Gerry Lewis:
Hi, everyone. And welcome to another episode of GLINC Outside the Box. I’m Gerry Lewis. Today we’re going to talk about feedback. Specifically, giving feedback to team members. And if you’re anything like me, giving feedback to someone often reminds me like going to see a dentist. Now let me explain. Since you’re probably wondering why I’m making the connection of the two, going to the dentist needs to be regular and consistent, so does giving feedback. But whenever I see on my calendar that I’m due for a regular six month visit, I find myself looking for and successfully finding an excuse to postpone that visit. But guess what happens. Inevitably, it’s me who pays the price of those delays with cavities or other dental issues that could have been prevented. Similar to giving feedback, I understand the value and the need to provide regular and consistent feedback. After all there’s clear evidence of short and long-term benefits and I’m sure many of you might agree.
Gerry Lewis:
We’ve all had bad experiences with providing feedback, even with the best of intentions to help correct or improve behavior, it can at times feel like the conversation is a car that’s been going out of control on a ice patch and heading into a ditch and there’s nothing we can do to stop it. Now perhaps it’s me just being a tad dramatic here, but let’s face it. Giving someone feedback is not easy, mainly because it will undoubtedly be taken personally. So the reason we chose this topic for our podcast is that with almost everyone now working either from home or in a hybrid home office environment, the physical distance between managers and their teams create yet another barrier in providing the need of feedback. If sharing feedback was difficult in a face to face environment, doing it over the screen makes it that much more difficult.
Gerry Lewis:
So today I’m speaking with some people I’ve come to know and respect over the years as to how they have met this challenge head on. My first guest is Trish Rodda, who has worked within the Canadian banking system for 36 years. She’s worked in the branch network, move to training and development, crossed over to the investment sector to then become vice president within the international group. She’s currently retired and providing one-on-one coaching for young professionals joining us today, as well is Shane Harrington. He’s a banker and entrepreneur who has worked in several national and global teams. Welcome to both of you.
Trish Rodda:
It’s great to be here.
Shane Harrington:
Happy to be here.
Gerry Lewis:
All right. So let’s get right down to it. Let’s get right to the questions and see where this conversation goes. First question have either of you personally seen feedback change in this remote environment? Trish and maybe we can start with you. Have you seen a change?
Trish Rodda:
I really have seen it change. I think giving feedback has always been about building that two-way trust. And part of that two-way trust came from staff being able to see how you treated others. It wasn’t even so much about how you treated them, but how you treated others. And they could see that in the day-to-day work environment, how you spoke to people in meetings, how you spoke to them in the hallways, how you provided direction next to them, say in the office or the booth and that helped them to open themselves up, to be able to receive feedback from you. You were always being watched as a leader. And unfortunately in the remote environment, they’re seeing you in such encapsuled sterile environments, like a Zoom call or a meetings and that doesn’t give them the opportunity to really gauge who you’re going to be when you’re providing them with that feedback. Shane, what have you see?
Shane Harrington:
I think it’s changed as well, but I look at it a different way where I think it’s almost changed for the better. And my thought around that is it’s more thought out. When you’re providing feedback, it’s not as random as it used to be. You’re not just popping up as not just coming off the top of your head. Now to give feedback to someone, you have to book an appointment, you have to get it on their calendar, or you have to send them teams message and they get the opportunity to decide when they’re going to reply back to you to have that conversation. So that’s kind of what change I’ve seen, but I really, really think it’s for the better.
Gerry Lewis:
So Shane, you work in a sales environment. Do you think that because of the sales environment, that that changes for the better versus let’s say something that maybe is not so sales or result oriented. Do you think that has the factors to play?
Shane Harrington:
It does for sure. I think when you’re looking at giving feedback, the opportunity for the leader to be more intentional and provide more feedback, regardless of the situation is going to be better. It could be different depending on how immediate that feedback needs to be given. There are definitely a certain situations where it’s an emergency and if you’re not going in there and giving feedback and correcting the situation, something could get out of hand.
Gerry Lewis:
Okay. Let’s think about employees we’ve coached in the past. So I want you to actually, you don’t have obviously tell me their name, but I want you to think of individuals you have coached in the past. What differences do you see now in this current environment? So you’ve coached them in the past, in a face-to-face environment. Now you’re in front of them in a Zoom call or a Teams call, what are nuances that has changed in that?
