46. How to Give Feedback

Hi everyone. I’m Saralyn Hodgkin. And this is the podcast to practice your leadership.

These past few weeks, we’ve been diving into how we work together in teams. Today I want to revisit a podcast I recorded in the summer of 2021, because it’s a powerful one. It’s one that focuses on how do you give feedback? How do you give feedback to your teams? How do you give feedback to your alliances?

How do you give feedback in your relationships with others? Whatever that means, and why is this important right now? Because in this time of transition, as we’re resetting, we’re taking the opportunity to reset and coming into wow, what is my way of communicating with others? What is my way of giving feedback to others?

Because it happens every day. You do it all the time. Sometimes formally, sometimes informally. So what are some of the key nuggets we can give you? So you can come into a practice of giving feedback that aligns with your intentions so that your behavior of giving feedback aligns with what you’re intending.

And you can have that practice of giving feedback in a way that works for how you’re showing up now.

Let’s get started everyone.

Giving and receiving feedback to one another is some of the, some of the hardest things to do, I had this conversation a lot around I want to improve my communication. So what, what does that mean? Well, I want to be able to talk to people with more confidence. Okay. I want to be able to share what I’m really thinking.

Oh, okay. I want to be able to tell people that they’re pissing me off. Ah, yes. And down to the heart of the matter, you want to be able to give people some feedback about what’s what’s working here or, or, Hey, can I give you a couple of pointers or whatever it might be? And for many as well, they want to receive feedback from a constructive place, not be barfed all over.

Right. So I have had this conversation lots about what does it mean to give and to receive feedback? Uh, what I’ve learned is number one rule, do your own work first. I say this to my kids. I say this to myself when I am losing it. Hold on, just do your own work. First, just the other day, my oldest made a decision that was against the three very simple rules that I’ve put in place during COVID and he got caught red handed and I couldn’t speak to him in that moment. And I had to make a choice right there and I looked at him and I said, sweetheart, I cannot even talk to you right now.

Wow. Cause I knew I was so heated. If I didn’t do my own work first, I was just gonna, I was just gonna like bowl him over and give him a whole bunch of stuff that is not necessarily productive and not necessarily his, some of it sparked in me like my own worry and concern around COVID stuff and social setting stuff.

And some of it was my own stuff that he just triggered. Thank goodness. I caught myself because wow. It could have been a doozy, but this is the point, right? To give and receive feedback in your family situations and your, with your colleagues with yourself. What is the number one key that I’ve learned is just do your own work first, do your own work.

So, okay. What does this mean? What’s the point of giving feedback? Let’s start there. Point of giving feedback is about creating a dialogue. It’s about creating a dialogue. That’s a big one, right there. It’s about creating a dialogue to move forward on some situation or some insight that, that needs some changing that needs some attention, because the impact it’s having needs to be shared. Maybe it doesn’t align with the shared intentions or maybe it doesn’t align with the culture that the behaviors are trying to, trying to amplify or elevate.

Giving feedback is a dialogue when people are giving and receiving, listening, not words, not your own stuff and triggers, but you’re giving and receiving, listening. Listening with compassion, with curiosity, with intention, it’s about being relational, keeping the relationship as the primary and feedback is simply a tool enabling this rich relationship, this rich relationship that is trying to foster impact in the world. This rich relationship that is trying to help me be a good parent, to my, my 13 year old for goodness sakes.

But one of the quotes that I really like from Brené Brown is getting to the heart of the issue with heart. Hence the word compassion. Hence the word curiosity, hence the word intention. And so some of my key touchstones in giving and receiving feedback is to stay curious so you can discover and learn together. Right? Stay curious, stay in the courage, coming from a place of bravery, holding awkwardness, being clear, not skirting accountability and number three, maintaining a growth mindset.

Giving and receiving feedback is a practice. It’s about listening so that the other feels heard. It’s about creating a context so that you feel heard. So with giving and receive receiving feedback, here’s my sort of top level breaking it down. How do I give feedback.

First I would go off and I do my own work. I didn’t go and yell at my kid, which poof was I ever close to. And instead, I went around and I rumbled with what I was grappling with. What’s actually true here. What’s my part. What’s their part? Making myself ready so I can hold myself and the other accountable without a whole bunch of blaming and shaming and barfing.

And I was doing my own work. Then when I was ready to come back into conversation, I set up the conversation. I sat beside him. I tried really hard to stand in a place of understanding and have a stance that creates dialogue, a stance that creates dialogue. I also held and set up that conversation to honour the emotions that are in the room.

So we use something called the emotion wheel in our house. Being able to put that down. And for me to circle all the emotions I’m feeling in that moment allows me not to fix them. It makes it so that I’m not barfing them all over him, but he can just see those emotions on this piece of paper. The one I use is from someone named Abby VanMuijen on Instagram.

You can find Abby @ avanmuijen, @avanmuijen. And to set up the conversation, I had to have enough resilience to model vulnerability and openness. I needed to set it up to have those things. Then when we started the conversation, I framed it up. This is the third step after I’ve done my own work.

And then I’ve set up the conversation. I frame it. What do we need to talk about here? Let’s connect to the purpose of what we’re trying to talk about. And let’s create, can we both share that we’re creating a container to listen and ask questions? So if you’re using this with your team, for example, or with a colleague, how do we each need to be in this conversation right now?

What do you need to be in this conversation? What do I need? Giving and receiving feedback can happen at performance review times for example. What do you need in this conversation? A performance fee review. What do I need? Let’s connect to the purpose of what we’re trying to do here, framing up the conversation. And then being able to seek to understand using things like I statements and curiosity, and keeping the accountability piece always upfront.

Right. Always keeping that accountability piece and not skirting it, which can make it awkward but required. And then converging into a place when the time is right to create actions of what can be different now, or what are your takeaways or what are the supports needed or how long are you now going to be off video games, whatever it might be.

Who are you writing that apology letter to? Um, you can start converging into actions from here. But all in all, it’s about making this feedback loops, right? Making it a practice. To receive that feedback. You know, the cadence is about the same, doing your own work first, setting it up for you, advocating for what you need, framing up that conversation about advocating for what you need in that conversation.

Standing in a place around seeking to understand and using I-statements or, just standing in a place of generous assumptions and having the faith that you’re doing your best and then saying, here are my actions that I’m going to take from this and committing to circle back. All that to say is that giving and receiving feedback is a practice.

It’s an ongoing practice and it requires doing your own work, having a growth mindset, and setting it up into a place where it’s going to be awkward. Sometimes it’s going to be hard, but to create a construct and a conversation and framework that allows each other to feel heard, that has significant listening with each other enables a rich relationship with self and with each other.

And in one of our future podcasts, what we’ll do is go deeper into receiving feedback. Thanks all. I’m Saralyn. You can find me at holonleadership.org.. I walk alongside you as you practice your leadership.