162. No More Sh!t Sandwiches: Mastering Feedback at Work with Mel Loy and Prina Shah

SPEAKER_01 0:03

This podcast is for people who know that the workplace can and should be better and are ready to do something about it. You will learn practical ways to change organizational cultures and human behavior without passwords, without box ticking, without performative leadership. I am the boss of Prina Shark Consulting, working with executives, leaders, and teams to create work cultures and environments that actually work for people. I am Prina Shark. I specialise in organizational culture change and human behavior change. I am all about making work better with people who give a damn. So if you think I can help, contact me via LinkedIn. I am here to help you to find decent ways to change the workplace. Let's do this. Hello and welcome to this series of podcasts where my friend Mel Lloyd talks to you on her podcast, which is called Less Chatter, More Matter. And Primo Chatter. My podcast. It's called Ways to Change Your Workplace. And we're doing a bit of a collaborative effort because I love Mel's brain, and I think leadership culture should marry with communication. So here we are today, Mel. It's so good to be talking with you today. And today, Mel, I want to talk to you about giving and receive receiving feedback within the workplace. Oh, juicy. Juicy topic. Many a book has been written about it. Many uh uh lack of sleep has happened over it as well. So should we get into it?

SPEAKER_00 1:27

Let's get amongst it.

SPEAKER_01 1:29

Where do we want to start? Because it's a big one. Oh, okay. I'm gonna ask you a question. Why do you reckon giving feedback is such a frigging issue for many a leader?

SPEAKER_00 1:37

I think it's because at the core of it, we want to be nice and we want to be liked. And we worry that if we give feedback, people will think we're mean or won't like us anymore, we'll hurt their feelings. And that's a beautiful part of most humans, right? Humans are generally empathetic, sympathetic people, except for psychopaths. But for the most part, they're they're fairly empathetic and sympathetic. But what that means is that we often back out of courageous conversations because we're too scared to upset the apple cart. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:11

Okay, so you reckon it's because we're too scared to upset the apple cart. Definitely so. It's that people-pleasing element in us, and therefore we just avoid it. Um, I have been talking about this at length with various clients, and I know you have as well. Um, I have a whole list of what types of feedback there are within the workplace.

SPEAKER_00 2:32

Shall I launch into it? Let's do it. I love your lists, and everybody should be listening to this very carefully in taking notes.

SPEAKER_01 2:39

My list means endless, I tell you. So this is from my um communication skills um course that I do. Because I've been thinking about this at length, right? So there's so many types of feedback within the workplace that we don't even consider now. So once I started thinking about this, I thought, oh my gosh, let me reel off the list. So, formal feedback can be in the form of performance reviews, um, 360 feedback reviews as well, right? So your performance reviews, every single workplace nowadays pretty much has some form of performance and development planning. Hello, we have to give feedback in there. Please do it more than just once a year, though. Um, then there's informal feedback. Mel and I work together, let's say. So there's day-to-day feedback that we have to give each other. I, if I'm managing Mel, or you know, if Mel is, you know, an employee of mine as well, there's coaching feedback that we need to give each other on an ongoing basis. And that's guidance and support for each other for us to improve our skills and our performance. Obviously, there's the one that we all know and love, there's the constructive feedback. That's the one that we really enjoy. So that's specific feedback that's clear and focused on our behaviors and actions. There's developmental feedback, uh, so not so great feedback, but you know, stuff to help us to improve. So the intention is always good there. Uh, there's positive feedback, so you know, when we need to recognize our people as well, there's so much that we do in terms of acknowledging our people, thanking our people as well. So there's loads in that respect. There's feedback that we need to give our people in terms of reinforcement as well, Mel. So that was a great job today, Mel. Thank you so much for that. Okay. And then there's negative feedback, and this is the one where people really freak out. And it's corrective feedback more so. So, feedback aimed at addressing performance issues, errors, or areas where improvement is needed, essentially. Critical feedback. This is feedback that points out shortcomings in areas of weaknesses here and now, and it has to be done in many an industry, and it has to be done bluntly as well, because sometimes I know you've got industries that are very uh we need to do this, or legal requirements. I've got um clients in the medical industry, for example, where that feedback has to be cutthroat. Ideally, there's continuous feedback as well, so real-time feedback as we're working on projects and whatever, and it has to be ongoing and consistent. There's anonymous feedback within the workplace through surveys, culture surveys, engagement surveys, you name it, whatever kind of survey you're hit with. There's often suggestion boxes or you know, ideas kind of feedback that people require as well. And then the last one, and a very important one as well no feedback is also feedback off source mill.

