The Management Trinity - Feedback
March 2nd, 2008This show describes the The Feedback Model’s inclusion in the Management Trinity.
We continue here our recent theme of revisiting the high level rationale and actions involved in the Management Trinity. In our discussion of feedback, we talk about the basics, of course: What the Feedback Model gives the effective manager, and how the effective manager actually puts it into action.
This theme came out of many conversations we have had with managers about the value they were getting from our high level discussion of the Trinity at both Effective Manager Conferences and at onsite corporate client work.
We’re careful to make every cast actionable. This one IS. We make a specific recommendation regarding feedback delivery you don’t want to miss.
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March 3rd, 2008 at 1:38 am
Excellent cast! Thank you gentleman for all your work.
Question for you = wouldn’t it help me change my future behavior to better understand why I did the ineffective behavior?
I often open my feedback with, “Why did you…” Or, “Why are you…” This feels so natural, but that doesn’t make it effective.
Thanks again for your great work.
March 3rd, 2008 at 10:15 am
I can’t access the slides and have paid the premium fee.
March 3rd, 2008 at 10:35 am
Judy,
Your account looks ok … one suggestion is to try logging out, then logging back in to the site. I suspect that will resolve your issue. If not, please shoot me an email and we’ll figure this out.
thanks,
Mike
March 8th, 2008 at 3:24 am
Mike & Mark -
As a new listener, I want to add my thanks and gratitude for what you are doing with your pod cast and website. I am an Ops Executive in a Fortune 100 company. Your content and guidance are very sound and incredibly user-friendly.
After devouring your stuff for a month or so, I have a number of questions/issues.
The first has to do with my virtual team and feedback/coaching. I do O3’s with 15 director level folks. They are scattered across the globe leading or supporting Ops for 3 large businesses that are managed very independently. Ten of the 15 focus on one or another of the individual businesses. The other five lead functional teams who support all three businesses. I do not bring the entire team together for weekly team meetings, as they do not share common goals and objectives.
Half of my O3’s are face-to-face. The rest have are done by phone. For the half that I do by phone, I can directly observe behavior 5-6 times per year. Results are much more visible than behaviors for these folks.
The issue I am wrestling with has to do with feedback/coaching and development for those who are not located where I am. Aside from making sure folks hear directly that their results matter a great deal, the actual act of providing feedback on visible/measurable results feels a little redundant/self evident. I am worried that the behaviors I can observe and provide feedback on may not be the ones that, if improved, would have the greatest impact on the business. Our company’s culture is overly polite and I would never hear from my directs directs. A situation would have to be totally out of control before I heard from my peers or my directs peers about ineffective behaviors. I am also doubtful that my directs self-assessments of improvement opportunities would yield the highest impact goals.
Can you comment on effective approaches for “observing” and getting useful insight into behaviors for folks who are not located where I am?
Thanks - Bill
(PS - Clarity index for this comment is 25! I love what you guys are doing!)
March 10th, 2008 at 12:42 am
Bill-
Glad you’re with us!
Let me ask you - what are the five types of behavior, and which one does the distant manager therefore almost HAVE to rely on?
Mark
March 10th, 2008 at 4:59 am
Thanks Mark -
5 Behaviors? I can name four from a cast I listened to on Saturday - what you say, how you say it, facial expressions and body language. The last two are tough to see over the phone. What’s the fifth? What cast is it in?
Part of this issue and my question has to do with wanting to know more about how my remote directs are behaving with others when I am not present. I don’t believe that their behavior with me during O3’s and teleconferences will give me enough insight into what their high gain development/improvement opportunities are.
- Bill
March 10th, 2008 at 10:17 am
Found it… what they did… easily discoverable in O3’s and other means. So, let me flip the question around. In your experience — will observation that is heavily weighted towards “what someone did” yield a enough insight to craft the right high impact coaching goals? - Bill
March 10th, 2008 at 10:41 am
In the beginning of the podcast, Mark said something to the fact that managers are worried that their feedback might cause conflict or turnover. I think that is definitely the reason why I myself and others are hesitant to give feedback.
I would add that if managers learned how to give feedback well, it shouldn’t even feel like creating conflict.
March 10th, 2008 at 1:40 pm
Bill-
The fifth is WORK PRODUCT.
Seeing it yet?
Mark
March 12th, 2008 at 8:58 pm
M&M = since you emphasis the FUTURE with Feedback how about renaming feedback FEEDFORWARD?
I know Marshall Goldsmith already coined this, but I like that word.
October 22nd, 2008 at 9:01 pm
In your Rolling out the Trinity cast regarding feedback you mentioned your plan to schedule a 30 minute meeting and use your materials. Is there a specific document you were refering to?
October 22nd, 2008 at 11:02 pm
The documents associated with the cast.
Mark
November 3rd, 2008 at 6:21 pm
HI Mark and Mike, catching up on earlier casts. I was challenged to apply very similar thinking from my earlier days to the business world from what you were saying.
From about 1992 - 1997 I coached junior basketball here in North Sydney, and had teenage boys from a wide variety of backgrounds. I got lots of positive feed back from their parents as my methods were as much about life as about sport. To help the boys get over mistakes in a game I coined a phase “You can’t change the past, but you can influence the future”.
I was talking to a sports master from one of Sydney’s top private schools about sport coaching and I mentioned that phrase and he was mind smacked and wanted to know where I got it. It was just one of those things I developed back then, so he asked to use it as it was much briefer than what he used.
Lesson for me from your cast was I was reminded amount some of my own philosophies outside the business world and they can (and should) work equally as well in the business world. The choice is ours to influence the future.
thanks for the reminder.
Kind regards
Jason
November 4th, 2008 at 9:51 am
Jason-
Great story! Thank you. Most effective business and management practices are rooted in real life truth.
Mark
November 8th, 2008 at 12:55 am
Thank you for these excellent tools and resources. I’m a fairly new and motivated manager, and the casts have been so helpful. I wanted to share a recent experience I had with a new hot shot coworker who has been consistently nasty and condescending to me and others in the dept. I have listened to your casts on feedback several times and I was recently put to a difficult (self) test.
I received yet another condescending email from this particular coworker and had just had enough. My newly acquired skills on how to give feedback hidden away in my back pocket, I began typing an email to the tune of: who do you think you are, I have seniority, how dare you talk to me like that, blahdey blah blah. Catching myself, I clicked select all, delete and replaced it with, “may I give you some feedback on this email?”
After I clicked send, without consciously deciding to, I felt myself calm down: physically, emotionally, everything–just calmed down. I remember thinking, well now, you can’t really send an email like that (asking if you can give feedback) then launch into the bitc…I mean coworker. I almost literally felt myself rising up to meet the high road. It was one of the most amazing professional experiences I’ve ever had.
It went fairly well from there, I even pulled out some “Feel, Felt, Found”! As a result, my relationship with coworker has changed dramatically and we have you to thank. Thank you!
November 8th, 2008 at 4:36 pm
KKacmarcik-
Sounds like it went well…if only it hadn’t been in writing! [That’s a feedback no-no.]
Mark