Jenny Cole on Building Your Leadership Skills: Giving Consistent and Constructive Feedback

Jenny Cole: 1:02

Hello and welcome to Positively Leading the Podcast. I'm your host, enny Cole, and I'm thrilled to be here with you again this week to look at one of the subjects dear to my heart, and that is feedback and why it is so critical to your role as a leader to be skilled in both giving and receiving feedback. Today, we're going to be looking at three types of feedback affirming feedback, coaching feedback and that more corrective or evaluative feedback. Feedback is absolutely essential in an organisation because it's essential to human beings. We need to be receiving feedback to know that what we're doing is right and we cannot make the assumption that we're professionals. So therefore, we don't need feedback anymore. We get paid, don't we? No, we all need feedback to stay on course, and you're going to hear me talk a bit today about course correction, just making sure that people are heading in the same direction, because it only takes somebody to get off course by a percent or two a year to all of a sudden be 10% off course and heading in a completely different direction. But before we talk about giving people feedback, I want to just talk quickly about do you ask for feedback on yourself? It is one of the preconditions for ensuring that feedback works. You can't say to a team member can I give you feedback if you've not first asked for feedback on yourself, because you say could I just give you some feedback? And what they're thinking is oh God, let me give you some feedback, sweetheart. We need to be able to trust that it's a reciprocal arrangement and that we can both give and receive it.

Jenny Cole: 3:03

Feedback identifies our blind spots. It shows our vulnerability, but also a growth mindset. So when we ask the people that we line manage for feedback, we are modeling a culture that says I don't know it all. I can improve, I can get better. I'm curious, I'm growing too. And the really amazing thing about feedback is if you get some feedback from a staff member and you do something about it, it builds trust faster than just about anything. So let's imagine that you sought some feedback on yourself and somebody said I really like you, you're a breath of fresh air, you're really enthusiastic, but your staff meetings run too long. And you get to the next staff meeting, you say I've got a bit of feedback that the staff meetings are running too long, so I've implemented a time keeper and we're going to stay to time.

Jenny Cole: 4:05

What happens is that person who gave you the feedback says that was my feedback and they've done it, and they tell their peer or partner or colleague that was what I suggested and it builds trust really quickly. It says not only do I ask for feedback, but I'm going to do something about it Now. You can't do something about all of it. Ask for feedback, but I'm going to do something about it Now. You can't do something about all of it, but it's really important to implement something really quickly. It shows that you care about the feedback and it's not just an exercise and it's one of the things that I teach in my launching into leadership. But I also encourage all of my coaching clients to do is to regularly ask the people in their team that they line manage what is something that I do well, what is something that I could do differently, what is something that works for you or the team? Nice, open-ended questions and when you first do this, you get beige feedback.

Jenny Cole: 5:03

People will give you very indirect feedback, but that's okay. They don't trust the process yet and after a while you will get some really good quality feedback that you can act on. But we find it really scary to get feedback. Some of us more so than others. Do we actually want to know what people think? Well, here's the rub People don't see our intentions. So you might intend to be kind and progressive and supportive, but people may read your intentions differently. They read your behavior, they don't read your intentions and they judge you on your behavior. And sometimes we don't know what we're doing and we have blind spots, and so the purpose of feedback is to identify those blind spots and move you into growth.

Jenny Cole: 5:58

I want to share one of my most interesting pieces of feedback. We get feedback all the time, and most of the time we just ignore it. But I remember when, many years ago, I was a principal, but I was also the head of the WA Education Support Principals Association and we would advocate for students with disabilities, and it was a pretty key time in education. There was no curriculum for kids with disabilities, they were being excluded, the behaviour policies didn't include them, etc. Etc. And so I spent a lot of my time at a system level in the state, advocating really hard, and also at conferences.

Jenny Cole: 6:42

You know being very passionate about including children with disabilities, and one afternoon at one of these conferences, we had finished for the day and we were standing with a glass of wine and a colleague of mine called Margaret. We were talking about something and she said oh, I don't know how you do it. You always seem so angry and I was stunned. So angry and I was stunned Out of all of the words that had ever been used to describe me. Angry was not one of them. And so I do what all good people do when they get feedback that doesn't sit right In my mind. I went well, you're clearly delusional. And I blamed Margaret and I disagreed and I internally stomped around. I thought no, that's not right, that's ridiculous. I don't know who she is, that's stupid. And then I realised over time that what she saw as anger I had intended as passion. There I was thumping the table saying it's not fair, our kids deserve better, and she saw that as angry. And I thought if Margaret saw it as angry and she was on my side she was another ed support principal then how were the department and the union and others that I was trying to influence, how are they seeing it?

