3 Tips for Feedback Conversations You and Your Team Look Forward to as a Humanitarian and International Development Leader
In today's episode, we tackle a common challenge: making feedback sessions something we look forward to rather than avoid. If you're finding feedback stressful for both you and your team, this episode offers actionable insights to change that dynamic.
We explore why feedback often feels uncomfortable, and how you can turn it into an opportunity for growth and learning.
You’ll learn how to:
- Reframe feedback as a gift, enhancing receptivity and engagement.
- Approach feedback conversations with a clear, neutral mindset to foster better outcomes.
- Incorporate regular feedback into your team's culture to support continuous improvement.
Listen now to unlock the secrets to more effective and less stressful feedback conversations that benefit everyone involved!
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FULL TRANSCRIPT:
How can we make feedback conversations something we look forward to rather than something we avoid? Find out in today's episode.
Welcome to The Modern Humanitarian and Development Leader podcast, the podcast helping humanitarian and development supervisors make a greater impact by taking control of your time, leading more inclusively and empowering your team all the while avoiding stress, burnout, and overwhelm. I'm your host, leadership coach and former aid worker, Torrey Peace.
Are you ready? Let's get started.
Hello, my aspiring modern humanitarian and development leader. I hope you're doing great and having a wonderful week. I'm really excited about today's episode. I know I've been saying that a lot lately, but I just feel like I'm getting some momentum here and I have so much to share with you, especially because it's performance, planning time, at least for some of you, it's about the end of the fiscal year.
And we are getting to the point where we're going to be having those wonderful feedback conversations. So I think this will be especially valuable for you and in today's episode, you're going to learn what makes feedback so stressful for both the giver and the receiver, three tips to give feedback your team will be receptive to and grow from, and how to incorporate feedback more regularly into your conversations.
Now, like I said, I actually am recording this especially for the performance planning types conversations. However, even if the time of the year is not that time for you, where you're giving these performance planning conversations, feedback is something that we should be doing on a regular basis.
And I will be giving tips on how to do that. But I think that all of what I have to say today is relevant to you no matter where you are in your fiscal year. And so, yeah. Well, listen up.
These are things that I really wish that I had known when I was a manager or a supervisor, because it would have made my life a lot easier.
And they're things that now I teach in my six week digital course "Becoming the Modern Humanitarian and Development Leader" and I see how much impact they have for my students. So now I'm going to share some of those with you today, so that you can start using them with your team. So what's interesting to me is that everyone says that they want feedback, but then why is it so stressful both to give and receive. And I've thought about this.
And I think that one of the reasons is because when we receive feedback or when we're getting feedback, normally, we see it as it's going to be something pointing out something wrong with us. And it's usually presented from a place of this is me telling you about you. And so we naturally and automatically feel either like we are defending ourselves if we are receiving it or we are justifying ourselves if we are giving it. Yeah?
So I just want to repeat that one more time, because I think this is such a game changer and a mindset shift that can really, really help you if you really understand it. And that is once again, When we give feedback in a traditional way, we are giving it and people are receiving it as if it is true, or as if we are telling someone about themselves. And when I tell you that you are a certain way, you're going to naturally be more defensive.
And when you are defensive, I'm going to naturally feel like I have to justify myself. So naturally this is not leading to the type of conversation where much learning is going to happen. Right? When we are feeling defensive, when your team is feeling defensive, they shut down and they're going to stop listening.
So rather than approaching a feedback conversation as if you know everything and that you just need to tell or deliver that news.
What can be very transformative is when we approach it from not knowing everything and being curious. This will be a game-changer for you. So once again, this is something that I cover in the course along with how to use coaching for feedback, more in depth, how to help someone look at their mindset and how that's impacting them. However, I think these things that I'm going to share with you now are going to be very helpful for you as well.
So number one the first tip for having better feedback conversations is that feedback we look at as a gift. Right? Both the receiving and the giving. When we're receiving it, we should also be looking at as a gift. Even if you don't like the gift, you still can at least take it. And maybe just be curious about how you might like it or what part of the gift you like, right?
Also offering it as if it's a gift can be a very different way. It will change the way you deliver it when you're offering it as something, which is a gift, is something that you are giving to help the other person. But also that they don't necessarily have to like, or they don't necessarily have to agree with or receive. Yeah? '
Because a lot of times I think when we give feedback, we think that the other person has to receive it and that they have to keep the gifts. Right? But maybe that's not going to be helpful for them, or maybe they don't agree with the gift.
I like to look at it as I'm reaching my hands out, I am literally offering something to you. And as I'm doing that, I want you to look at the gift and decide. What parts of it, do you think are valid and what parts of it maybe are not? And we're going to look at the gifts from a place of how can I learn something more about you and how can you learn something more about yourself?
So the best kind of feedback is where you are both learning something. You as the giver, learn their perspective and learn more about them and you understand them and their perspective more. And they learn hopefully about themselves through your questions through helping them improve their self awareness.
So this is where coaching can be very powerful, is to help them see ways of thinking. For example, a way they're thinking about something that is keeping them stuck or is not helping them.
This is the most transformative type of feedback conversation.
So once again, you're offering a gift to them. You're offering them this gift of feedback. It's something that maybe you've observed or maybe something on their 360 degree feedback form. Or just something that you have noticed, or you've heard from others, you're offering it to them, but not like shoving it at them, but you're just gently offering it to them to see, first of all, what they think about it?
And then also their perspective of it? And their side of the conversation.
It's very helpful to approach this type of conversation as if we want to learn something, once again. They're learning something about themselves. Hopefully that's the most transformative type of feedback conversation. And once again, great use of coaching. And we're learning something more about them as well.