Trish Rodda:
Well, I’ve always based my feedback on real life situations that I’ve observed in combination with an example that I would ask the staff to bring to the meeting so we can discuss something that was a challenge or something where they were really successful in. Typically now you see those folks again into environments, you see them in a group session, or you see them in your regular one-on-one meetings that you might have. Without those casual observations or interactions, it’s hard to find those good examples. And when they bring an example, I find the employees are really in two groups.
Trish Rodda:
They’re either the ones that are just so hard on themselves because they feel that they’re not doing the job as well as they used to. So they bring an example that, it doesn’t mean necessarily put them in the best light or the opposite. They bring an example where they’re in such a positive light, because they don’t want you to think that they’re struggling in any way. So I worry that the examples that I’m getting, because I didn’t observe them myself are more stylized. They’ve been more scripted. They’re more how they would like me to see them rather than how I’m actually seeing them interact with the clients or with their peers.
Gerry Lewis:
That’s a very interesting point, Trish and Shane to you, in the first part of this question, you said that you were more prepared, you had more thoughts going on in your head. I’m wondering if what Trish said is also happening from the receiver end, from the team members end, they are more prepared. They now know what to say because they’re prepared for what to say. What are you noticing the difference between face-to-face sessions and remote sessions in coaching? What are you noticing?
Shane Harrington:
The biggest thing I noticed is the different level of engagement. It’s much harder to try to judge that level of engagement when you’re virtual. Are your employees or team members showing up on video? Are they just showing up on phone? Can you hear them ordering the coffee at McDonald’s? All of those things make a big difference where in previous years we were face to face. We were in a tiny room and that room was private. I knew that nobody else was listening and in that room where now the majority of our video conference sessions are recorded. So I do think that as our team members go into those sessions, they’re a little bit more cautious and they’re a little bit more prepared as well.
Gerry Lewis:
All right. So Trish, if I go back to you and your case, you talk about how there are two camps, you know, the ones that really they’re very hard on themselves and they want to make sure that you see the best possible employee. How have you adapted now that you know that that’s a scenario that could fall into one or the other, how have you adapted to that type of feedback?
Trish Rodda:
Part of what I’m doing I find in these sessions now, as I spent a lot more time at the start of the conversation reconnecting, because you used to see them on a day-to-day basis, you didn’t need to spend necessarily as much time because you, through the day it was can I pick you up a coffee, or how was the run on Sunday or as a house, a little one feeling. So you kind of had a baseline, constant connection. So now I find in the start of the conversation, I’ll spend more time connecting and letting the conversation be more free flowing to try to relax the individual, to make sure that they feel comfortable in that setting reconnecting with me.
Trish Rodda:
The other thing I believe that changed, I don’t believe that in the old corporate structure, I would have asked an individual at the beginning of the conversation. So how are you feeling these days? I think that’s one of the major things that’s changed. And I think it’s changed for the better. To Shane’s point, I think because we are doing this dedicated one-on-one now and that is our feedback session. There is, if you can build the comfort in the relaxed, there is more of an opportunity to find out how people are feeling. And again, we probably wouldn’t have gone there in the past.
Gerry Lewis:
Okay. So you start off with a bit more to kind of get them to exhale a little bit before that conversation starts. So that more sort of conversation actually happens rather than a feedback session, per se. So Shane, you said that the differences you’re noticing is that in some cases, because it is recorded because they have more time to prepare, they’re more, I won’t say scripted, but they’re more aware of what they’re saying. How have you adapted to that particular awareness?
Shane Harrington:
I think for me, I tried to continue to do the same sort of check-ins that I would in the past, random team messages to say, hello. A quick message, an email, a funny story I saw on LinkedIn or Twitter that was somewhat relevant to our days. So I’m doing that a lot more than I normally would have in the past, because they could have just walked by them and said, hello and tapped on their shoulders. One of the other ways is being much more vulnerable. So being open to share the mistakes that I’m making, picking up my cell phone instead of a teams meeting and going for a walk and having a conversation outside of our normal environment or even just sitting on the couch and asking them to do something different, it gets us out of that seat, stop staring at that screen. And let’s just have a conversation and work on something together.
Shane Harrington:
The interesting thing for me around that is I feel like I’ve adapted. And once I’ve adapted, the rest of the team sort of adapts along with you. So we talked about, do you have the right technology? Do you have your coffee mug with you? Are you going to be able to hear me on the call? Are you going to be able to see me on the call? Your coffee’s not quite ready? Well, let’s just hang out for five seconds. You can run upstairs, grab your coffee and then come back. So that adaptation for me was around no planning for what the conversation is going to sound like while in advance, making sure they have an agenda.
