Facilitating Feedback

When you talk about training people to give feedback, how do you give good feedback? And also, I would imagine you have to learn how to receive feedback as well.

Yeah, we do a number of things, we do workshops on how you give feedback, we'll have people role model times where they gave feedback, times where they held back and we will do role modeling of being able to provide that feedback, and often, the great traits of feedback is its specific behaviors, it's timely, it's really geared to help the other individuals succeed, and so we'll do workshops there, we will also do sessions where we get feedback in a more facilitated manner. So, my leadership team, my executive team, and I go through these a couple times a year even though many of us have worked together for years where we will have our high-performance team coach lead us through giving feedback to each other where we will go around and give every individual a specific behavior we admire and a specific behavior that might be limiting their effectiveness, and we will go through that and we will practice that, we are a role model of that, and once you know the exact team is really committed to this, I think it frees up other people to say that that's something that they should teach you, and it's been really instrumental in terms of our culture and being able to give that feedback.

That's really interesting, I would imagine it also creates a bit of discomfort as well?

Well, in the beginning, it can create discomfort, that's why it so important that we also invest time to get to know each other well at a much deeper level, including what each other's preferences are. The more you know someone, the more comfortable you are giving feedback. I use the analogy of a best friend, you're willing to tell your best friend anything, and maybe that best friend may not want to hear it first, but knows deep down that you have their back and their best interest in mind, and so creating that culture where people are free to be able to give feedback and receive feedback really makes us better.