S1E3 Yakety Yak, Do Talk Back pt. 1

Welcome to Everything Is A People Problem; a podcast that explores the connections between business, culture, and community, uncovering how every business problem has a people-centric solution with host Dia Zafer-Joyce. 

In this episode, Dia defines the what, why, and how of fostering a culture of open communication. Feedback increases transparency, decreases apathy, and improves the work we do together; part 1 of this two-part episode lays the foundation of this topic so that part 2 can address delivering feedback with cultural, gender, and generation considerations.

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Transcript

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Hi there. Welcome to Everything is a People Problem, a podcast that explores the connections between business, culture, and community, uncovering how every business problem has a people centric solution. I'm your host, Dia Zafer-Joyce. Let's talk about people. 

Hello again. I'm Dia, and I'm so glad you're here for Everything is a People Problem.  Today's episode is about feedback, and I love feedback. I love giving feedback, I love receiving feedback, and I'm a strong believer that feedback is the basis of a healthy and productive work culture. I have so much that I want to share with you about this topic that this is part one of a two parter.

In this first part, we're going to cover the what, why, and how. What feedback is and is not, why we even care, and how we make the feedback magic happen. And in the second part, that'll be released next week, we're going to explore how to adapt feedback throughout cultures, genders, and generations. I'm pretty sure if somebody took my DNA and put it underneath a microscope, instead of seeing typical nucleotides, they would see the word feedback. So instead of chemical building blocks, it's feedback building blocks. When I was an instructional designer, I wrote a lot of training content on feedback, not just how to deliver it, but also how to receive it. It's the fundamentals of open communication, and it's not just an activity that you check off on your to do list. Now, keep in mind, I was living that instructional designer life about 10 years ago, and so a lot has changed in 10 years. Our society is different. Our work cultures are hybrid. So naturally, fundamentals of feedback might be similar, but the mechanism and the experience and how we execute that has definitely changed. 

In 2019, Zenger Folkman conducted a survey about feedback in the workplace. 94 percent of participants reported that well delivered, corrective feedback improved their performance. Not only did they recognize the benefits of a culture of open communication, they craved it for their own personal development. Feedback is critical information. It's real life data that we can use to either reinforce or change behaviors. The critical part of that statistic is that the feedback was delivered skillfully. So how do we deliver effective feedback? 

Let's dive in with a definition. Feedback is an intentional conversation, one that's based on an observable behavior and that behavior's corresponding positive or negative impact. Don't worry, we're going to break that down. Feedback is observable. It's based on a behavior that you can see, that you can experience. Feedback is not a feeling. It's not secondhand information. It's evidence. It's fact. Not only is it based on a behavior, but there's an impact to that behavior that's either positive or negative. Why do we talk about an impact and not just the behavior? Because a behavior itself is neutral. Let's take the example of laughing. In one scenario, the behavior of laughing may reflect a positive environment. It could be comic relief and even be relaxing to those who are there and experiencing it firsthand. But in another environment, laughter may be seen as sarcastic. It could reduce the seriousness of a conversation and even communicate disrespect. Behaviors are neutral because they're situational. To deliver effective feedback, you need to observe both the behavior and the situation in which it was displayed. 

Okay, delivery time. So, we've seen a behavior, check. We've seen the corresponding impact of that behavior, check check. Now, it's time to have a conversation. There are three things you need to either prepare for or be ready for as you go into this conversation. 

Number one, you need to assume that the person who displayed this behavior did not intend that impact. No one goes in to a meeting and laughs with the goal of disrespecting someone. People are not inherently rude and vindictive. It's just the impact of the behavior that occurred. 

Number two,  get ready to ask questions. This is not a one directional oneversation. This is a two way street; you need to seek to understand before you can come to a conclusion together. 

And number three, if you're going to ask questions, you better be ready to listen.  

Okay, we're prepped, but now we need to know how to effectively deliver our message.  It's really important to get the how of this conversation right, and when I say “right”, I mean put yourself out there and practice because you're not going to nail it the first, the second, the third time you do this. Francesca Gino from the Harvard Business School did some research around why we need feedback. And in the category of “managers providing critical feedback”, 72 percent of the employees she talked to highlighted that type of feedback as important for their career development, but only 5 percent of them believed their managers were providing that type of feedback.

So, so many of them are in need of this in order to become better employees and to do a better job and to stay engaged, but minimal numbers of their managers are engaging in this conversation with them.  So going into this conversation, we need to remember feedback is timely, so you don't want it to go too long from when you've observed something to when you talk about it, and it's intentional. Make the time to have this conversation and not just on your time, on their time. That's going to be a good lead in into how we execute this. 

Step one, you need to set the expectation and position why you want to have this talk and ask permission if it's the right time to have the conversation. If now isn't the right time, schedule it, put it in the calendar, and again, make it intentional.  What does this sound like? Let me give you an example: “Hey, Daniel, I'd love to give you some feedback from that meeting we were in together just a few minutes ago. Is now a good time?”  