Shane Harrington:
I think that’s key and something that I probably failed that in the old corporate setting, because it was so easy just to connect and talk about what was on our minds and then to make sure that the team knows the biggest difference between a feedback session and a coaching session compared to a touch-based session. When we first went remote, because we were so disconnected for so long, I found it was very much more, here’s what’s on my list of things I’m working on, Shane. Here’s the troubles I’m running into and here’s what’s on my mind as opposed to I’m having an issue with this particular thing. How do I get better at it? How do I make sure when I leave this call today was valuable enough for my time. And next time we talk, I’m going to be a little bit better than it was the day before.
Gerry Lewis:
I want to circle back, Shane. Feedback session, coaching session, touch base session, give me some parameters around that, or at least your parameters around what the differentiators are.
Shane Harrington:
I think that the big difference is having a scheduled consistent approach like you talked about in the beginning. So we’ve got our performance coaching sessions. They’re scheduled, they’re inner agendas. We know when they are, the reoccurring, I can look to my calendar and three years from now, and it’s still sitting there on my calendar and we know what we’re doing in that session. It’s not a waste of time. Now that we’re all remotely time seemed to have disappeared altogether. And when you’re sitting on a Zoom call or a face-to-face virtual meeting, you want to make sure you’re getting the most out of that. Otherwise you don’t feel like you’re making the best of your day. So those performance coachings are designed to get us better at something than we were today. So whatever it is we’re working on, we’re practicing we’re role-playing, we’re finding a way to make it better. The feedback sessions are not necessarily scheduled. So they could come out of a coaching session. It could come out of a customer interaction or could come out of something that we just randomly saw during the day.
Gerry Lewis:
And then touch base would be even more informal than that. It’s just picking up the phone, I’m grabbing a coffee, let’s just chat for five minutes type of thing?
Shane Harrington:
Absolutely. Let me know. What’s on your mind.
Trish Rodda:
I’d like to circle back to what you said about being more vulnerable. And I do agree with that. I find that as leaders, we are more casual than we were in the corporate environment. I think that’s, we’ve kind of exhaled ourselves in some ways, because when you’re in that corporate structuring, you’re working on a floor and there’s 165 people in your hall from meeting to meeting, that doesn’t happen anymore. That transfer time in between. So you are a little more relaxed when you get on the call than you would have been before. So I think that really is a real plus to where we are today.
Gerry Lewis:
Okay. So we’ve covered generally the giving of feedback, sort of the understanding of how I don’t want to call the fourth dimension, but I’ll call my laptop the fourth dimension. Like there’s one more dimension I’m dealing with, how to manage that dimension and how it has changed the way, there isn’t that kind of pulse that we get from our team members anymore that we can easily tap into. In some ways it’s more contrived, but in other ways it’s more structured. So I do see the pluses and minuses to it. And the most important thing is we’ve adapted and our team members have also adapted along with us, which is what Shane talked about. I want to talk about the really difficult feedback. The ones that really is what I call the root canals, if I can use my dentist analogy again, I really want to postpone that root canal. When it comes to difficult feedback, that is a much more difficult thing to do remotely. I’m just curious how you’ve handled giving difficult feedback.
Trish Rodda:
I think it’s important to lay a context of some things that have changed, just to give an example of what could be a difficult discussion today that might not have been in the past. There’s really two ends of the spectrum. Either I find that emails have become harsher as if not worrying about seeing others after sending it in the haste, in which it sent is not taken into consideration the receiver or the opposite end of the emotion over sensitivity, fear of seeming too harsh, uncaring and demanding because I’ll have to see that person again in the Zoom call. It really by the way, it takes out the true intent of the message. Both are areas that employees need to work on. Like all feedback, your intent has to be to help them, send that message more clearly or interact better with others.
Trish Rodda:
But I find that what you’re doing more lately is holding up a mirror to themselves. You’re asking them to see themselves as others are seeing them. They see themselves all the time on Zoom, but do they really see themselves? Do they see their behavior and what message were you’re working to convey in that email or together, let’s find the facts of the situation and find a way to send that message that you’re comfortable in how it’s going to be received. The giving and the receiving of those messages in this new communication style, I think is where the difficult feedback is coming from for me.