SPEAKER_00 5:29

So that's a killer. That is a killer. 100%. So I'll just reiterate what those types of feedback feedbacks, I guess it's a plural. The types of feedback are that uh you just mentioned. So there's formal feedback like performance reviews and 360 degree informal feedback. So the the day-to-day stuff, the coaching, constructive feedback. So that's very specific. It's about your development a lot of the time. Got it. Positive feedback. So when we actually acknowledge and recognize people's contributions, and I would argue we sometimes don't do that enough either. We focus on the negative too much. Yeah. Uh reinforcement of that. Uh, and then negative feedback. So the corrective or critical feedback that uh, you know, something's not working, it needs to be fixed.

SPEAKER_01 6:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 6:14

The continuous feedback, like you say, the real-time, immediate, this has just happened, we need to fix it, and the anonymous feedback that you talked about, like surveys and suggestion boxes. What I like about the continuous feedback is I think part of the challenge where people feel worried about giving feedback and having those conversations is because you haven't created a culture in your workplace where feedback is the norm, where it's welcomed, it's accepted as part of that every day. It's not just a six-month performance review cycle. It's actually, you know, this culture of well, we want to improve. We take pride in continuous improvement and knowing that you can't do that unless you are actively seeking, not just giving, but also seeking feedback. And that to me is a sign of really nice psychological safety that you've got that culture in place. But I don't think we see that a lot, do we?

SPEAKER_01 7:09

We do not. And uh, I was one of those leaders who really shied away from it until I realized my no, no, no. It's like the emperor's new clothes. And because I had that positional power, my team were just saying, Oh, great, Prina. Whereas I knew things were not great, and I needed honest feedback from them, Mel. So I've got a real life example actually. So when I was uh leader of a fair few HR teams, you know, like really, really high churning workload, a stressy workload as well. Um, I needed to know if I was being the best boss for them, and they weren't really being completely honest with me. I didn't feel anyway. So, what I created, and I still have this, and I still share this with, you know, anyone, because it's tried and tested by me, is a one-to-one meeting planner. So we'd have a one-to-one once a week, we'd have that conversation of, you know, what are you working on? What are your top three priorities for this week? Uh, what do you need help from me? Is there anything that needs to be escalated to me or my boss before anything hits the fan? We need to know first. And then I added in there, uh, is there any feedback for me? And then my feedback for them. Okay, and then whereabouts and anything else, that kind of stuff. Now, the employee, the person who reports to me, comes prepared with this. So they really have to think about the feedback that they have to give me. And Mel, it was awkward at first. If I'm trying to change your culture, and my people are like, nah, everything's great. Like, I knew it wasn't great. Like, so I'm poking and prodding. Like, okay, what about when blah blah happened? Can you give me feedback in relation to that? So this took, you know, like I'd say three months of poking and prodding, and then eventually my team actually came to me with honest feedback. And this is this is where things really changed, right? Because otherwise, if you're that leader who's not receiving feedback and you're only giving it, that's pretty crap. Oh, that is crap. Not cool, not cool. Because we need to work out what's working, what's not working for our people as well, because we've got that privilege of the positional power and the duty of care to our people as well. We need to know if our style, if our work, if whatever that we're doing is landing or not landing as well. And I'm telling you, that one-to-one meeting planner changed my life and it has for a number of people as well. And I'm happy to share it with anyone. So if you're listening, drop me a message. If you want the one-to-one meeting planner, I'll share the love with you.

