There’s something I need to tell you…

I often hear leaders talking about the importance of giving feedback and how to ensure the recipient receives the message in the way it was intended. 

There are so many models for giving feedback; I clearly remember being introduced to the sh*t sandwich a few decades back, where you basically skim over the most important part….

At The Training Rock, our approach to feedback is to reframe it.

The very name ‘giving feedback’ suggests that you need to do the talking. 

It also implies looking BACK. Spoiler alert: you can’t change the past. 

When we reframe ‘giving feedback’ to ‘understand’ we go from ‘oh I need to give her feedback so that she stops being late and starts logging in on time’ to ‘I need to understand what is driving the behaviour’ it changes the flavour of the conversation.

There’ll be a reason she is constantly late.

There’ll be a reason that he keeps making mistakes on the monthly report. 

There’ll be a reason that productivity has gone down in the team.

None of those situations will really by helped by a leader ‘giving feedback’ to tell them what they likely already know. 

So let’s reframe this particular task from ‘giving feedback’ to ‘understanding what’s driving the behaviour’ and we might find it easier to stop procrastiffafing quite so much before we have that conversation. 

Look at the difference in tone/feeling/anxiety levels (on both sides!) between

 “you’ve been late twice this week, what’s going on?”

And

“You don’t seem yourself this week, I just wanted to check in….

I’m keen to understand what’s feeding into your difficult week, what’s causing your challenges?

I’d really like to help get you back on track, what support do you need?”

So next time you need to ‘give feedback’, have a reframe and ask yourself how you can find out what is driving the behaviour (hint: ask the right questions and then listen – I mean really, really listen) and how you can support your team member to get to where they need to be.

And if you need any support with that, you know where we are.