Gerry Lewis:
That’s very interesting, about the harshness of emails as how easily, because now we’re so starved with the nuances of the every day that everything we get is through either email or zoom call. And that is sometimes very taken out of context to the entire day because those three lines are the only three lines we’re reading, but we’re not getting sort of the backstory to what created that message. A very interesting point. Shane, what about you? Difficult feedback discussions. How do you do that? What’s your process? I’m sure you’ve done your fair share in a sales environment, in a results-driven environment. How do you do it?
Shane Harrington:
I think what Trish said was really powerful around your intent. So your intent has to be not to discourage someone and not to put them down and not to make them fearful of making a mistake again, but then intent on making sure that they can see themselves in that mirror and they have to realize, do I want to be that person? Do I want to do that? Is that how I want to be looked at from the outside world and in a remote situation, some of your team members might not know you, they may have never had a chance to meet you before. You might work on the other side of the country or the other side of the world. So they haven’t seen how you’ve engaged with other people. They might not know that your intent is always genuine and always good and always kind.
Shane Harrington:
So when I’m looking at my processes, I know at some point I’m going to have to give difficult feedback to everybody on the team. Through my day, through my week, through my month, through my year, through their onboarding process, I’m trying to do my best to show my intent in every interaction. My intention is positive. My intention is good. My intention is not to belittle someone or make someone feel disrespected or little, it’s to make sure that as a whole, we’re strong enough as a high performing team to be able to give feedback anybody on the team and to receive that feedback for anybody on the team.
Shane Harrington:
And it doesn’t just come from Shane. It can come from anybody at the team at any time. So as you start relaying that message more and more and more often, I found that given the difficult feedback was a little bit easier. Now that I’ve been working with the team for a little bit longer, especially because they know that my intentions are good and they know that, Hey, this is how high performance teams operate. We need to make sure that we’re all on the same page and we can take it for you also have the full authority to give it as we see fit as well.
Gerry Lewis:
I hope you haven’t exhausted your best practices for me because that’s my next question is to kind of get to the best practices. There are so many. Feedback is one of those topics that, we’ve all received bad feedback. We’ve all given feedback that we wish we could have taken back because at the intention, even though it was really good, it just came out the wrong way. So I think one thing with feedback is you got to… Why it’s important to be regular at it is because you need to become better at it yourself. So by doing regular feedback, you actually get better at feedback. To me that’s one of the real reasons why I think regularity is important, not just for the team member, for yourself, that you are comfortable in the way in which you deliver. Let’s talk about more best practices or whether or not you want to call the do’s and don’ts, what are some definite great advice you have for me in terms of giving feedback?
Trish Rodda:
I feel right now, you need to do a deeper self-examination they’ve done before in how you gave feedback in the past and why it might not work now. You need to own your own trigger phrases. Back to what Shane was saying, when people knew you day in and day out and knew what your intent was, you could get away in a feedback session with, I call them trigger phases, a phrase like what were you thinking? No matter how well-intended that is, it never sounds good. It never sounds good. It implies that you weren’t thinking. It could be helpful with their permission, we’re able to record your feedback session. Not because you’re listening to them, but because you’re listening to yourself. Maybe you jump in too quickly. Maybe you never let them finish the sentence. Maybe when you’re giving feedback, you go on and on and on.
Trish Rodda:
When really what you’re trying to do is soften the blow when facts could do it for you, always sticking to the facts. A feedback should be a piece of repeatable action. Something they can take away. Maybe they’re the kind of person that jumps in to do an action before they really stop to think about it. So a stickie on the side of their computer says, pause, plan and proceed, might be all they need to really get impact to the action. And then you follow up next time to see what impact did it have for them. Small repeatable allow the person receiving feedback an opportunity to be successful. Feedback like Shane says, unlike coaching is not focused on the long-term. It’s concerned with executing those really short-term steps well, so they stay focused and they’ll help them be more successful. They have to stay in the now to move forward. And so your feedback should allow them to see themselves in that feedback and be able to take those steps forward.
Gerry Lewis:
Wow. So many pieces I like, I never even heard of the term trigger phrases, but I totally get that. It’s almost like you see this a lot now on social media, what phrases should we just stop saying? And I don’t know whether they’re trigger phrases or not Trish, but things like, with all due respect, the minute I hear with all due respect, I’m going to say, okay, you’re going to disrespect me. You’re going to so disrespect me right now.