SPEAKER_00 9:26

Yeah, and that's an awesome idea. And I think you touched on something there too, around the language we use with feedback. So the word feedback itself often has quite a negative connotation to it. And what do you mean by that? So when you know you ask somebody, have you got any feedback for me? A, that's a very closed question. It's a yes or no, right? Yeah. And it's easier to say no, so probably gonna say no. Uh, as opposed to asking, what am I doing well that I should keep doing? What haven't I done so well at that I should look at improving or changing? So open up the conversation, take it away from feedback, take it to keep doing stop or change. And that's a really nice way of just getting around that closed question. The other thing is too, when you're giving feedback, especially if it is somebody who's a senior or a peer, instead of saying, Can I give you some feedback? Because again, that's a a yes or no. Yeah, uh, but also the word feedback is alarm bells start ringing. It's um, can I give you a bit of advice on that specific thing? So talk about get specific. I think that's another rule with feedback in general, you know. Yeah, you've got to be specific so that it can be addressed. Um, but can I give you some advice? And people are typically happier to take advice. The flip side, of course, is you can also ask your team for advice. So, what advice would you give me to be a better leader or to improve our meetings or to improve the way our communicate? And again, it's the language, it's only one word, but gosh, it makes a difference. Like the language you use really matters.

SPEAKER_01 11:06

You know, I did this when I was leading, so asking for advice. So internally, uh, me and my team used to manage culture and leadership development, all of the brilliant proactive things in HR. And one of the things we used to do were um pre-mortems, not post-mortems, pre-mortems. So I'll explain the way we did it in our sense. So let's say I'm running a workshop, Mel. I'll design the workshop, I'll create it. Then I'll bring my whole team together, and uh, we had trust. Caveat, yeah, we had trust. Then I'd show them the slides from a slide viewer perspective. So you see all of the slides on one page, and we put it onto a projector, so you'd see all of the mini slides. Then it would be a case of roast me and boy, did they roast me. Oh my god, those were the best sessions, but we had the trust, right? So I didn't even say give me advice, like let's rip this to shreds. Come on, people, come on, come on. We made it fun, so we made it a good fun roast, yeah. And then you know, others are open to it as well. So I was the first one to be roasted and happily so you know, so creating that safety because you know, we have different personalities as well, and some people are more sensitive, and even the sensitive people eventually, as we created the culture off this within our team, it was like, Yeah, cool, my turn to be roasted. Come on, people, hit me with it. So much fun, and that's how we learn from each other, uh, yeah, as well.

SPEAKER_00 12:29

It was just so much and as a lead leader, you need to role model that too, yeah, because otherwise people will not feel safe. So you've got to show, hey, I'm willing to be vulnerable, I'm willing to take the feedback, you know, I'm willing to be put my, you know, I'm not gonna cry about it. Give it to me. Just give it to me straight. Yeah. And I think there was a couple of other things you mentioned when we went through that list of types of feedback. And one was about the positive feedback, and it sort of reminded me. Um, so my husband works in a high school. He's uh it's a massive high school, and he works with special needs kids in a sort of grade seven, grade eight cohort. And they do have a lot of behavior issues at that particular school. Um, and it's a very, it's a beautifully multicultural school as well, which is lovely. But what they're trialing instead of punishment for poor behavior is you know, they're using the carrot, not the stick. So um they've found out what's important to the students. And for some of them, it's just being able to go over to the shopping center at lunchtime to get a juice or an ice or whatever it is the kids eat these days. One of those things, the bubble teas, whatever. Yes, um, you know, the kids. Um and so, you know, when they have done something good and when they've shown that they've changed a behavior for the better, they are rewarding them. It's not just uh, that was great work. It was actually instead of punishing you, when you do the right thing, you will get a reward.

unknown 13:54

Cool.

