10:31

a while , but if I'm talking to someone , you know we've been talking for a while , but what have we spoken about ? And I'm looking for them . I'm looking for that aha or those eyes light up type of a moment . So I'm making sure that we're communicating about what's important and then , based on that , I can challenge them to have me better explain it or get them to talk about . You know , you hear this thing . Yes , without how is useless . But if I get them to recognize yeah , here's what we're doing I agree that I'm like , okay , how are we going to do that ? And I want to understand how I can help move them forward .

Todd White 11:04

But feedback has to do with recognizing what's happening , recognizing what our next best moves might be , and then , depending on that person , I need to figure out what level of support might I need to give them , and some people you just need to leave them alone . They need to struggle , they need to take their own time . Others need feedback and guidance , more real time , but that's that human engagement . It's kind of a touch feel , look and investigate that , but it has to do with human connection . At the end of the day , I think we miss so much of that now with remote work , with just flying back and forth in the world of emails and text and everything else . But feedback is a contact sport .

William Lindstrom 11:46

That's a good way to put it . So I guess my question is that , from the role of people that are leading companies , there's a point where they're leaders and there's a point where there's coaches . At least , what I'm hearing from you is that when a leader steps into providing feedback , they're really shifting their role to that of a coach little bit of a different .

Todd White 12:11

Until I got into professional development and coaching , I'd never really thought a whole lot about this . My management or development style has always been one-on-one to engage people . Performance reviews were just more or less a formality but I've always engaged as close to real-time feedback as possible . As leaders , you have a direct functional manager , you may have a career manager , you may have a mentor and then a coach is somebody that's a little bit more specific and doesn't have maybe what I call a dog in the fight . They're not there on an interactive daily basis but they can get this overall perspective .

Todd White 12:41

But I find as leaders , leaders are all about . You have doers , you have managers and you have the leaders . But it took me a long time to recognize you don't manage people , you manage numbers . People demand leadership and that leadership is about giving them clarity of purpose and direction . So oftentimes that can be coaching if there's a lack of leadership and where we're headed and why . But that one-on-one coaching , it's a very hands-on thing . But I think most leaders they don't necessarily have time . Not that they wouldn't love to do it , but if I'm the leader , if I'm the CEO of an organization , I don't have time to go out there and lay hands on every single individual . So I have to build my squads or my team leads or my frontline folks out there to be able to listen and engage . It's a learned trait . I know a few people that are very good at it . I know people that they just full out struggle with it .

William Lindstrom 13:35

Yeah , I've had some that just struggle with it because they don't see it as their role .

Todd White 13:39

Well , not only do they not see it as their role , but a lot of people are like listen , dude , I learned all this myself . They can learn it for themselves too . You can get into turf wars , you can get into protecting your space or other bits . There's no one size fits all , but I do find , if you look to a functional manager , they've got a full-time job . I got things to do . I don't have time to babysit you . I don't want to spoon feed you or they may feel threatened by you , and that's why it's important for to me , you need to have more than one path to get feedback and understand the people that actually have influence over your career , certainly your frontline manager . In a lot of cases it's HR . A lot of times it's people that you don't even know have influence over what's going on . So a particular behavior at a particular point can get you scores in a good bank or a bad bank , right .

William Lindstrom 14:28

We try to keep these little sessions short and sweet and to the point . You provide a lot of really good insight , but , as we wrap up , if there's one thing that you could provide guidance to , or if there's one thing you could give sage advice to a leader in an organization about how to effectively leverage feedback to improve resilience , what would it be ?

Final Advice and Conclusion

Todd White 14:49

I think the first time , particularly if you're a leader in getting feedback , I think my first bit of advice would be just shut up and listen . You're lucky when you get feedback and you're lucky that you get honest feedback . Most organizations are not . If you give me a form for feedback and I fill out that form of feedback and I actually give you full on , 100% , best as I can feedback , but I feel , well , somebody else is going to do that to me A lot of people hedge their bets because they don't want oh , this is going to hit a performance review or something else . But , particularly if you're a leader , you should have already had your at-bats . You should have a lot of your bumps and bruises . But when you get feedback , just shut up and listen , onboard that feedback and then follow up to make sure I am improving that feedback . So how well am I behaving ? Am I hitting my metrics or other things ?

Todd White 15:40

I think the most important thing about feedback give as open and honest as feedback as possible . Now you're also up against it in the context of how does HR actually use this . I've seen a lot of different things on how that plays in , but you've got to have the right system for feedback . People have to understand it , know how to use it . I think the best thing . My advice for leaders is listen onboard the feedback and it's an iterative loop for how you're going to improve that .

William Lindstrom 16:09

So it sounds like the most important thing , which I absolutely agree with . If you ask for feedback , you got to let them know what you're going to do with it and ask them how you did with it and you get one chance at that and you screw that up organizationally .

Todd White 16:22

You're not going to get a second chance . Been there , done that . I've seen HR . They send out an anonymous survey and then they start analyzing handwriting or something to see who said what . You never get another one of those .

William Lindstrom 16:35

Absolutely Well . I appreciate you taking the time to connect with us . Some really interesting thoughts we're going to continue to delve into and how to build those resilient organizations that are prepared to pivot Because pivoting is the name of the game especially for startups and venture funded companies . Because pivoting is the name of the game , especially for startups and venture funded companies . If this conversation you found interesting and you'd like to learn more about Todd White and what he's up to , you can follow him on LinkedIn or go to clearpegcom , which will be included in the comments below , and with that , I'd like to say thank you to everyone , and especially you . Thanks , todd . Thanks Will Appreciate it .