Trish Rodda:
Or don’t take this personally.
Gerry Lewis:
But what I got from you, certainly a lot more self reflection, I think is a really key part to this, to really think about what is this you want to say, how do you want to say it, prepare for how they might receive it. I also love the fact of the making sure that there are pieces of repeatable actions. I really, really like that as well. What can they do with it? Which is we often call it constructive feedback. Constructive feedback basically is what can they do to build towards better? So that piece of repeatable action is constructive. Even though I never liked that, talk about trigger phrases. I don’t like constructive feedback because it makes it seem like a lot of work. But I think the way you said it is very good. What can I do to repeat so that I can improve? All right. Shane, I hope Trish didn’t take all the best practices away because you’re not allowed to say ditto. So tell me what some of your best practices are.
Shane Harrington:
All my best practices are now Trish’s best practices, because that was fantastic. I’m hoping to get a recording of this session. One of the things I think I’ve done and it might’ve been harder to do in person environment was when you’ve given poor feedback or you’re having second thoughts about what you said or how, how you reacted and some of those phrases that it’s okay to stop and go back and say, sorry. It is very possible that when you’re reviewing that conversation in your head, it didn’t go the way you thought it would go. It didn’t even go the way you wanted it to go. And your job is to go back and check in. Maybe you don’t have to say, sorry, maybe you don’t have to redo the whole session again, but at least to check in to say, Hey, listen, I know that conversation wasn’t a conversation either of us wanted to have, how are you doing? Do you want to talk a little bit again? Do you want to go grab a virtual coffee? Do you want to go for a walk?
Trish Rodda:
That’s a really good point because sometimes when you get in to giving feedback, you find that, you know just in that moment, oh gosh, I wish I could have a do over. Where’s my Mulligan. I really want to do this again. I think it’s okay now to stop and actually say, well, that just didn’t come out the way I wanted it to come out. What I’m trying to say is, and then go back to the facts because what happens when you’re not a feedback professional, as I’ll say it, you start embellishing it. You start trying to dig yourself out of the hole, by adding more adjectives to what you were trying to say. And basically what you should have done is go back to the facts. Here’s what I’ve observed. Here’s where I think we could move forward better.
Shane Harrington:
And I would add to my final best practice list would be just be quiet after you provided some feedback. Listen, just listen. Everybody wants to be heard.
Gerry Lewis:
I think those are amazing tips. If I could add a couple of my own, I think that it’s great practice, whether you’re giving or taking feedback to thank the individual for the feedback. Always thank them all because we know how difficult it is to say something that you really intentionally want to get out. So give that person that appreciation by saying, you know what? Thanks for sharing that with me. The other tip I want to say is there have been times, and I know Trish and Shane, you’ve probably had someone give you feedback where your inner voice said, and I can’t say this because I’ll be bleeped on the podcast, but you’ll get the jess is like, this is complete crap you just said. Like you are so wrong and I don’t even know where that came from. You’re so wrong. You’re so wrong.
Gerry Lewis:
And I challenge anyone who has either given or received feedback or given feedback when you find yourself in that situation where you are in complete disagreement with them. Number one, still thank them because I think that’s a very important thing to do. The second thing I think it really is important is no matter how much you disagree with them, challenge yourself to find the grains of truth in that, find it. Honestly, even if it’s the tiniest grain, take that grain and say to yourself, that is something. Like what can I do with that? Because I think that if you’re able to do that, you have created such a wonderful awareness of how people perceive you and that you become Bulletproof in a way, because you’re saying, I’m sorry, I don’t really agree. But you know what? What you said about that, I’m going to really think about it because there’s something there. I think that just creates a better conversation going forward. What do you guys think?
Trish Rodda:
Totally agree. I mean, it’s like where there’s smoke, there’s fire. If someone is saying that to you, they have seen something that you haven’t seen yourself. So I think it’s really important. It would be nice to be able to have the strength, to explore it further, to be able to say to that person, that’s really interesting. Can you tell me more? Can you tell me where you observed that behavior? Because I’d really like to learn more about that. That’s when you have that self-confidence, that self-awareness to recognize that taking feedback like that is, as you said, just that green, it’s someone else’s put a mirror up and seeing something different and you’d like to explore it further. That’s when you’re really along in the personal growth.
