The Feedback Shift: Moving from Directives to Co-Active Growth | Joel Silverstone

Welcome everyone to the Leadership in Quarters podcast, the interview series where leaders come to share their perspectives on different leadership topics. I'm Josh Selden, and today's guest is Joel Silverstone. Joel began his career as an actor before discovering his strength in helping people connect and influence others. He built on that foundation to develop a career focused on communication, leadership, and impact. He is the founder of TFR, This Feels Right, a facilitator, coach, and speaker. And over the past 25 years, Joel has worked with organizations such as Microsoft, TD Bank, RBC Bank, BMO, Quiddle Ortho, Hyundai, Bayer, Abbott, and the list goes on. Joel helps leaders and teams communicate with clarity, empathy, and confidence. His approach focuses on practical tools that professionals can apply immediately to improve conversations and outcomes. He is currently preparing to run his first full marathon in New York City in November 2026. So welcome, Joel.

Yes, thank you. Yes, I went for my run just before, and I realized I've got a long way to go still.

Well, you're a lot closer than I am, so I definitely applaud you for the marathon.

Thank you.

Well, I'm glad to have you here, Josh.

Thank you for having me.

Oh, of course. I'm really glad to have you here, and I'm excited to talk about motivation and feedback because I think this is something that a lot of people really touch on and can impact and they experience in their day-to-day work. So this will be a great topic for everybody.

Absolutely.

We'll first talk about motivation. When we talk about motivation, can Can you talk about why we sometimes see people and leaders fail to motivate their team when they use their own logic and values and their own perspective to try to motivate people instead of what's important to others?

I can make this a really quick answer because you just said it in your intro, which is their own logic and values. And that's the biggest challenge, is you're in your own way, because most of the time when people are communicating They're stuck because they think, why can't they think the way I think? Why don't they get it? I thought I was being crystal clear. And that's such a big challenge for us to get over that. If I'm a logical thinker and I speak really fast and I make decisions really quickly as a leader, but the person with me is more amiable, more team player, more deliberate in how they speak and how they think, I get frustrated as a leader as opposed to— Ah, maybe I should just slow down my rate of speech. And maybe I should build a bit of rapport with them. Maybe ask how their weekend was or some way to make it more emotional and not just facts-driven. And also, the other thing about leaders is often people became leaders because they were self-driven, because they were self-motivated. And that's also another frustration for them when people maybe don't have those natural abilities or natural inclinations be self-driven and they can't wrap their head around it. So those are the main things. And as you said in your question, their own logic and values gets in the way.

And I got to imagine, as you said, a lot of the people that become leaders are these outstanding executors that are self-driven, that get there. And in their mind, then they say, I did all of these things. This is what motivated me. This is how I got here. Of course, this is what they have to go do. But that's not always true with everybody.

No, like, here I am training for my marathon. And so that's obviously a value of mine that's important to be self-motivated, to be self-driven, to have a goal. And then I might meet someone on my team that doesn't share those same self-driven self-goals, and maybe they're just in it for the paycheck, or so they think. So my job then in giving feedback is really find out what does motivate them. It's got to be more than a sense of a paycheck. It's got to be a sense of purpose. And find out what that purpose is and maybe help them uncover it because they haven't uncovered it. They can go into coaching, but that's another reason for feedback. Start with that place of curiosity.

Right. And curiosity is so important. What way can somebody who's in this mindset— I'm in this mindset of you should be able to do this because this, of course, is motivating. You should be motivated by this process. And when it's not, how does somebody pause and do that mindset shift to go, okay, rather than force this view of motivation that's not happening. I'm going to ask these curious questions to understand what really motivates Joel.

It starts even before you go into it, which is you should already have an intention, because it's hard when you're in the moment, which is, I really need to correct them. I really need them to fix this. I really need them to apply this immediately. And instead, if you switch that or reframe that mindset and go, I'm going to go from a place of talking about the future, maybe not the past, as an example, and find out what does motivate them, what is important to them. And the second part, Josh, I think you'll fully agree on this. And it's no surprise to anyone listening. It's listening.

Yeah.

So many times, the clues and cues are given and they're missed because the leader is just busy thinking ahead of that great question that's going to uncover the motivation when the person might have just said it, which is, my family was here and we went on this trip to Disney and— oh, clue, family is really important to this person. Let's talk a little bit about that. Maybe that ties into a sense of purpose. I don't know yet, but let's go down that path and see what happens.

It's a start. And I think you touched on a couple different things. One is there's a phrase I love that somebody I worked with used to say all the time. It's that we were given 2 ears and 1 mouth. We should use them proportionately. And as you said, I don't think we do. We just like to talk and talk or think of what we're gonna go talk about next. And I think that ties to the remark you made about focusing on the past instead of the future. Because as soon as you say something and Joel says something that triggers me from my past that I can now use as either a motivation or an example to get this person motivated, my mind is now over here and I'm not present in our conversation. And now we're not having a conversation about what needs to happen for the future. I'm stuck in the past.