SPEAKER_00 13:54

When you get do the wrong thing, yeah, you may be punished depending on what you did, but it's more about well, what would you change if you wanted to get this reward? Um, and it's it has made a big difference to behaviors there. And I think you know that works with adults too. If you just keep banging on about the negative, people's self-esteem just starts going down and down and down, and their performance will go with it. They're not going to get any better, they're gonna get worse probably. No, nope. So you do need to look for the good stuff. That said, please avoid the shit sandwich conversations. Oh man, I'm deal with this. Can we delve into this one?

SPEAKER_01 14:33

Because this really gives me the shin.

SPEAKER_00 14:34

Yes, let's talk about the shit sandwich. So, for those of you who may not be aware, it's or it's kiss kick kiss. You start off with something nice and fluffy. I really value everything you bring to the team, and oh, everybody really likes you. But this is bad. But you know what, we all really love you, and you know, really glad to have you here. And the result of a conversation like that is there's no clarity. Like, so am I doing good or also you're playing into that primacy and recency effect where we tend to be more swayed by what we hear first and last, and we tend to remember what we hear first and last. So, what's that person going to take away from that conversation? I'm doing great, except for this little thing, but I don't even remember what they said because it was in the middle of the conversation, and off we go.

SPEAKER_01 15:19

Uh, and that's to me, it's just the worst coffer way to deliver feedback when something is not working, versus perfectionists who only only listen to that middle shit part of the sandwich and just dwell on that, obsess over it, and then it will impact your relationship. And you, as a leader, just come across as really disingenuous when you're doing that because it's such a pardon the French, but I'm gonna say it, it's such a head fuck. I've had I've had many a shit sandwich served to me, and I've just walked out scratching my head, thinking, what was that? Um reminds me of that Brene Brown quote, right? To be clear is to be kind. Boom, exactly. So so there's other, I mean, we can go into models and framework models, you know, there's the situation, behavior, impact. Yeah, but I love another one, Mel, where and I'm really simplifying this because every single person, well, most people within the workplace will understand this one. Okay, I'm gonna try it on you. Okay, uh, it has two, it has two elements. Do you know what star stands for in the workplace?

SPEAKER_00 16:19

Uh, I think it relates to it. Well, I've seen it be used as a comms structure. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 16:24

Yeah, tell me.

SPEAKER_00 16:24

Oh, off the top of my head, I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 16:26

Okay. Because I don't use it. Lots of people either use it for applying for jobs or um comms professional. So situation, task, action, result. Mel, the situation was blah blah blah. Your task was to blah blah blah. The action you actually did was blah blah blah, and the result therefore was not the best. Okay, there's that. There's one element to star. Everyone understands star. Then I had AR, alternative result. Because now I've just gone blah to star R. Star R.

SPEAKER_00 17:00

Like a pinch.

SPEAKER_01 17:04

The AR, let me talk to you about that. So I've just gone blah to Mel about the situation, task, action, and result. AR, hey Mel, what do you reckon could have been done differently? AR, alternative result. Simple, simple. But you as a leader are being clear to be kind. Mel has just gone, oh, okay. And now it's Mel's turn to talk. Because the other thing when we're giving feedback, people really they panic and they just go and they don't give the other person a chance to even respond. Whereas that AR alternative result enables the other party to how a thing can respond.

SPEAKER_00 17:39

That's it. Uh, and I really like the air model. So um, again, nice and simple, AIR. So very similar, action impact result. So when this happened, this was the impact. How will we find a result? And I think it's really important. There's a couple of things here. Number one is sometimes it's helpful to talk about the role, not the person. So in this role, this role needs to do these things as opposed to you did not do you, you, yeah. Uh so this role, let's talk about the role. Right now, you're not doing these parts of the role as well as we need. The impact of that is, you know, such and such has to pick up the load over here, or uh, you know, this didn't get done on time, and so we missed a printing deadline, or whatever the impact was. Yeah. The second uh piece around this when we talk to the result is not just providing solutions to the person. This is a coaching moment. You want people to think, okay, so ask them what are some ways we can address this? What are some solutions that you can come up with?