Jenny Cole: 8:03

So feedback doesn't often come nicely wrapped with a bow, but it is a gift nonetheless, and so it's sometimes worth trying to find the gift. As a friend says, it's sometimes wrapped in sandpaper, but there is a gift in there anyway, and I say that feedback is a treasure hunt, not a witch hunt. We're not trying to blame the other person. We're trying to find the little bits of gold inside what it is that they're saying. Look, sometimes it's not always possible to find the bit of gold, but when you get some feedback from someone you know, be it a parent or someone that you manage, just saying thank you for sharing that with me goes a long way. In fact, I always say the correct response to feedback, both good or bad, is thank you. And what comes after that is also useful. But thank you for sharing that with me. I'll take that on board. It's always a good place to start. But let's talk about what feedback is.

Jenny Cole: 9:10

Feedback has two fundamental purposes. It's affirming which is that's working. What you're doing is great. I like the way that you do that. Do more of that. That's on the right track. Good job, affirming thumbs up feedback. The other is do differently, and there's a whole range of do differently from. That's not working as well as it should. Maybe you should choose another strategy, or that's not how we do it around here. Our values are X, y and Z, or maybe you could try so anything that says that's not working the way it could, or it should, or as well as it could be.

Jenny Cole: 10:00

And then moving to action, and not all feedback is negative, and today I'm going to outline the three types of feedback that I think that you, as leaders, should be focusing on, and they are affirming feedback, coaching feedback and evaluative or corrective feedback. So let's talk about the affirming feedback, coaching feedback and evaluative or corrective feedback. So let's talk about the affirming feedback. That's the do more of this that's working, carry on. This is when you reinforce and recognize positive behaviors or things that are moving in the right direction. It's all about saying I see what you're doing and it's making a difference, be it small wins or major outcomes. Affirming feedback boosts morale. Graduates and those new need far more affirming feedback than your veterans, because they need more positive reinforcement that says you're on the right track. Keep doing that.

Jenny Cole: 11:01

So let's think about some ways that you could use affirming feedback every day. You could say I really love the way that you left really quality handover notes for your relief teacher. That ensured that she knew exactly what she was doing and your kids had a great day. So it's very specific. It is not good job well done. It's not vague feedback, it's very specific. Or I've noticed you always meet our deadlines with really high quality work. That reliability really helps us stay on track. So in that example, we're talking about deadlines, reliability, quality all in that one piece With affirming feedback. We need to be giving this at least three to one, probably five to one. You need to be regularly and consistently to one. You need to be regularly and consistently noticing things that your team are doing that is good and affirming them. And if you've heard me talk about expectations, you need to tie your feedback to the school or your personal or your team expectations.

Jenny Cole: 12:16

The second type of feedback is coaching feedback. This is when you're guiding someone to improve or develop. The goal here is growth, and so this is the course correction. Either someone doesn't know the skill that they need to develop or they've gone slightly off track and are no longer doing what it is that they're supposed to be doing. It could be a strategy that you're implementing in your school. It could be a way of managing behavior, and this is just where we're trying to be constructive and supportive of the person. It's not just pointing out what needs to be different, but actually supporting the person to do it, as a coach that is alongside them and guiding them to do that.

Jenny Cole: 13:10

If you want to think about a sports analogy, it's not just the coach standing on the side of the swimming pool yelling you need to swim faster. Instead, they're saying I noticed your stroke was a bit like this. You need to turn your arm slightly differently that way, and perhaps you need to be more conscious of what your feet are doing in the water and as that person practices that, you are giving them feedback, affirming and correcting as you go. Feedback affirming and correcting as you go. And so this is, in schools, exactly what instructional coaches should be doing. But also if you're a leader, a holder, a deputy this is what we're talking about in our one-on-one conversations If you've just noticed someone's gone a little bit off track, pulling them back, or if there's something that they want to develop, and you can sit alongside them and ask questions and guide them.

Jenny Cole: 14:02

For example, imagine that somebody in your team struggles with planning, you, as their line manager, might say something like look, I've noticed in our last couple of conversations you've got some really good ideas for what you want to do with your year nines, but I can see that you're struggling to get that down in your planning documentation. Is that something we could work on together? Would that be useful to you? You'll notice I asked permission and so this is not always, but it's a good habit to get into.

Jenny Cole: 14:38

With coaching, feedback is to first ask permission. Would you mind if we worked on this? Is it possible for us to work together? Is this something that you have as a priority? It's not always possible to ask permission because we don't always want them to say no. We know that sometimes people will say no, no, I'm not interested in that. So don't ask permission if you think the answer is going to be no and it is something that is really important to your school or organisation. You might want to do that slightly differently, but it's always nice, as the receiver of feedback, for someone to say could I just give you a little bit of feedback on something that I noticed the other day? I've got a couple of friends and colleagues who we have very high trust relationships and I will send them a little voice message. That said, I listened to your podcast and I'm wondering if I can give you some feedback about X, y and Z and they in retrospect will say I read your love note on the weekend and I'm wondering, you know, if I could give you some feedback. I felt like it was a bit long, got a bit waffly. I love that and that's what high trust relationships can build, and I understand that you don't always have them in schools.

