Great feedback starts with good intentions (3.7)
"What finally gave me the power to give him the feedback was that I cared about him."
In this video, experts Kirstan Marnane and Michiel Kruyt share their experiences “checking their intentions” before giving feedback.
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KIRSTAN MARNANE: I think of feedback as a gift of observation and insight to help a person or a team achieve their full performance potential. There are two times when you give feedback. One is when you see an opportunity for growth. So there is something that can be improved about someone's performance. And the second is to appreciate good performance and to embed it. So the foundations of good feedback have everything to do with your intention and a kind of generative listening.
So let me say something about intention first. Intention is for that person. So your intention is something beyond yourself. It is either for that person, or for your team, or for your organization. And your intention is to improve them in some way, or to help them in some way. Intention matters so much because you might get it wrong. Feedback often happens in the moment, but if you have checked your intention first and you don't quite get it right, you can come back to your intention and actually state it. So my intention was to help you improve the way that you present or the way that you deal with clients. I didn't quite get that right. Let me try to say it another way. Good intention towards the other person helps to establish trust.
Generative listening is a very special kind of listening. You give the feedback, but you are willing to listen to what they say afterwards. And you're also willing to think of them as the potential high performer that you want them to be. Or that they could be. So there's a special quality to the listening in both coaching and in feedback, which has to do with the potential of that person.
I really value harmony. And I can remember working with somebody facilitating a very important client meeting, and he was not present. So whenever he was not presenting, he'd go way, and do his Blackberry, or do other things. And it was very distracting to the clients, and to me, who was doing the other side of the presentation. I've really pondered a long time before I gave him feedback. And it began to fester.
And this is the problem with not giving it. Because you can arrive anywhere you want on the conflict curve, but conflict is not good and it leads eventually to crisis. What is it that finally gave me the power to give him the feedback was that I cared about him. I had to look at what mattered most. And I was thinking of his future self. His future self doing this in other meetings and that it was going to be bad for his career. It was going to be bad for him. And I knew he was a good person who could be present. So I gave him the feedback and he was really grateful to me.
Always check your intention before you give feedback. Even if it's something that you're going to do in two or three minutes because it's just happened, step back, check your intention. If you can't name an intention that you're proud of, your probably not ready to give the feedback.
MICHIEL KRUYT: And the biggest important thing about giving feedback is from what mindset do you give the feedback. Do you assume good intent? So do you assume the person is actually trying his or her best and there might be things getting in the way that you're not even aware of? So do you assume there might be some learning for you as a feedback giver? Or do you assume it's all bad and take a blaming mindset?
Now of course, the first mindset is the productive mindset that actually leads to growth. And the second mindset, where you actually start to get into blaming mindset, will not be prevalent to actually help have people receive the feedback. If you're in that negative feedback mode, it's not conducive to a good conversation.