Before you go and to this conversation, and this is tip number two, you need to make sure you are in a good place emotionally in terms of the stories you have about the feedback. So, let me explain.
When you go into a feedback conversation, especially if it's one where you're offering feedback, that might be a little sensitive. Even though, remember we're, we're just offering it as a gift.
We're not shoving it in their face. We're gently offering the feedback. And seeing how they react and what they want to say about it. We want to be in a place emotionally where we are, what I call neutral or let's say calm. So you do not want to be frustrated or angry or in some kind of a negative emotion when you are having a feedback conversation. The things that you say will be influenced by those negative emotions and it will not be productive.
So make sure that you take a walk, you take a break, whatever you need to do before you go into that feedback conversation. The second part of that is watch your stories. And what I mean by that is be careful that you don't let your assumptions of the situation influence the way that you see that person or the way that you offer the feedback. Right?
Remember, we're offering the feedback as a gift. We're offering it as a potential truth, but it probably is not all true. There's probably parts of it that are, and parts of it that are not.
Before you go into a feedback conversation and you have an idea of what the feedback is, for example, maybe you're telling someone that they could be a better listener. You're hearing it from multiple team members. So when you offer this to them, remember as a gift, and you could phrase it, something like., I noticed from your 360 feedback that some people have said that you don't always listen. How do you feel about that? Or what do you think about that?
Make sure that you don't believe that without first talking to the person and hearing what their side is. Notice the story that you have about this person. And where you have a story which might not be in their favor.
For example maybe they're not always great at listening. But maybe your story behind that is that they just don't care. When it could actually be that there's something else. Some other reason that they're not listening. Maybe they have a hearing problem or maybe they are impatient or they just have a way of thinking that's much quicker than other people or maybe their second, third, fourth language is English or whatever language you're communicating in.
Make sure that you separate the facts from the stories before you go into the conversation.
Torrey: And then the third tip for giving effective feedback that will be received by our team is to have them choose where to start and approach from not knowing or curiosity. In the last example I had about the person that doesn't listen, sometimes you may need to direct the feedback. In other words, bring up the topic that you want to discuss because it's impacting the team, it's impacting the project or whatever.
And so, you know, that it needs to be addressed. And so in that case, you would offer that feedback at the beginning of the conversation after you are in a neutral place and you have thought about all the stories you have, which may or may not be true around it. What I'm saying is if you can in situations where you are able, the best type of feedback is where you can ask the other person where they want to start? So, for example, asking them something like
what would you like to work on? Or what area would you like to improve? Right? And letting them choose because what happens is when you give them an option, then they become in control the conversation and they'll feel less defensive 'because it's coming from them and not from you.
And then once they choose where to start, once again, remember coming from a place of curiosity. And I think a lot of leaders feel like they have to direct the conversation. They have to be the ones that choose the areas that you discuss for improvement or whatever. And I can see where that could be the case if it's a real performance issue.
But if there are not a lot of performance issues, I think a much more powerful way is to ask the person where do you want to focus? What do you want to learn? Where do you want to improve?
And you also might be surprised how often they have in mind the same areas for improvement that you would have named yourself. So trusting them, that they know themselves well enough to be able to point out their own flaws or give themselves their own feedback, essentially.
So this totally changed one of my student's experiences with a direct report. They had someone on their team who was not performing well and they needed something to change or else they were going to have to do something drastic. So when they approached this person and presented the feedback about that person from a place of curiosity, or really wanting to learn their perspective. Not only did the person open up and share that they had been going through something personally, that was very difficult.
It also brought empathy on the part of the supervisor, more understanding and the supervisor understood better how they could actually help that person.
It can be very powerful to just approach the situation from not knowing and from curiosity and from really wanting to understand the other person's perspective.
Of course feedback can also be good feedback, right? We can be giving positive feedback. And part of that can be acknowledging ,a tool that we use in coaching. And I will have an episode on that further down the line, but I know that feedback is such a hot topic and one where both sides feel very uncomfortable. And so I wanted to give you some different perspectives on how to approach it, which I've been very effective for my students. And I think could be very effective for you in terms of delivering feedback.
So how do we incorporate feedback more regularly?
Not just during performance planning or three times a year, or when we are asked to do it. I think the best way to do that is by asking learning questions. You can look at feedback as also learning, right? This is by definition a coaching culture, a culture where we are constantly learning about ourselves, learning about our situations and evolving. Always improving.
So when you make it part of what you do as a team, By asking on a regular basis what can I do differently next time? What went well for me? What maybe didn't go so well, where can I improve next time? When we ask ourselves these questions from a place of wanting to grow and move forward and learn they can be received in a more positive way.
And when it's part of the way we do things, part of the culture of our team, that can be a very powerful way to give consistent feedback.
To summarize the three tips that we went through today to give effective feedback. One is looking at feedback as a gift, both for receiving and for giving -to learn something. And remember that the best kind of feedback is where you both learned something about the person who is receiving it.
They learn something about themselves and you learn something more about them and it grows your connection.
It makes your relationship stronger.
Number two, before you go into the feedback conversation, make sure you are in a a good place emotionally. That you're calm, you're not feeling any strong negative emotions. And make sure you watch your stories and assumptions about the situation around the feedback and about the other person. And then finally, number three, have them choose as much as you can, where to start and approach the conversation from not knowing or from curiosity as if you know nothing about the full situation and that you're both exploring it and looking at it together. All right. So that's all for this week. Until next time, keep evolving. Bye for now.