Step two, share your observations and give examples. “Daniel, do you remember laughing during the meeting? It turned out that came at a very critical point in the conversation where we reached a serious topic. When you laughed, it made the topic seem like a joke to our partners. The impact is that they're not going to take this issue seriously anymore and work with us to get it fixed.”

Step three, ask questions so you create a shared understanding of this moment. In Daniel's example, it might be,  “Tell me a little bit about how you approached that meeting, “ “How do you feel about that issue in particular?” Don't be afraid to ask follow up questions so you can deepen your understanding of their perspective in this situation. Your agenda here is to share an observable behavior and its corresponding impact to the business. It is not for you to prove that you're right.  

Step four, thank them for their time and equally be open to feedback in the future.  

Whew, that's it. Super simple, right?  It's not simple, it's hard, but it gets better, I promise. The more that you do it, the more natural the conversation becomes. And just like we said, you have to prep yourself to be a giver of feedback, you also have to prep yourself in the same way to receive that feedback. Assume that that person who's giving you that feedback wants to see you succeed, wants you to be great. Listen to what they have to say. It's valid. If it's observable, they've seen something that they need to share with you and ask questions just as they're going to ask questions of you. You need to ask questions back as well so that you can foster that shared understanding.  

There are a lot of opinions on the how part of giving feedback. For example, Kim Scott, who's a former Google executive, she popularized the term “radical candor”. She wrote a book in 2017 by that same name. And she argues that even “obnoxiously aggressive” feedback is better than “ruinous empathy” because it puts the ownership on the person receiving the feedback to still get something from it. To be honest, I have a different perspective and ultimately disagree because by making the best of the situation, we're giving somebody permission to deliver feedback poorly and maybe even cultivate that toxic work environment we talked about last week. I like to say, “Control what you can and influence what you can't,” because you can't control how someone delivers feedback to you. And if it's all you're getting, of course you have to do what you can with what you have. Kim shares techniques on how to extract the value from that experience, and to me, that just encourages poor management behavior. I say that with the caveat that I have not read her book, Radical Candor, and I'm very big on reading the source materials. So please take that with a grain because this is based on research alone. You can bet though I'm gonna add that to my reading list.  

Another opinion on feedback comes from Ray Dalio. He's the founder of Bridgewater and he uses the term “radical transparency” where employees rate and give feedback publicly about one another's contributions and meetings and it's in shared documents as the meetings take place. That is a big ol’ yikes right there for me with red flags flying everywhere. Mostly because feedback is for everyone. It's not just manager to employee. It's the great leveling playing field. It's peer to peer. It's employee to manager. Everyone needs to be open to feedback and when you get into a situation where what is shared in the meeting is the recorded feedback, that is incredibly one directional and dictatorial.

The steps we talked about earlier are the lowest common denominator. If you've never given feedback in your life, then if you follow those steps, voila, you're giving feedback. That being said, delivery may change based on the relationship you have with someone or the familiarity that you've established. While being respectful of the people you're talking to, find your feedback style. Everyone's going to be a little bit different. But I do want to share the five F's of feedback flaws with you before we're finished for today. 

The first F is focus. Feedback is ineffective if the discussion, experience, and expectations are not clear.This goes back to what feedback is and is not.  

The second F is formality. When feedback is only delivered during scheduled one on ones or performance reviews, it becomes an activity you have to do or receive versus something you want to do or receive.  

The third F is fear. The more you avoid feedback, the less you communicate. Most commonly, managers are afraid to deliver feedback because they're worried it'll introduce tension, demotivate people, or they're straight up conflict averse. Giving in to these fears often results in watered down messages, which make these conversations way less powerful.  

The fourth F is frequency. Earlier, we said that feedback is timely. It's in the moment. While I don't support it being as timely as literally written down in the moment, publicly, it's still important to check in quickly and either talk right after or schedule a time when you're both free.  

And finally, the fifth F is framing. Feedback needs to be relevant and connected to personal development, team priorities, or business goals in order for the impact to be meaningful enough to motivate change. 

As a manager, by not giving feedback, you're depriving your team of mentorship and opportunities for growth. Work environments with poor communication and unclear expectations are also riddled with distrust and disengagement. But leaders who rank in the top 10 percent when giving honest feedback generate teams that rank in the top 23 percent of engagement.  So, be vulnerable with your team and share that you're going to try something new with this feedback thing, and ask them to keep you posted on your progress. 

Next week, we're going to peel back another layer of feedback delivery by introducing cultural, gender, and generational considerations. I hope you're excited. I know I am. 

You've just finished the latest installment of everything is A People Problem. You can find episode transcripts with work cited on diazaferjoyce.com/podcast. Find me on Instagram @EverythingIsAPeopleProblem, and tell me what you thought of the episode.  If you like what you heard, please subscribe so that you're notified when new weekly episodes become available. Once again, I'm your host, Dia Zafer-Joyce, thanks for joining me and see you next week.  

Today's episode was written and produced by Dia Zafer-Joyce. It featured insights and statistics from the Harvard Business Review, the Harvard Business School, and Zenger Folkman, and royalty free music provided by Sarah, the Instrumentalist from Epidemic Sound.