S1E4 Yakety Yak, Do Talk Back pt. 2

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 continues the discussion on feedback by addressing cultural, gender, and generation delivery considerations. Leaders must accommodate employee diversity without enabling dependency or destructive patterns of behavior.

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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. 

Why, hello! I'm Dia, and I'm your host for Everything is a People Problem. Thank you for coming on back for part two of feedback.  Last week, we talked about the what, why, and how of feedback; what it is and what it's not, why we care, and how we actually execute it. Today, we're going to explore how to adapt feedback throughout cultures, genders, and generations. Before we dive in, I want to share a funny feedback story with you. 

So at my current role, my team had shared that they hadn't had a lot of instruction or training on feedback, both delivery of and receiving.  So I put together a curriculum that was based on my expertise and things that I  expect out of my team as well, from a feedback perspective, and they really enjoyed the content. They said it was really helpful and things they hadn't had a chance to practice or learn in the past. In my very next one on one with one of my employees at the end of our time, he said, “Dia, is this a good time to give you feedback?” and I said, “Yes, of course! Please, what feedback do you have for me?” And he said, “I've noticed that you're not wearing as interesting of earrings lately, and your earring game is really slipping.” During the pandemic, since all we had was a little square of video, I started to improve the quality of my earring game. I realized that that little virtual picture was all that we had to live for and so I wanted to make it interesting. And rightly so, since we'd started to come back into the office a bit and are more of a hybrid situation, I had really dropped the ball on choosing interesting earrings. And so I said, “You know what? You are absolutely right. Thank you so much for giving me this feedback.” He said, “The impact of you not wearing interesting earrings is that I don't have something to look forward to in our one on ones.” And I said, “That is a tragedy. I deeply apologize and thank you for bringing this to my attention. I truly value your candor.”  And yeah, that is a funny example, but it also shows how you can practice getting comfortable delivering feedback. It doesn't have to be in dire situations where it's critical to get a message across. Tell somebody how you really miss their cool earrings and put it into your feedback format so you can practice. 

In an earlier episode, we talked about how it is a leader's responsibility to invite diversity and different perspectives into your team. We need to seek that out. When we do that, and we do that successfully, that means that our team has different cultural norms, different societal norms, especially if they aren't based in the same country that you are. So you as a leader need to understand not only their background, but how to effectively communicate, especially if you want your feedback to land.

That being said, I want to take a moment to define two terms, because as we discuss bespoke feedback delivery, I think we could confuse accommodating with enabling. Accommodating is making a modification or a choice that will be beneficial for a person, a group, or a type of individual. Accommodation is a mindful act. It shows purposeful respect. Enabling, on the other hand, is over-functioning to compensate. So really you're creating a dependency or even increasing one that already existed by overcompensating  for faults that emerge through a behavioral pattern. This is a fine manager line we're walking between these words, because when we accommodate, we actually, as leaders, need to make reasonable accommodations. That has existed before the pandemic, but especially since, we are called to a higher level of emotional intelligence and understanding for our team in order to ensure that they can balance work and life reasonably and thoughtfully. Now, when those accommodations result in a pattern of behavior that is destructive either to the individual or to the work, then you've crossed over into enabling because now as a leader you've created a dependency. You might wonder, “Well, how do I know when I get close to that line of enablement?” You won't, unless you start to recognize and observe the behaviors with a negative impact. That's why feedback is critical; as soon as you see it, it's timely. You need to be able to deliver that feedback and the impact of the behavior in order to curb it and to go back to creating reasonable accommodations versus enabling an individual.

Now, to be clear, enabling or enablement is not inherently negative. For the sake of our conversation, I am using negative connotations of enablement in order to contrast with accommodations or accommodating or supporting your employees. Enablement can mean enabling someone to do their job by providing training or education, but this conversation focuses on how enablement is destructive versus empowering. 

The things I'm sharing sound more like coaching than feedback and the truth is that there's a pretty blurry line between those two things. With feedback, that is an observation on a behavior and its impact, and that kind of conversation can be given to anyone, from anyone, irregardless of role or responsibility. Coaching is not done on a peer level because it has ramifications to someone's career development, growth, performance, or potentially rewards and earnings. So this is a manager duty to deliver coaching, but it's done within the format and structure of feedback.

Okay, the setup for this conversation is finally finished. Now, let's talk about delivering feedback that is thoughtful and intentional per culture, gender, and generation. I'm going to be drawing a lot of inspiration from a Harvard Business Review article called When Diversity Meets Feedback by Erin Meyer mostly because I didn't even think about this until I did this research for myself. I had a pretty standardized way that I would deliver feedback and of course would be thoughtful about the individual, but Erin really pushed me to think deeper about my global teams and understand where they come from more before I dive into a feedback structure that is comfortable for me.