SPEAKER_01 18:48

You've just yeah.

SPEAKER_00 18:50

So test them, get them to get them to use their brains and not just wait to be handed something on a platter because A, that doesn't help them grow, doesn't help the self-awareness, but B, they don't own it. They don't own the action. And so they're not as invested in it if you've just told them to do something. They need to come up with that themselves and own it because they're much more likely to then take the action. Yeah. So that's why I like the air model because it's nice and simple, it's just three letters. Uh, and again, you'll notice in both of those examples we use there's no shit sandwich. It's very clear. Action impact result or the star R method, whatever you choose, it's very clear. This is what happened, this was the impact. What are you gonna do to fix it?

SPEAKER_01 19:35

Exactly, exactly. Can I ask you another question? So we haven't gone into receiving feedback. Can we we launch it into that part? Because I think giving feedback is freaking hard, but receiving it is really hard as well. 100%. What are your thoughts on receiving feedback? Because I have loads of thoughts. Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 19:54

Well, firstly, I think you need to be aware of yourself. So I have a little model I use, it's a two by two matrix because we're consultants and we love our two by twos, right? Do we? Yeah. So the way I see it, there's two key factors that influence how we respond to feedback. And one is your level of self-awareness, and one is your level of self-esteem. So if you have low self-esteem and low self-awareness, and people give you some feedback, you'll be like, oh my god, I had no idea I was, I knew I was shit, but I didn't realize I was that bad. Like it was, you know, it's it it yeah, it plays into this narrative that people have already got about themselves. And because they're not aware of it or not aware that they've done something wrong, now they're thinking, well, what else have I done? I am, you know, and it just spiral, spiral, spiral, right? Of course. You have low self-esteem but high awareness. This is kind of perfectionist territory that you were talking about earlier, where everything I do is bad. And this is just again reinforcing, and I'll and they play over the tiny little moments, every tiny little moment. And so when you get into a conversation with that person, it's like, I knew it, I knew I was shit at that, and I knew this, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then you've got what I call Donald Trump syndrome, which is low self-awareness but high self-esteem. I think you call them the brilliant jerks. So, although they're not always brilliant in this case, but um I think I'm great. And the response to feedback is often along the lines of, no, that can't be right. It's just it's combatives, it's defensive. Well, such and such did this, and then they did this, you know, it's deflection as well. Uh, you do this, it gets into gansliding territory. So it's very defensive. They take no ownership because they just have such low self awareness but think so much of themselves. And so then you get where somebody's very self aware but also has very good self esteem, and they typically take feedback on as with gratitude. They're like, Oh yeah. Thought I didn't wasn't doing as well with that, and I really want to get better. Thanks for sharing that with me. I think we all know people who fit into those boxes. Yeah, we have an inkling. And we probably have an inkling of where we are as well. And it does change. You know, I think back to when I was, you know, a baby corporate person who undiagnosed ADHD, I'll just add, but non-excuse. But I took everything personally. I didn't take it with gratitude. I took it as I must be really bad at this and I'm so bad at this. And then I'd get defensive. And, you know, these days it's like, tell me what else I can do better, because I don't know if you don't tell me. But that took time and maturity to get to that. And sometimes you're lucky with it. I think with the younger staff, you might come across some who are a bit, you know, old souls and have been, you know, have built up a little bit of that. Um, I don't want to say resilience, but more adaptability, you know, they're willing to problem solve and those sorts of things. But typically, younger staff, I mean, just think of it biologically, frontal lobes are not developed when you're in your early 20s, especially with boys. And so it's more likely you're going to get some of those more negative responses than perhaps an older person who's, you know, done this all before and is used to that culture. Um, but that's kind of how I see it. And I think part of receiving feedback is being really self-aware of your own mental state, of you know what you want to get out of that, having a mindset of learning, not of I'm doing this poorly. Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 23:34

