CAR Feedback

Hi and welcome back to Ed and His Cupboard Door. This is for Chris and his request about giving feedback when it's difficult or you're finding yourself a bit frustrated. So there's two things I want to talk about with it. One is the fallacies to think about when you're approaching feedback and one is the car model on how to deliver feedback. So let me tell you a little bit about what's really important with feedback is what, how we approach it and some of the challenges that we have when we think we're trying to do the right thing with feedback. And there are two fallacies, I believe, that get in people's way when they're giving feedback. The first of that is that they think that it's also an opportunity to teach the person. Now, that's understandable. When we see lots of frustration coming out of either them or ourselves, they're not doing a good job, the company is performing badly, the team is suffering. We want it to change, we want it to change now. So we get a bit frustrated and we want them to learn. Problem with that is that we try to do too many things at once. And feedback is the stage before they decide ultimately if they're worth keeping to learn and get better. But the first thing they need to do is raise their awareness. So the first fallacy is that teaching is not feedback. Right? Feedback is a time to raise their awareness. It's not the time to educate them on what to do. That comes after, so still important, but it comes after feedback. The second one is a little tricky and that's honesty. I'm going to put a question mark over it because I do want you to be specific and it's not about being dishonest. But honestly, sometimes, if I was to be honest with you about your performance, well, I tell you what, you were absolutely, you know, you could lose it, you could be frustrated. And you know intuitively that if you say that, you're probably going to get defensive response, you're going to get kickback. And so being honest with all your thoughts and feelings is not what's being asked for with feedback. What is being asked for is to be specific about what you've seen, where. This is where I want to introduce you to the car model on how to give feedback. So in the car model you'll notice it's context, the situation that where the events arise and there's always a context that's given rise to some issues. The action is what this person specifically did in that situation, in that context. And the result is what happened as a result of that behavior or that action. Importantly, you'll notice two question marks after actions and result. Because you can always ask them first. Indeed, I recommend it. What they thought they did and what they thought the result of those actions were. So you can lead by asking them, but there'll also come a time where you need to share it. Okay, so you want to tell them a bit about the context, what actions, be specific and what result came of it. So here might be a quick example. I noticed you dealing with an angry customer on the phone the other day. It went on for a while. I heard you say roam wasn't built in a day. Your voice got louder and I heard you say yes, but three or four times during that 10 minute call. What do you think was the impact? So that was the actions and I could ask them about the impact or I could say the result was it went on for another 10 minutes and then it got escalated to me and I had to handle the customer and it looks like we might have lost them. That is car context, action, result. We can then go and talk about what you might do differently next time. But that's a separate piece from feedback. Feedback is about awareness of what's happened. Fixing it is what they're going to do next time. And ideally they'll think of ways. Okay, so that's it. The fallacies of feedback, don't try and teach them. Be careful of being honest and use the car model to help you deliver those difficult messages. And be specific about the actions that the person has done and let them know what you saw so that you can talk about the results that happened as a result of that or as an impact of that. Okay, so that's Ed and his cupboard door about giving feedback in difficult situations. If you liked it, follow me on facilitating change. And thank you very much. Hope it's useful. Of course. Give me your feedback. Thank you.