Diversity in the workplace is critical to great work being done. But of course, with every positive thing, there is a risk associated. And the risk to diversity is that it increases the likelihood that people will interpret feedback as an act of hostility. Americans, typically, culturally, are seen as exceedingly direct. They place a high value on clear and simple communication, and often recap key points and decisions in writing. That is not typical across all cultures. Unfortunately, Americans also are known, especially with negative feedback, to deliver what's called a “feedback sandwich” You're wrapping negative feedback with positives. And they may use overarching generalities, like, “Overall, it was effective,” or “For the most part, it was a good presentation.” This communication style is just confusing for people in countries where managers are going to tell it like it is, whether there's a positive or negative impact. Countries like the Netherlands, Germany, Denmark, Israel… these are a few locations where if you communicate as an American in that style, that is not going to be effective for your work. In  less direct cultures, an American approach to feedback may be perceived as inappropriately blunt, or it can even be seen as bullying. So, we need to be thoughtful about delivery. 

Action time: what do we do? We listen. When providing criticism, direct cultures tend to use what's called “upgraders” that make the feedback feel stronger, and those are words like absolutely, totally, or completely. Whereas indirect cultures use “downgraders” like kind of, a little, or maybe. So listen, notice the words that are used by your peers who don't live or work in your geographical location and emulate that behavior. Use those cues when you deliver feedback so that it can be more appropriate for their culture and their cultural norms. This sounds like extra work, but remember, this is beneficial for you, and this will help you get work done better. So take the time to listen and to adjust how you communicate. 

We covered culture, let's talk about gender. Stanford University did a great study in 2020 on gendered language and performance assessment, and they found that women are expected to be warm and nice, as well as competent and tough. In case you were wondering, that same study found that men were not being held to that same standard. And despite men and women having the same technical communication skills, men are described as assertive and women are identified as aggressive. Now, I learned a new term in this research called manvising. You always hear mansplaining, but not manvising, which relates to advice or advising. So many men don't believe that they're guilty of manvising. But over 90 percent of women reported that they have recently received unsolicited advice from their male colleagues. When we're talking about gender, advice and advising is coming up a lot because often When feedback is provided with a genuine desire to help, it can give the person who's dispensing it emotional power over the person receiving that feedback. There's a recent study that was conducted by the, get this, the Neuro Leadership Institute. What a cool group. They found that when people get spontaneous feedback, their heart rate jumps to a level that indicates moderate or extreme duress. So when someone says, “Hey, I have feedback to give you,” then imagine somebody's heart rate jumping through the roof because of the fear and anxiety of the unknown conversation about to hit them.

So what do we do? We ask before we give feedback. We position what we want to give and ask if this is the right time to give it. Think back to the structure we talked about last week. It's critical to ask if it's a good time to give feedback because you want to make sure as the person delivering it that you are setting the person up who's receiving it for success. Does that mean that we only ask permission for feedback delivery in gender diverse situations? No, we always ask if it's the right time to deliver feedback. What we are doing here as emotionally intelligent, thoughtful leaders who are trying to be better than those that came before us is that we're acknowledging there has been a behavior pattern between traditional male and female  employees in the workplace. There has been a pattern that feedback delivered by male peers and leaders veers into advice over actionable impact. So let's pause for a minute,  accept the historical relevance of having a conversation about the difference in gender and gendered communication, and vow to do better for all of our employees.

And finally, generations.  Each generation has its own expectations of the praise to criticism ratio,  along with who's expected or has the right to deliver feedback in the workplace. Fun fact: did you know that Baby Boomers, typically those in the U. S. born between 1946 and 1964, introduced the annual performance review? They believed that feedback should be formal and documented between a boss and their subordinate. Gen Xers, who followed Boomers, born between 1965 and 1980, didn't want to wait all year for feedback, or to know how they were doing, so they were the first generation to deliver feedback up the chain to their bosses. And Millennials, who have the most convoluted and made up reputation, were found in 2019 in a study to be less sensitive to critical feedback as compared to their older colleagues, who often stereotype this generation as in need of constant praise and avocado toast. It's very annoying.  

So how do we accommodate generational differences when delivering feedback? As leaders, you set the expectation of what feedback is and is not for your team and and hold to that standard consistently. Of course, have personal conversations, get to know the individuals and how people prefer to both deliver and receive feedback, but the culture of feedback is up to you. And in order to set that in motion, you need to communicate your expectations clearly to your entire team and hold them to that.

Let's recap. So we discussed how to deliver feedback with accommodations for culture, gender, and generational differences. And remember, I said accommodating, not enabling, because we are making a conscious choice to modify how we may be approaching a feedback conversation so that we can be inclusive of these differences on our team. For cultural, we want to listen. Listen to how people that are not in our geography are talking to each other.  For gender, we want to ask. We want to ask if it's the right time to give feedback, and we don't want to advise.  And finally, for generation, we want to set an expectation. Communicate feedback team culture clearly so that everybody understands what feedback looks like on your team. 

Two episodes is a lot of episodes on feedback, and I really appreciate you coming along with me on this journey and this topic. If nothing else, since there is an enormous amount of nuance with everything that we talk about, I really want you to take away from this that communication and creating a culture of open communication is a number one priority for you as a leader. 

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 Neuro Leadership Institute, Psych Central, Stanford University, and  Strategy-Business. com, and royalty free music provided by Sarah, the instrumentalist from Epidemic Sound.