3 Areas of Development

What is your process for giving feedback to your team? And do you provide feedback in different ways depending on who you're communicating with?

Oh, this is such a great question. So when I was a young leader and unfortunately in my first leadership role, I was promoted in the group. So my teammates suddenly became my direct reports. And honestly all I wanted was for them to like me. I just wanted to be one of the guys and it was very difficult for me to give negative feedback. And I think for any brand new leader, it's hard. And I told you I had that empathy gene, I didn't want to say, hey, you're screwing this up. So I started doing something, I guess when I became a middle manager actually and it's helped me through every kind of feedback that I've given. So we do twice a year formal feedback, although I will tell you, I give a lot of feedback, like almost every day to my team. But the formal feedback I thought the first time I did, I said, okay, nobody's perfect Gail. From now on, you are going to tell whoever you're giving feedback to three areas of development, and then you can tell all the strengths. But you have to give them those three areas of development. And I learned how to do this artfully by saying nobody's perfect, I want you to know every person that I'm going to give feedback to is going to get three areas of development.