Key Strategies for Unlocking Positive Input

Curious about why your leadership skills might not be reaching their full potential? Could it be due to a shortfall in feedback or perhaps challenges in time management? Join us today as we explore the pivotal role of receiving feedback in the workplace and its profound impact on shaping your leadership growth.

Discover a fresh perspective that reframes feedback as valuable data rather than a personal critique. Engaging discussions encourage leaders to proactively create a culture of open communication and actively seek feedback. Together, let's nurture a strategic and adept approach to feedback that not only enhances personal development but also contributes significantly to professional growth!

In this episode, we discuss the following:
1. The importance of setting the stage for open communication and feedback.
2. The significance of actively listening to feedback and capturing specific details.
3. The value of seeking feedback from various sources.

This episode is sponsored by LucidPoint
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CONNECT WITH SUSIE:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/susietomenchok/

CONNECT WITH JAMES:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/capps/

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:15

Welcome to the Quick Take podcast, the show where you get targeted advice and coaching for executives by executives. I'm Suzy Tominczuk.

Speaker 2: 0:24

And I'm James Capps. Give us 15 minutes and we'll give you three secrets to address the complex topic of issues that are challenging executives like you today.

Speaker 1: 0:36

Hey, welcome to Quick Take. I'm one of your hosts, Suzy, along with my co-host, my favorite one, James. How are you?

Speaker 2: 0:44

I'm proud to be here. I'm proud to be the favorite. You know you have a lot of choices and co-hosts, but selecting me is something special.

Speaker 1: 0:52

I know you're my only one, but that needed to not go spoken.

Speaker 2: 0:57

That was assumed, but anyway sometimes it just needs to be said.

Speaker 1: 1:02

So feedback is one of the things I talk a lot about with my clients how to give it, how to receive it and it's really interesting to talk about receiving feedback, because we often talk about giving feedback, and what came to mind for me was back when I was a leader.

Speaker 1: 1:19

I remember working with a woman who was really open to feedback, and so I gave her feedback a lot, and it didn't matter if it was really kind of in depth. Let's sit down, let's talk about it. I want to give you this, or just kind of a hallway conversation where I said, hey, just so you know, this is some things that I was thinking about in that meeting, that I wanted to tell you that I would have thought about doing differently, and what I found was, at the end of the day, I'd have to reconnect with her, because so often the story she started telling herself about the feedback that I gave her became this bigger story, and so it was so and I felt bad, and I also knew that I learned this, that I needed to go back and cover back off with her so that I could reel her back in, understand where she went, so that she was consuming that feedback in a way that she could actually use it.

Speaker 2: 2:20

Right, right.

Speaker 1: 2:21

You know what I mean.

Speaker 2: 2:22

Yeah, I totally do. I think that the challenge there is we talk a lot about how to give feedback, but we really need to talk and I think that's a great topic for today is how to ensure you get good feedback.

Speaker 1: 2:33

Oh right.

Speaker 2: 2:35

In her case, her behaviors. You were a good mentor and a good supporter that she was not receiving well.

Speaker 1: 2:44

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 2:44

She was not a good listener in that capacity. So the lesson here is and we'll talk about is how do you ensure that you are putting yourself in a position to receive good feedback, and I think that's as much of an art as giving good feedback is setting yourself up for success when it comes to receiving it.

Speaker 1: 3:04

Yeah, I think that's a great topic Because I think you're right.

Speaker 2: 3:07

I think that getting feedback, we believe that it just comes from our direct report or these formal channels, but feedback comes in a lot of different avenues, channels and we need to be proactive in some cases and we need to be observant about some of the things that are happening, because feedback is also nonverbal getting invited to the meeting, the different things are all aspects of feedback 100%, and I think you nailed this one word that I wanted to spend a couple of moments on, which is you need to be observant, and I think if you, as a leader, if you're a listener today and you are thinking about how you are behaving to ensure you get good feedback, I want you to think back to when is the last time you got some feedback, and oftentimes, as leaders, we get a muscle memory of providing feedback, but that constant teacher, that constant broadcast mode, is the very worst way to ensure that you're not going to get good feedback, and so I think, as leaders, we get stuck in a rut of broadcasting only, and I think that I want the listeners to take a moment and really look deep inside and remember the last time you got some good feedback and think that put two and two together and know that this episode is really something you should take into consideration, because we get into broadcast mode quite a bit and it is a bad habit to get into.