Jenny Cole: 15:57

I want you to ask yourself before we get onto corrective feedback, we've looked at affirming feedback. We need to be doing lots and lots and lots of that to help people stay on track. Then there's the coaching feedback, which is helping them, working alongside them, coaching them to grow and develop and to continue to build so that they stay growing the way that we want our teachers to stay growing. I want you to ask yourself how often this week have I given very specific affirming feedback to a member of my team, very specific feedback? Maybe it's feedback that is specifically relating to my expectations, and if you haven't, here's my suggestion Write the names of the people of your team in your diary or in your calendar and, next to them, I want you to catch them doing something and write some feedback for them and deliver it. So maybe one of your staff members ran an awesome excursion and was very clear in their planning and kids loved it. Notice that and, at the appropriate moment, give that feedback Ideally one-on-one, but the good thing about positive feedback is people will accept affirming feedback if there's other people around. You don't need to announce it at a staff meeting. The point is have you been giving affirming feedback? If not, write down everybody's names, remind yourself, make it a bit of a habit.

Jenny Cole: 17:32

Now let's talk about the corrective or evaluative feedback. This is the stuff that we hate. Corrective or evaluative feedback. This is the stuff that we hate. This is our challenging conversations. This is our difficult conversations, our hard conversations, our high emotional conversations. These are the ones that we avoid. I give whole workshops on this, whole days. The intention of this is not to train you how to have a hard feedback conversation. Of this is not to train you how to have a hard feedback conversation. Instead, I'm going to give you a few pointers about what this might look like and how you might prepare. I've included our downloadable planning sheet, which are all the things that I like to consider all the aspects, all the issues, all the thoughts going around in my head, all the things that I need to get out before I have one of these conversations.

Jenny Cole: 18:25

So, even though I believe that these conversations, where possible, need to happen, in the moment almost none of us can have these conversations unscripted, and I can almost guarantee that there is a conversation that you need to have you should have had that you're avoiding with somebody already these. Quite often they're repeat offenders. If they've been difficult before or if they've been late before or if they've rolled their eyes in meetings before they're going to do it again. And so I say plan and script so that you're ready for the next time. Despite having taught how to have difficult conversations for years, I still find them really hard. I still plan, I still script, I still prepare, I still gather the relevant information and I still practice. So once you've got the facts, think about how you're going to approach the conversation.

Jenny Cole: 19:27

As I said, I advocate scripting it, and finding the right tool for the right kind of difficult conversation is important. If it's really high stakes, with particularly high emotions, practice with a trusted colleague. It's important to set the right tone so that the other person feels safe and respected, and there are some strategies for making it safe before the conversation so people know what the conversation is about and what it's not about. It's also important to think about the timing, however. It's almost impossible in a school to get the timing right. You don't want to have a hard conversation first thing in the morning and send someone into a classroom of kids. You also don't want to get a teacher at the end of the day who's overtired and exhausted and dehydrated. That is not a good time to have a conversation. So it's often tricky to have those calm, cool, collected conversations in the right place.

Jenny Cole: 20:32

Whatever you manage to do in terms of making it safe and finding the right time, I want you to remember that the purpose of these conversations is dialogue that gets to a solution, and we're not telling people off. It's a collaborative problem solving. How can we do more of something? So if a person's late I noticed you were late on Tuesday and I noticed you were late last Tuesday too. It's starting to become a bit of a pattern how can we make sure that you're on time next Tuesday? So it's about moving forward.

Jenny Cole: 21:12

I want you to think about the acronym FAST. Good feedback is fast. The F is literally for fast. These conversations shouldn't take an hour. In the beginning, you should be able to give your feedback, have a conversation, move forward and not take three hours to do it. So, literally, f is for fast, but it's also focused. Often people for whom we need to give some corrective feedback are doing more than one thing. That could probably have a conversation. Try and stick to one thing, one thing in the beginning. My example about being late they were late once and they were late again. That's a pattern that's really useful. You know, I noticed you yelled at this kid and I noticed that you raised your voice last week. I'm wondering if this is now a problem. How can we talk about this so that you have the skills to do other things rather than bellow at kids when you're upset? So one thing fast as in quickly, one thing fast as in quickly, but F as in focused.

Jenny Cole: 22:17

The A is accurate facts, not opinions, not judgments, not understandings, but facts. What did you actually see? What do you actually know? What would a camera capture? And so if you didn't see your teacher being late last Wednesday and you said, can I just talk to you about you being late last week, somebody told me that you were late all of a sudden. The conversation is not about being late and doing something about their behavior. It's about who told you who.