Gerry Lewis:
How do you guys feel? There’s this very, I don’t know where I learned it. I’m sure I learned it from somewhere about when you give feedback, do the, I don’t know whether they call it the sandwich feedback, say something good, sandwich, no, no, no. If you’re going to say something bad sandwich between two things that are good, like you’re such a friendly person but I want to talk to you about how much you dominate the conversation, but you know what? When you do talk, it’s so energetic. It’s like, I find, you often lose what the specific feedback is because you can be coded it and very often it gets lost on people. They might’ve completely even missed that piece of critical feedback because you sandwiched it so nicely, top and bottom. What do you guys think of the sandwich feedback? Do you do it? Have you done it or what’s your approach?
Shane Harrington:
Say it like it is, let’s go into the meeting, have the conversation and correct anything that needs to be corrected.
Gerry Lewis:
Trish, same?
Trish Rodda:
It was interesting. You should say that because obviously in the early days, that’s the way we were taught to do feedback. You say something nice, you put what you really want to say in the middle and you say something nice at the end, but that bash between the first slice and the actual filling, you’ve lost them, you’ve lost that whole first slice. Shane’s absolutely right. What people want to know in feedback is what are the facts? And that’s where feedback’s the most effective. If you have the specific example and you’re laying out the facts of the situation that they can now see for themselves, yes, it actually did happen. That’s where you’re going to win the trust. You’re not going to win the trust with the two slices of bread on either side.
Gerry Lewis:
Excellent. I’m going to throw away the sandwich feedback from now on. I won’t practice it. I won’t teach it.
Shane Harrington:
Well, you could send me a sandwich. I’m starving, Gerry.
Gerry Lewis:
All right. My last question to you, but I like to throw something out only because the conversation is really cool. And then I have one more question and I’m going to tell you that one question and it’s, what’s the best piece of feedback you’ve ever received that you learned the most from? I’m hoping you would be willing to share that with me, but planted in your head first for now, for now. I want to move to my question of, we’ve been talking a lot about giving feedback and I want to talk about the reverse, which is asking for feedback. And number one, how do you ask for feedback and number two, how do you make it so that they’re comfortable in doing so. You can ask for it and then people would just say, oh no, everything’s great. You’re all good. You’re great. You’re great. How do you make sure that there is something that comes back? What do you do, Trish?
Trish Rodda:
That one is a challenge. I mean, that goes back to my very first question. That’s the trust factor. It’s whether you respect that individual or not, whether you’re going to ask them for feedback and there have been very different types of people that I’ve asked for feedback from. One SVP I can think of in particular tough, tough nut, but asking for feedback from that first person and having them actually give you good constructive feedback, almost felt like a reward because it felt like they really were thinking about you. So you don’t need to be afraid of maybe funny individuals that you really respect, but asking for feedback, if you were hosting a meeting, if you were the one directing a particular conversation, asking the most senior person in the room, a very specific question, like when I introduced the conversation where you did you feel engaged.
Trish Rodda:
So when you’re talking to someone, it gives them very specific question. When you’re asking for the feedback, because asking for general feedback, how did I do? You’re probably going to get the, you did fine. But when I introduced the speakers, when I introduced the topic, when I did my presentation, did you feel engaged? Was it clear? Did you understand? Anything that allows them to give you specific feedback is rewarding for them, and it’s going to give you something you can move forward with.
Gerry Lewis:
I really liked that Trish. Shane, how do you ask for feedback?
Shane Harrington:
I think for me, it starts at the beginning of the relationship that I’m having with someone. And we talk a little bit about, what I’m going to do and the role that I’m going to play in from time to time there, they’re going to receive some feedback from me. And I would love to get some feedback from them, not today, not tomorrow, but when you see an opportunity for it to come up, giving them their green light, to already give you feedback well in advance of them, actually having that fuzzy feeling going, should I say this, do I have enough courage to bring this up today?
Shane Harrington:
I think that’s probably that the biggest thing that I do is I set that up in advance and then I will go out and let them know that, hey, today we’re going to be asking for some feedback. Here’s some specific things that I’m looking to get feedback on from yourself. And that key there, as Trish mentioned, is that specifics to general and you will get the, hey, yeah, you’re great. I’ve got nothing for you, but when you give something or someone something to focus on, they’ll remind or really go to that exact situation or that exact scenario and they’ll find a way to make you better.