Speaker 1: 4:37

Yeah, and feedback can be both positive and negative. So when you think back on those things, if you go to one category or the other, try to also flip to the other side so that you can kind of look at it from both perspectives.

Speaker 2: 4:52

Yeah, I mean, it's hard. I think about it a lot and, gosh, when was the last time somebody who did not report directly to me gave me some hard feedback? Wow, that's a pretty tough conversation to have with yourself and you have to really put your. You have to work hard to create an environment in which your team will give you negative feedback. That's a gradual level stuff, and so I think it's really worth the self-examination.

Speaker 1: 5:18

All right, so what are some of the tips that you would give to our listeners?

Speaker 2: 5:22

Well, I think the bottom line is you really have to lead by example, and the first thing you need to do is you need to be able to. When you are giving feedback, you need to elicit feedback, and so there is. You've got to create this dialogue, and I think people want to know that that communication is acceptable. And by putting yourself in a place and creating the dialogue, for feedback is super important, and so it's like many things. You can't expect it to happen overnight. You've got to set the foundation, and leading by example is by far the most important part.

Speaker 1: 5:56

Yeah, and I want to add to that is that if you ask the first time to somebody, they may not give you feedback. So keep asking the same question, because what you're going to do is train them to go. Oh, they're going to ask. So I need to start looking because the best kind of feedback is when a person has been thoughtful about observing and so they might then that might tune them into being a good observer of what you're doing.

Speaker 2: 6:26

No, I like that. It's like when you get off stage I know you and I speak publicly once in a while and you get off stage and, yeah, somebody how did you do? Or somebody unsolicited says you did a great job. That's not feedback. That is like saying, responding to somebody asking how are you? Fine is the answer. You've got to create a situation where, when you do come off the stage and you didn't do well, that that person you talked to tells you you didn't do well. So it's really about setting that foundation and ensuring people are comfortable giving you that response over time.

Speaker 1: 7:03

Yeah, I think that's great, and even asking for a category of feedback so that they know, kind of, what you're looking for. So I don't know if I'm taking it off.

Speaker 2: 7:11

Yeah no, I think that's another, a good segue into, really, my second point, which is accept it well, and so the way that you do that is you need to create that conduit for that feedback to come, and much like when you, on the daily basis, ask somebody how they are and the response is very generic. When you want feedback, you need to ask for specific feedback, right? How did this message strike you? How did my tone work? Whatever that feedback, you want to ask a question that somebody can give a constructive point of view back. So I think it is so important that you create that dialogue and ask those questions in a crisp way to make sure that the person has the opportunity to give you some feedback.

Speaker 1: 7:58

Yeah, and give it some space so they feel comfortable, and watch your reaction to it. I don't know if you're going to go there next, but no, I think that's exactly right.

Speaker 2: 8:10

I think that how you respond is not only how you've set that up, but also the physical response. The way that you hear what they say, I think, is so important, and really trying to understand the language that they're using is super important.

Speaker 1: 8:26

Yeah. So I want to also just add in if you feel like somebody's giving you feedback and maybe you didn't expect that they were going, to if you feel something triggering, like any kind of emotion, like frustration or anger or how dare they? One good practice is to just allow yourself to say this is feedback. I need to hear. Don't respond, don't react, say thank you and then say I might come back to you to get more information. But collect the data.

Speaker 2: 8:58

Yeah, I think you have to be in a listening mode and I think the only response to feedback should be thank you, right? Yeah, because the need-york reactions for so many of us is to defend it, to explain it and really, if you can just walk away and say thank you. And another great piece of advice is to write it down. I think that so many times there is the words that they say and then, to your example, there is what you remember hearing later on, and so somebody, their specific words matter, they chose those words and so, rather than allowing your monkey mind to go off into some sort of sad, negative space, like so many of us do, write down those three words that they use so you can come back to them, you can build on them and maybe get more clarity around it later, when it's not so emotional. But that receiving methodology, the way that you receive that, is so important to ensure that not only people do it again, but that you can actually grow from that feedback.