Jenny Cole: 22:51

Who am I having a very different conversation? So so accurate. Not judgments, not the stories that you've made up. You're not diagnosing them with anything. It's just in this meeting I noticed you talked over the top of that person. That's not how we do it around here. Can we have a little chat about how you can do better in the future? That, my friends, is a really good example of why you shouldn't do these conversations unscripted, because that was not perfect. The facts part was so what did you actually say? What did you actually notice? What did they actually do?

Jenny Cole: 23:28

So F-A-S, solution focused. So solution focused is what is the outcome that you want? So I want you to be able to be in that meeting and raise your objections without talking over the top of somebody. That is the solution. I want you to be able to get to work on time so that you have plenty of time to prepare and the kids are ready to learn. Solution focused is part of the planning sheet that you can download. What do I want? What is it that needs to be different? Not going back over the problem, but what is it that I want instead? And last is timely, we need to have these conversations as soon as possible after we notice the behaviour happening.

Jenny Cole: 24:18

We need to give this feedback quickly, both the affirming and the corrective feedback. We cannot wait and I often say we know that when we're training a puppy, that we give them really good feedback when they've done the right behaviour, that we give them really good feedback when they've done the right behaviour. We don't wait till September and smack them on their bottom and say this is for when you weed on the carpet in March and this is for July and this is for when you chewed my sock in August. We don't do that. We give them good, positive praise and correction when they're doing the right thing and corrective feedback when they're not doing the right thing. I don't want you to see your staff as puppies, but the theory is exactly the same. We need our feedback to be fast, focused, accurate, solution focused and timely, both the positive feedback and the corrective feedback. And I just want you to remember that fabulous, fabulous quote from Brené Brown that says clear is kind.

Jenny Cole: 25:27

Sometimes, the kindest thing that you can do to someone is to give them some good, clear, actionable feedback. Give them some good, clear, actionable feedback. It's the kindest thing that you can do, because if feedback is to affirm something went well, that's good. That means that they can continue doing it, but this is not as good as it should be. That do differently feedback. Most of us want to be successful and if we give them good, clear feedback that what they're doing is not being successful. So rolling your eyes and talking over people in meetings is not endearing you to your colleagues and that's not how we work here. That's not the culture that we want. So do it differently. That's kind. You're not fitting in here by doing the things that you're doing, and we want you to fit in. We want your opinion, we want you in this team. Let's see if we can find different ways of behaving when we're in a team so that we can all work together. So in conclusion, let's recap the points we've covered.

Jenny Cole: 26:35

Feedback is an essential tool for any leader. The stats say something like 90% of our employees desperately want feedback, yet only 15% of leaders give it consistently. That's awful. People want to know how they're going and in fact, the Hay Group once said one of the reasons why people leave their job is my boss has no idea what I do and I don't get any feedback about how I'm going. We also talked about the importance of structuring a feedback conversation, and, though I didn't go into scripts today, I did talk about the importance of planning and being really clear about what the conversation is about and what it's not about, and I really encourage you to download the planning sheet and that will give you a really good understanding of all the sorts of things you need to consider before having a corrective feedback conversation.

Jenny Cole: 27:33

We talked about the fact that we should be giving far more affirming feedback and then, next up the pyramid is our coaching feedback, which we should be doing as often as we possibly can in those one-on-one meetings, in our classroom observations, as instructional coaches however you do it in your school we need to be coaching people so that they improve their performance and stay on track and then, when necessary, as quickly as possible if we have to, we need to give some of that corrective or evaluative feedback, and the reason it's called evaluative is because we make a judgment that says this is good enough and you're not here and we need you to be here, and in between is a gap, and that's the gap that needs to be filled. But remember, feedback is a two-way street. At the end of my coaching session, I often say to my clients was that useful for you today, or are you clearer on what needs to happen? Or was there a question that I asked that was particularly useful or not useful to you? They are questions where I am getting feedback about my performance as a coach, as a leader. You could be asking people at the beginning of the meeting I want to get some feedback at the end about how I ran that. So if you could give me some feedback about how I'm going, that would be awesome. Or at the end of the one-on-one meetings, just simply saying was this time useful for you today?

Jenny Cole: 29:07

Thank you for joining me on today's episode of Positively Leading. This won't be the first time that we talk about giving feedback, because I know you're all desperate for the more challenging feedback, but I really do believe that it starts with good quality affirming feedback. So, if you do nothing else for the rest of the term or for whatever time period, find ways that you can give affirming feedback to the members of your team Good, specific, affirming feedback about what's important to the team and what you notice that they did really well at. If you've enjoyed this episode, please subscribe and rate and review and, even better, refer it to your friends. I love it when people say a friend of mine shared your podcast and I'm really enjoying it. That's all for this week. We shall see you next week. Stay safe. Bye for now.

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