Leadership lesson on feedback and listening. #310 OTWTNW with Therese Huston

I have wanted to capture all my learning from the podcast 'on the way to new work' so here is a starting point of a recent session with @ThereseHuston and @MichaelTrautmann.

 Learnings about giving feedback and listening from Theresa Huston.

Listen here on Spotify: #310 Therese Huston | Cognitive Scientist at Seattle University and Author

Minute 15: 'The shit sandwich' How many of us learned to give feedback like that? - Meaning you say something nice then the criticism and then again something nice.

Are you doing this? Does it work?

The tricky thing is that the manager often only want to give the middle part. It didn't matter if you stop with praise or criticism. You need to start with very detailed praise and mean it! Alternatively some people just give it as it is, but that is not working with everyone.

 Top Performers need more feedback - they have the most options to move on. They want to engage with you on interesting problems.

Minute 24: Two way conversation: 'Listen first. Feedback later.'

'Managers who are rated best in giving feedback are the ones who ask for the perspective of the employee (not starting with the sandwich)'. 'Side with the person, not with the problem.' Imagine a triangle: there is the person the problem and the feedback giver. Worst feedback experiences 'he cared more about the problem, than he cared about me'.

Minute 35: Why are we so bad at listening? We are already poorly trained when we are kids. Figure out what is the most important to the other person, when listening? (Not what you found most interesting) Can I feel, what they feel, when they talk?

Minute 40: Women get crappy feedback. Women get positive feedback about taking care, while men get feedback about taking charge.

Minute 45: Unconscious bias around 'women's intuition'. In reality women feel they need to backup their opinion more with data. Men give more gut feeling. My comment: I have been pushing my (predominantly) female teams to base their arguments more on data (#performance marketing) which seems to even back this when discussing with e.g. sales decision makers who are predominantly men. Theresa says it is nearly impossible to change the stereotypes, listen to what she recommends! So what would you recommend?

#onthewaytonewwork