Um, have you come across Kubler Ross's five stages of grief? Yes, yes, true. Self-awareness 101. So this is one thing that I bring about to people when um, especially in receiving feedback male. So when you receive feedback, I'm just gonna open up, sorry, uh Kubla Ross's yeah, uh, five stages. It's five stages of grief, but we do grieve when we're giving feedback. This is us, and we're giving feedback to change. So we're grieving this middle part of us who's like, what the hell just happened, right? So I use Kubler Rossi's beautiful words to apply to us receiving feedback. So do you go into shock and denial, anger? Do you start bargaining? Do you fall into a funk and get depressed? Or do you jump into acceptance? And this really talks to this beautiful quadrant that you know Mel just talked to as well. It really marries with all of the work that you just talked to. So self-awareness is really important. So do the hard work on yourself first, right? And yeah, when I was young, I was super ambitious. I was like, oh my god, I want to prove to everyone that I'm okay. So when feedback was given to me, it was an extra hard, extra hard. Mel, we haven't even gone into this, and I think this might be a different episode altogether, but thank you for sharing about you being uh undiagnosed at that stage, but we haven't talked about neurodiversity within the workplace whatsoever. So, one aspect of neurodiversity within the workplace, within society as well, and I'm learning as well, is that um the concept of RSD.

SPEAKER_00 25:06

Yes, which is a it's very common with people with ADHD and autism. Yeah. Can you please talk to that? Because your book levels are Yeah, so it's rejection sensitivity dysphoria. So it tends to be that we take rejection much more um, I guess, personally, and we take it really hard compared to what other people would. Um, I don't know whether there's a lot of research around why that is the case. You know, how are the neurons firing or not firing in this case? No, no, there's a lot of research that's still yet to be done, especially with women, just quietly. Um but it is one of those things, and like you said, and in a previous episode when we talked about tailoring the communication, this marries into this quite nicely. That if you know you have team members who are neurodiverse, or if you know yourself that you are, and that there could be, you know, some of that sensitivity around rejection, then you do actually need to take a slightly different approach and explain why you're giving the feedback. I think that's really important to say, and Adam Grant has a great line around this. He's like, it's something like, I'm telling you this because I have high expectations of you and I think you can meet them. Oh, and I really love that line. And I think this is about going. I believe in you. This is why I'm I'm going to tell you this because I think you can do even better. And I think if you give that why, the reason why, gorgeous, then it can help sort of go, oh, this is like set the frame in the mind, crying the thinking, this is a learning moment, it's not a rejection moment.

SPEAKER_01 26:40

Yeah. So going back to neurodiversity, not everyone comes out within the workplaces. Oh, and that's completely up to you. Totally. But but for the people who do come out, um, you know, I've had some clients have come out only to their manager, just so their manager knows about what their needs are, right? Yeah. And and then therefore the manager and the employee talk about, okay, so tell me how I can best work with you and for you. And in a past episode of Ours Mel, I talked to the user manual of me and creating that. I think it's really important for anyone, especially who's someone who's neurodivergent, especially to have that user manual of me because that just enriches your work life even more. And you freaking deserve it as well.

SPEAKER_00 27:19

That's it. And I think what is important in that is uh, you know, as you said, what's the best way to give me feedback? Maybe that's part of what you put in that manual.

SPEAKER_01 27:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 27:28

But making sure everybody does it. So it's not just the neurodiverse team members that don't feel singled out. No, no, this is for everybody, and yeah, I think that's really important too.

SPEAKER_01 27:38

Yeah. Um, another point I want to talk about when we're receiving feedback as well is that obviously, you know, the other party has taken time and they've taken time to really think about you. You've not had the opportunity to process and to think about stuff. And sometimes people feel cornered in that conversation, Mel. And people forget. So please let this be one gold nugget for you. You don't have to respond immediately. You could even say, Mel, thank you so much for that feedback. That's a lot for me to take. I just need a day to process it. Can we reconvene tomorrow and have this chat again tomorrow? You know, people just freak out as like deer in headlights, you know. But no, you don't have to respond right now. Let things settle if there's a lot of emotion bubbling away, or if you're funking out a la the Kubla Ross model, take time out. Yeah, that's well within your rights, okay? So you're not caught, you're not caught in it. Please remember that.

