In my experience as an individual contributor, manager, executive and founder I have found very few people who excel at asking for, giving, and receiving feedback. There certainly are some, and I can say with certainty they weren’t born that way.
They worked throughout their careers on giving and getting feedback because they know it makes them and those around them better. Even when it stings a little. While most people are not inherently good at giving and getting feedback they can get good. It’s a muscle that like all muscles can be developed with focus, practice, and repetition.
Just because at Reverb we make a living helping teams with this stuff, that doesn’t mean we don’t have room to improve. I thought I was ahead of the game when, after a few changes to the staff, we invested a half day in talking about styles using DiSC and followed up with a session on collaborative conflict.
Most People Avoid Conflict
We agreed to a set of norms then measured ourselves using an anonymous survey based on the 5 Dysfunctions of a Team. Our scores were in the good /healthy range with direct feedback the lowest. Like many teams, niceness can lead us to conflict avoidance. We don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings. But knowing Clear is Kind (see below) we committed to work on it, and measure our progress quarterly.
What happened after the first quarter? All our scores improved but our strengths and growth area remained the same. I thought “Ok we can all go work even harder on this” but my COO had a better idea. Why not work on it together, every single week? That’s how we ended up with a standing agenda item to help us build our feedback muscles.
Candid Conversations Take Practice
We now spend 10-15 minutes every Monday reading an article, watching a video, or listening to a podcast about trust, feedback, or candor then we talk about it. We ask what’s hard, what does this look like for us, and what holds us back? I’ve always found that common language makes most conversations easier. We considered what to call our feedback chats and landed on heart to hearts.
Here are the first four topics we looked at. We’re even building out a resource list for future reference. Is it working? Well, just last week during a one on one when my team member said, “This is just a quick heart to heart” I was ready. She talked, I listened, I learned something, and I thanked her. Most important, I increased my own awareness and started to change my behavior. I firmly believe our conversations as a team opened the door for her to point out something that she might otherwise have let slide. And that’s really what the heart to heart is all about.
Brene Brown: Anatomy of Trust
In a live appearance at UCLA’s Royce Hall, research professor, social scientist, New York Times best-selling author and TED Talk sensation Dr. Brené Brown discusses the fundamentals of trust. Brené explains how she was moved to focus on the topic after watching her daughter struggle with a betrayal of trust. Brené says she eventually found a way to teach her daughter to build trust and identify the people in her life who deserve it. She also explains why gossip harms relationships more than we realize and creates an intimacy that isn’t real.
Radical Candor Episode #23
In this podcast, Kim and Russ start off with some stories about feedback systems they’ve seen work for encouraging feedback among peers. Kim shares two systems that worked well for peer-to-peer praise and appreciation at Google. Russ shares a story about receiving criticism from peers that helped him make a change that impacted his possible career trajectory at Google.
Clear is Kind Unclear is Unkind
This piece helps you understand and internalize why it is neither nice nor kind to withhold feedback. Great reminder to talk to others (not about them), and to avoid triangulation. Not getting clear with a colleague about your expectations because it feels too hard, yet holding them accountable or blaming them for not delivering…Talking about people rather than to them is unkind.
6 Tips for Taking Feedback Well
Too often we teach people to give feedback, but we spend too little time talking about how to receive feedback like a pro. Well, here at Candor’s Global Headquarters we get asked a lot some version of “how do you talk to people about accepting feedback better?” It reminds me a lot of people driving in the rain – they can see clearly when others are messing it up, but it’s sometimes a little bit harder to see it in ourselves.
Do you want to improve communication skills, build trust on your leadership team, and get better at having candid conversations? If so let’s talk – info@reverbpeople.com
