Why feedback makes sense
Leaders are supposed to give feedback. That’s part of their obligation when it comes to people development.
Feedback is one adjustment approach to help people to reach their highest potential and fulfillment. Reaching that, the business is very likely to profit, because their people love what they do, and they are great at doing it.
Who is in charge: leaders or managers?
Leaders often don’t lead. They manage. They have to. There are millions of things that have to get done. That’s what management is all about. Getting things done. Doing the business.
Leadership on the other hand means: being good at dealing with the human side, dealing with people.
Managing towards high performance processes is one thing you would have to get right. Leading people towards engagement and high performance is the essential human part. Without that your great high performance processes won’t come to life.
Let’s repeat what makes sense. The benefit is strikingly clear: giving feedback helps people to tap their highest potentials. That leads to high levels of engagement, to high performance people, which leads to high performance business if you got your processes right.
Why listening is the key
So, giving feedback is one part of the leaders’ obligation.
My question is: feedback based on what? What do we see when it comes to our employees? Do we really see the person in its entirety? Or do we see our image of that person, through our management lenses, with our desire to get things done? Do we see our image of them, not performing the way we want them to?
Here is the catch: if you want to give valuable feedback and help them to grow, you have to look at the person’s bigger picture. A good way to see the bigger picture is to get good at listening. Seriously: how can you give feedback when your mind is all over the place?
When you look at your Blackberry or iPhone all the time? When you think about the next appointment already, and about all the other things on your to-do-list? When you feel guilty that you didn’t see your boss before this meeting, as he asked you to? How can you be here and now, with this employee in front of you, listening, when you are occupied with the future and the past, but definitely not with what is going on right now, and now, and now again?
Intention drives observation
If you want to give feedback, the question is also: what did you observe, and in what mode were you during that observation? Did you primarily see yourself and your perception, or did you really see the other person, her needs, his state of being at that moment?
What was your reason again for giving feedback? Was it to make sure that some task gets done, that a presentation is held in a particular way, that a deadline is met? Or was it that you want to understand where in his or her stage of development your employee is right now, how well s/he is doing in terms of the desired development, and how you can support the growth and how you can find the best fit in this team or group or organization?
The managing – leading dilemma again
You might say: “Well, we do have this annual review or people development process in place.” or “I strikly follow this six step feedback tool we were introduced to in our last management seminar.”
It’s great to have these processes, tools and guidelines. Every company must have those rules of conduct in oder to oblige to the need of treating people equally and assure a certain level of quality. The catch is that when you are merely following policies and procedures, applying tools and techniques, with compliance as a response to controlling – you are back to management, dealing with things, with business, loosing focus on the people.
How to really listen
Great feedback starts with good listening. Good listening starts with mindfulness. Mindfulness starts with being in the present moment, 100% available for that person sitting in front of you. Mindfulness starts with making sure that the time of listening is not interrupted by your phone, or by disturbing noise or by people running in and out of your room. And it starts with your stopping to try to achieve something, to get something done here.
Your job right now is to listen, without judging, with an open mind, ready to experience the other person with all the wonderful facets, listening to his/her story.
The mindful listening experiment
I would like to offer you an experiment, a practical exercise that we practice with leaders in our seminars.
Here is how it works:
The role setting
You work in triads (a set of three people).
- The first person is the speaker. Let’s say, Paula takes that part. In the business world, she could be the employee.
- Jack is the second person. He listens, and later on repeats what the speaker said. In real life, he would be the leader, boss, parent, whatever.
- Anthea, the third person, listens and carefully observes all the time. She has a special assignment in this exercise. In real life, she would not be part of the listening and feedback giving process.
The content setting
Jack, being in the leader role, wants to find out about Paula’s development so far. He listens her to talk about the following stuff Just listening, no conversation. This is what Paula might want to talk about:
- What did her professional and personal development look like?
- What was it that she always liked to do or to be in her life?
- What provides meaning for her, and what values does she see behind this meaning?
- What are the driving forces?
- Who were key figures, institutions, heroes or whatever that had a driving impact on those values?
- What kind of path developed out of this drive?
- What did she actively choose to do?
- What type of work or activities does she passionately do?
- Where does she see herself right now?
The task and the timing
- Paula, Jack and Anthea have 15 minutes time to think about their lives, along the content setting as described above.
- Then Paula talks. She has 10 minutes time. If she uses only 5 minutes or so, the rest is silence.
- After the 10 minutes, Peter repeats what he remembers. No “Oh, that is difficult, let’s see … what I remember is …”. – Just the plain content of Paula’s story: “you were brought up in … what you valued most is … ” and so on. If Peter is finished after let’s say 6 minutes, the rest is silence.
- Anthea just observes mindfully. No judgement, no thinking about her role later on. Just 100% concentration and being with the other two people. And she keeps track of the time, sending the signal after each of the 10 minutes that the time is over.
- Then the triad shift roles. Anthea becomes the talker, Paula the listener, and so on.
The conclusion
After the end of the whole session (3x 20 minutes), the triad(s) come together and talk about their experiences, answering the questions:- How did you experience the silence (if there was any)? How did you deal with it? What ant through your minds?
- What did you experience as the listener?
- What did you experience as the talker?
- What did you see as the observer?
- What did you learn from this exercise? What do you want to take with you into the daily life and practice?
Posted by:
Peter Dilg
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