Trish Rodda:
I really liked that, Shane. I liked the idea that you gave them permission in advance to look for something to actually give you feedback on, because it does two things. Number one, they’re going to focus in on that area. And number two, as I said, you’ve given them permission to now discuss it at the end. And that’s fantastic.
Gerry Lewis:
I think very much in life, it is about setting expectations for people. And I think what you’ve done and how he described as Shane is at the beginning of the relationship, you start off by saying, here’s how I would like to communicate with you. So you set that up in the beginning and you’re also setting up even before you ask for feedback, is that the, you know, at the end of this, I’d love to get some feedback from you, so you’ve prepared them for it, which I love very much. All right. My bonus question, which I did not talk to you guys about, but Shane brought up vulnerability and I thought I’m going to go down that route and see what happens. What’s a piece of advice or feedback that you received in your career that you feel, you know what? That was great feedback. And I’m glad someone told me. Anything you can share that we don’t need to edit out afterwards?
Shane Harrington:
It’s not quite a long lines of my career, but it definitely shaped how I receive information from people. I was a young boy, maybe 12, maybe 13 years old. And my uncle owned a trucking company. And I was lucky enough to be chosen for that summer to go. We’d whack all the weeds down we’re on this massive, massive property that he owned. And after three or four hours of not blazing hot sun with a chain saw, weed Wacker, that’s too heavy for you, you start goofing around a bit. And I was swinging this thing around, like it was a golf club and just playing. I was still cutting. I was doing a good job. It was was getting done. But from far away, it looked like I was just goofing off completely. So my dad leaves the office, walks across this complex, goes, “Hey, what are you doing?”
Shane Harrington:
“Cutting the weeds down. I’m having a good time out here.” It’s like, well, from over there, what do you think it looks like? And the feedback that he gave me was somebody is always watching. And I thought that was a really, really cool piece of knowledge that I’ve, I’ve taken very far forward, knowing that someone is always watching. They’re watching to see how you act and they’re watching to see how you react. They’re watching to see how you move. They’re watching to see how you treat people. And that one simple phrase has really changed how I engage with people and engage with myself, especially when you’re sitting in the office and you’re going to send an email to someone. And you think, how is that going to look to someone else on the other side of things?
Gerry Lewis:
Great, great story, Shane, thank you for sharing that with me and thank God I don’t have any weeds in my backyard, but if I did, I certainly wouldn’t be asking you to do them now that I know your method. No, seriously, that’s a very powerful sort of phrase that someone’s always watching. Trish, are willing to share anything?
Trish Rodda:
As I was going up through the corporate ladder and one of the best pieces of advice that I received from one of the senior people that I really respected was when you’re conveying large quantities of information, you have to boil it down to a repeatable story. And that’s a piece of information or a piece of feedback I’ve passed on to a lot of people. When I hear them engaging in conversations with a lot of analytical information or a volume of information, they have to remember that the person that’s going to receive it, what are they going to do with it? And so for me, that was so powerful because after that any message that I was going to deliver, I had to ask myself, is this a repeatable story? Can someone take that piece of information and do something with it. Really important in coaching, really important in providing feedback because if they can’t take it and use it, that’s just a waste of time.
Gerry Lewis:
Well, I said earlier in the opening that my two guests are people who I know and I respect and that’s exactly why I chose you to be my two guests. And I thank you very much for allowing me to kind of go off course in the last question. But I do find that they make the best type of questions and the best conversations come out. Lot of stuff I learned today, but I think the one takeaway I really have from everything that you discussed and boil it down to is in this remote environment, we need to be far more intentional in the way we plan to give feedback. I think that Trish is you said something earlier in another context of pause plan and proceed. I take those three words and I’m going to attach it to the intentional piece here to say that we need to take the time to do it.
Gerry Lewis:
There’s so many things happening in our day. We could end up just firing off sort of like random feedback in an email or whatnot. If we’re going to give feedback, if we’re going to spend that time, let’s do it intentionally and with the intent of helping someone grow. And I think we do that, then we are going to be that much better at giving feedback, even when we come back to a face-to-face environment. So with that, I thank the two of you very much. I hope I didn’t scare you off and not doing other podcasts again. I really enjoyed it. And I’d like to do it again with you guys.
Trish Rodda:
It’s been a pleasure.
Shane Harrington:
Thanks so much, Gerry.
Gerry Lewis:
Thanks for listening to another episode of GLINC Outside the Box. I’m Gerry Lewis.