SPEAKER_00 28:33

I think that's a really good point. And you know, that's a good stage around the when we talk about what's the way forward. You know, that can actually be as a manager a good break to go. So, what I want you to do is go away 24, 48 hours, come up with some solutions, and then let's come back together and talk about it. So then you've given them time to process, to think, come up with some ideas. You've got some accountability because you're meeting again in a couple of days. So it keeps a conversation, you know, it's not just a set and forget, keeps a conversation going. So yeah, love that idea, Prina. Like, give space. I think that's so important.

SPEAKER_01 29:07

And Lil, I love you know the quadrant. I'm going back to that again. You booked my brain with it in a positive brain. Um, it really reminded me of the way that we talk to ourselves. Yeah. And this is homework for for for our audience, for our listeners. This is a lot of work I've done on myself. Have you heard about the concept of transactional analysis? I have not. That's two big words. Let's put them together. Very psychological, and I'm not gonna go into detail about it, right? But in your brain, you have voices, which are often your parents' voices. So that's a lot to be to answer for. I need a whiteboard for this one. I need a whiteboard. So in your brain, the the internal voice you have is either as a parent, an adult, or a child. Are you the punishing parent or are you the forgiving, like uh enthusiastic parent who's just motivating? As the adult, are you the healthy adult in your own inner voice, or are you the negative adult, you know, that oh, I hate myself, of course. Mel said that, therefore, it must be right. As the inner voice child in your head, is it the playful, joyful child who's just learning, absorbing, you know, everything, or is it that scared child, right? So do the work, people. That's for you to go and search on Google because that's individual to every single one of us, and it will break your brain if you want to go into detail off it. Uh, it's amazing. I love that. So I think that self-talk that you have for yourself is really important in the way that you show up to places and definitely in the way that you give and receive feedback.

SPEAKER_00 30:42

100%. I think there's two other things we should consider here, and I know we're we could talk forever about feedback, so I don't want to go on more tangents, but I'm getting another tangent. Um one is like like you were just saying about you know your inner voice as well, also consider that not all feedback is valid. Hello. Yes. So when you are, if you know yourself to be a very sensitive person to feedback that, you know, your self-esteem is isn't great and those sorts of things as well. It can be easy to take everything uh seriously. But sometimes not all feedback is valid. If it's just one person saying something and they're not really a person that you trust or that has a lot of respect in the workplace and doing what you're doing, exactly. If they actually don't have the insights into what they're saying, or they can't be very specific about what the problem is, yeah, you don't have to take that on board necessarily. Like there may be a kernel of truth in there somewhere that you have to think about, yeah, but not all feedback is created equal. Huge lesson to end with, I think. I think so. The other thing I want to point out is um when you are giving feedback or measuring performance, be aware of the measures that you use when you're measuring performance too. Tell me nothing. Tell me more. Um and I see this, okay. Example, I work in, you know, when I'm not doing what I do, I teach group fitness classes.

