Okay, so this week’s Six Minute Entrepreneur video is all about feedback and how to deliver it because if you can master this one technique, honestly, it will change your life.
I don’t care whether you’re running your own business, whether you’ve just got a team of people at work that you manage, whether you don’t even manage people, you’re just managing your colleagues on a level and working with them or if you’re working with suppliers or freelancers.
The ability to deliver feedback succinctly and in a professional way will turn you into an exceptionally great leader.
Now, I can still remember when I did my training on how to do feedback. My leadership coach, Kirsty, who’s worked with me for 10 years now, I remember when she asked me how I deliver feedback and I said, “Oh, I’m really good at this, I use the shit sandwich approach”.
And what I said was, “the only problem is, I deliver a wafer thin slice of ham, it’s the feedback in a massive, stotty bread when really what is needed is a steak in a pitta”
And she laughed at me and she said, “Right, Sara, we’re going to learn to deliver the steak, lose the pitta”.
If you think about it, the problem with delivering feedback in a shit sandwich is whoever it is you’re talking to, they know, they know as soon as you start talking to them, they know that there’s some feedback coming here and they’re waiting for it and they’re looking for it.
And what you’ve got to remember is, and I’ve talked about this in the past, only 7 % of the actual communication that you have with somebody are the physical verbal words that you say. The rest of it is in your body language and in your intonation.
So even though you’re getting ready and you’re doing all the fluffy stuff, the bread around the wafer thin slice of ham, they’re just waiting for that wafer thin slice of ham.
All you’re doing with all of this fluff, the BS around the shit sandwich, is you’re eroding their trust.
What we need to do is learn to really deliver that feedback in a way that is very direct, but that people will take it because you care deeply.
Now, Kirsty, my coach, taught me a feedback model called Radical Candor and it’s by Kim Scott, and I want you to go and look it up, search Kim Scott radical candor, and you’ll see a picture with two two axes, and those axes, number one, you’ve got caring personally.
And then on the other axis, it’s about challenging directionally. So when we’ve got this axis right up in the top corner, we want to be able to really care personally and give it very succinctly, really challenging, that’s Radical Candor.
Now, if you’re up in the other quadrants, this is where I used to be with my shit sandwich. What I’m doing is I really care personally, but I’m not being direct. I’m being fluffy and giving the BS, right? That’s called ruinous empathy.
And what I’m doing is I’m fluffing it up so much, it’s too much BS. Now what some people do is they don’t care personally, they just are very, very direct. And those that do that, it’s just obnoxious aggression. Or if you don’t care and you’re not very direct, basically, it’s just manipulative insincerity.
But it doesn’t matter because we’re not dealing with any of them. We’re just going with Radical Candor.
So what I want you to think about is to build the relationship, whoever that you are having the conversation with, and there’s a few of my staff that I’ve practiced this on over the years, where I’ve really had to work at giving them a lot of direct feedback, but being pretty to the point about it.
And it’s hard. As a leader, I can tell you, this is the hardest thing that I do is have to give people feedback.
But what I make sure these people know and understand, is that I care about them. I care about them as staff, but I also care about them as people. I want them to have really long, fruitful, successful careers in my business or any one of my businesses that they work in.
So basically, I am giving them that feedback because I want them to excel and when you can get a really deep, trusting relationship with somebody and you can start that conversation with how you’re giving this feedback because I want you to do really, really well, because I really care about the development of your career, I care about you doing really well at work, they will understand that you’re doing this with positive intent.
You’re not giving feedback for feedback’s sake, you’re not being nasty about it when you do it, you really have positive intent.
The only way you can successfully deliver that feedback, is to successfully deliver the steak and lose the pitta.
So I want you to really focus, I want you to look up that model and read a bit more about it. I’ve actually, I’ll be really honest, I’ve never read the full book of Kim Scott’s book. I’ve only ever read the overviews and seen the top line but Radical Candor, it is the best way you can ever give somebody feedback.
And it really relies on having that really trusting relationship so you’re going to deliver it really directly, but you’re going to care about that person a lot.
Now what I’ve done is, actually I’m going to follow this up next week because I’ve got some stories, some pure examples of where Radical Candor hasn’t been implemented and what the kickback on that’s been.
So we’re going to build on feedback next week, come back again next week and you can watch the next video of really putting radical candor into play and hopefully it will have a huge impact in your career, whether you’re a leader or you’re just an aspiring leader.