Speaker 1: 9:53

I think that's so true and using. I love that because that specific word is you do get revisionist history when you think about what they said, so that is a great best practice. I also when I talk. This was an aha for me. It wasn't even that long ago. I was reading a book and it was all about feedback, obviously, and it talked about how your blind spots are truly blind spots. So I often tell people to get more open to getting that reception. Think about it like the back of your head. The back of your head. You know it exists, you can feel it, you've seen it in the mirror, but you can never, ever see it in real time for yourself, and so experiencing yourself on the outside is impossible. So all this data is to help you understand what it's like to live around you and you're not. You don't have the capacity to figure that out on your own, so be open to it. It's data about it.

Speaker 2: 10:47

Wow, but that's really heavy. I feel like the title of that book is something about I wish I could see the back of my head. But yeah, I think that's exactly right that you know. Feedback is just a part of the puzzle and if you are truly going to grow as an executive, as a leader, you've got to find that there are multiple puzzle pieces in that conversation.

Speaker 2: 11:12

And you know that goes to my third point so well, which is you've got to have diverse sources. If you always go to one individual for feedback, that's not going to give you a good perspective of the back of your head. It's like when your mom says you look pretty, I'm not sure that that's going to be the best perspective. I mean when your mom says I look pretty, I love it, but that's a totally different story. But I think getting diverse feedback, getting other people to provide you that point of view, and then again just take that in as data points to build that overall picture, is the true skill of setting yourself up for feedback.

Speaker 1: 11:51

And so let's throw out a couple Like what is diversity in this context mean? Maybe it's somebody that sees you from time to time in meetings, maybe it's somebody from a different group, maybe it's somebody that could be challenging to you their perspective. They don't share the same way you see the world, so be really creative about who are some people that could give up.

Speaker 2: 12:15

give me this 360 view of the back of my head, right, right, you know, and oftentimes when I do ask for that kind of feedback, mostly I like to ask questions about how did my message resonate? Did my point come across? Do you think that the way I spoke about this topic resonated with both the engineering and the business people? That kind of that elicits feedback, asking how did I do or how is that for you? Ultimately, the best of interviewers are the ones that really pull out more than a one word answer, and if you're asking a question where there is a one word answer, then that's not feedback, that's just a small, that's just a response. So, going in and asking different people, people from different departments, people that don't report to you, obviously, people who are above you, your board, the other C level folks, maybe in other divisions those are the best people to ask because they have a different point of view. But it's great when you start looking at your relationship map and ensuring that you're talking to each one of those folks.

Speaker 1: 13:28

And don't forget, they don't live in here. We believe that they know the feedback that we need or what we're looking for. Give them the question to answer and not the broad. If you want accolades, say how did I do, but if you want some really meaningful feedback, tell them what you need to discover.

Speaker 2: 13:50

Yep, yep. I think that's the best feedback or the best piece of advice here is these folks don't live in your head. If you want to want them to give you some information, then you've got to ask for that information. I think that's so many of us forget that. That is one of my best piece of advice is to technology people that when we get into meetings, we start with the last half of the conversation. People forget that there was six months of pre-work that went into this. So often that we forget to bring people along for the journey and expect them to have been in our head so it certainly applies for requesting feedback, and when you want feedback from somebody, you should tell them why and from what point of view.

Speaker 2: 14:33

I think that those details are huge.

Speaker 1: 14:34

Yeah, all right. So tell us the three again.

Speaker 2: 14:37

First and foremost, really set it up. Put yourself out there by leading by example. Ensure that people appreciate the dialogue, understand that that type of dialogue is acceptable. Second, learn to receive it well. Receive it in a non-passionate way, accept it, say thank you, write it down. But receive it in a way that both ensures you get it again but also ensures you hear it the right way. And then, finally, really get diverse points of view. Ask for feedback from multiple levels people that report to you, people outside your circle, inside your circle. Build that picture of the back ear head with the use of multiple voices.

Speaker 1: 15:18

Yeah, such an important topic, one that we don't. We know is important, but we don't spend enough time on. So great tips, great tips. Thank you, james, this was a good one.

Speaker 2: 15:29

Good stuff Good stuff.

Speaker 1: 15:32

Thanks for listening to this week's episode of Quick Take, where we talk about the questions that are on the minds of executives everywhere. Connect with us and share what's on your mind.

Speaker 2: 15:41

You can find us on LinkedIn, youtube or whatever nerdy place on the internet. You find your podcasts. All the links you really did are in the show notes.