SPEAKER_01 32:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 32:12

And the gym chain shall remain nameless. But, you know, at the end of each class, we write down how many people were in that class. And you are given a performance review, I think it's every six months or something, where they go through your class numbers. And if they're above 50%, you're, you know, you get this. It was above 60, you get this, blah, blah, blah. Um, the challenging part of that is that if you've covered for somebody else and their class numbers are low, that counts towards yours, even if you've just filled in for them. Yeah, that's a whole thing. The challenge with numbers is that it can inspire people to be fraudulent in their numbers. Because if you know that your bonus relates solely to a number, that's incentive to lie. It's incentive to do the wrong thing. We saw that in the States with like the Wells Fargo, where and wrong as well. Yeah. Yep, exactly. Where they were told, you know, you need to sign up X number of customers. They were signing up people to multiple accounts who had no idea they've been signed up to multiple accounts. Um, we saw this, yeah, in multiple other places as well, where the measures that we use, if they stop being about an outcome and start just being about an output, you know, you need to make so many phone calls a day to customers, you make this. Who said they're any good? Who said they've actually given you have they resulted in more sales? If not, it's actually not the number that's the problem. So think about when you are having these performance conversations, am I actually having a performance conversation based on the right metric? Or is this something, is there something more that we need to be thinking about as well? And that can be hard when you're part of a big conglomerate where they set your KPIs and rah-rah-rah. It's hard to challenge that status quo. But it is possible to create measures that are about the things that actually matter. Like, you know, are you helping to achieve an outcome for your customers? Are they happy with what you're doing? How you treat other people in your team, that should be a metric. How you treat other people should actually be something that's important. Um, you know, are you telling, are you are you actually doing what you're meant to be doing when you're when you're there and showing up on time and being a team player? Like those things they're harder to quantify, but they are so much more important than how many phone calls you made or how many people turned up to a class. If they left happy, if they want to come back, that's a pretty good sign from a longevity point of view of the customer.

SPEAKER_01 34:44

Yeah, brilliant point there. Brilliant point there. Another point, well, we're digressing. Yeah, but it's still on track, still on track. But these performance systems have created this competition between me and Mel now. That's the other thing that these performance systems do, which is really, really unhealthy. Yep. And I'm speaking from experience and bad experience. When I was a manager giving my people feedback, I used to compare Mel against, let's say, April, for example. Not cool because Mel ain't April and April ain't Mel. And I've learned that the hard way, and shit sticks as well, by the way, on your reputation, and it's stuck. And I'm very apologetic to this day to the person that I did that to because that was completely wrong. So let's not compare people either, because we're not the same, we're not clones. Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 35:27

Well, Prina, I think we've covered a lot of ground. Remo. A few rabbit holes, but I'm all for it. So, what do you think some of the key takeaways are for people who need to have performance conversations or who are going to be receiving feedback?

SPEAKER_01 35:43

Remembering the different types of feedback. There are so many. So listen to this podcast again, check it all out. Um, check in on yourself and your self-awareness and how you receive feedback. Do the hard work on yourself, I think is really important. Yeah. We've given some brilliant tools, you know, the air model, the star R R Star R model, the SBI model. I loved your two by two male. That really got me thinking. Okay. Um, and I think a big one as well for people when you're receiving feedback, if you don't want to respond to it, yeah, you don't have to. Go process your brain, take time out, articulate it, don't freeze.

SPEAKER_00 36:19

I love that. Yeah, for me, it's a reminder about the language that we use. So remember you don't have to use the word feedback, especially if it does, you know, generate negativity in your workplace. You haven't got a culture of feedback. Um, but also just asking a closed question like, do you have any feedback for me? isn't the best way to generate a conversation that will be helpful for anybody. So ask open-ended questions like what could I be doing better? What should what am I doing well that I should keep doing or build on?

SPEAKER_01 36:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 36:50

So be open in your questions and you'll get much better feedback. And, you know, ask for advice rather than feedback can also be a good way to to generate a conversation that's actually helpful.

SPEAKER_01 37:01

Roast each other if you've got the trust. It is the best. Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_00 37:05

Weekly roast trip. I mean TikTok. Yeah, that's it. Only if you've got trust. Yes, that's a big game. Yeah, it'll be fun. Oh, I love that conversation, Prina. Uh so next time we are talking about well, having tough conversations. So this is kind of a going on from this feedback, but you know, there are challenging conversations we have to have. Sometimes it's about behavior, sometimes we have to let people go, sometimes it's, you know, the business is failing. Sometimes, you know, um, somebody maybe something really bad has happened to somebody at work that you need to have a conversation about.

SPEAKER_01 37:40

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