It does. You know, that's a great point, Josh, because it triggers things in your own past. Where that goes back to, again, your values. And so you get lost in your own thoughts. And really, it's focusing also on the past of the other person where you already go in, you've already written the script. And I see leaders do this all the time. They've written the script out for what exactly is going to happen in this feedback session. I'm going to say this, and then they're going to counter with this, and then I'm going to say— they've written the whole script. And I've seen leaders often do this, which is, I'm giving you feedback. And they actually say, okay, so I know you're hesitant to change the PowerPoint. You feel that there needs to be a lot of data in there. I get it. And you're probably thinking data is important and you're probably gonna say to me, Joel, data is important. So that person's not even talking.

Yeah. I love when people have those conversations and they start it with, Joel, I know you're not gonna like this, but you're already starting that process and you're already telling somebody how they're gonna react before you even start the conversation.

Absolutely. And again, going back to your original question about things that get in our way of our logic and of our values, it's also that we're writing the script. But the same person, the person receiving the feedback, already when they see that message, Josh, I've got some feedback for you at the end of the day, meet me at the end of the day, their mind starts spinning and they start writing out a script about what this could be about as well. Yeah.

And there's a phrase that says, imagination is so much more dangerous than reality. Because that's what we do. We just start writing the script of how something's going to go, and 95% of the time it's nowhere close to how our mind makes it out to be.

And you've limited yourself because you're not open to it, because exactly that, in your mind the prophecy will come true because you wrote it, basically.

Exactly.

I love this example from the film Jaws. Do you remember Jaws? What was interesting, I didn't even realize this, is that we don't even see the shark until an hour and 21 minutes into the movie.

Really?

The whole time it's just that anticipation. Do do do do do do. And that makes me think about feedback, which is feedback feedback feedback. It's like the same tune that's going.

Yeah, that's awesome. I've never thought about that. That's really funny. And it is funny how that works because you see those movies. I mean, obviously a tangent, but you see those movies and you're so excited to see the main villain, the main character, and then they don't show up till like the last 20 minutes of the movie.

That's right. But you didn't even know that because your mind filled in the blanks. And that's the other part of storytelling about ourselves is we fill in the blanks. And that's what they did a great job with Jaws. We filled in the blanks as to what this monster in the ocean was.

Exactly. Now, on the topic of feedback, I feel like there's multiple ways to get people to do things. Motivation, as we've talked, is one of those big ways that if you can make somebody excited and energized about what they're doing, they're just gonna run off and do it on their own and run through walls to get these things done. If that doesn't happen and they're not meeting expectations, a lot of times you give feedback to kind of steer them on the right track. What generally stops a leader from having that feedback conversation in the first place when it's necessary?

Well, what stops them is a lot of things. Again, writing the script. 2 is afraid of confrontation, afraid of being the bad person. I hear this a lot from leaders, which is, how do I give negative feedback but make it sound positive? And the answer, you can't. But if you go in with that intention of, look, I'm not here to correct you. I'm focused on our future. I'm focused on collaboration. I'm focused on your growth. And you then have to give something very specific. So you can't say, Josh, you need to be more confident. Okay, thank you. That's really helpful.

Yeah.

Josh, when you did this at that moment, this is what I noticed and it had this impact. And I wanna talk about some ways that we can improve that. I'd also wanna get your perspective on that, and then I'll share my thoughts as well. So give a specific moment and also say that they will have a chance to share their perspective as well. But you have some thoughts as well. So it's not being directive, but it's being more persuasive or more influential, which is, we're going to have a conversation and we're going to look at this problem together versus making you the problem. I noticed something, and this was the specific moment. So it triggers their memory of what it was. This was the impact. This is how it landed. This is what you observed. Can't dispute that. It's what happened. And then we want to keep it safe, which is, I want to get your thoughts on this, and then I'd like to share my thoughts as well.

I like that, that it's kind of a proactive situation where you're not just talking at the person and it's one way, and it's, Joel, you did this, do it better. Okay, I'm gonna leave the room now. It's more of a conversation. It's a very interesting way to approach that, which I think a lot of people don't. I think a lot of them have that one-way conversation, and that may be what turns them off initially to even starting that in the first place.

It's scary because what you're doing is you're feeling like you're losing control by opening it up to being a 2-way conversation. You hear leaders say this all the time, which is, oh, if I ask them what their perspective is, then they're going to go in this spiral and then I got to get them out of the spiral. In that spiral, if you could pick up on a couple things and see that as what is the block or what is motivating them around that, and then tie that into where you want to go with that. And the problem is that if someone's going in a spiral, you just tune out and you go, I've heard this before a million times. And I hear that from leaders all the time. What do I do if they keep saying the same story over and over again? It's probably because they haven't felt that they've been acknowledged. That's why they keep saying the same story over and over again.

Right.

They felt they haven't been heard and understood. So, do that even as a step because feedback is not coaching. Feedback is a small step that we could take towards our goal. We don't have to get everything done right here, right now. We could say, let's work on that PowerPoint. And now that you've agreed that we can lessen the data and use more your presentation style to bring the ideas to life, let's try it out. And then let's meet next week and see how that goes, or practice on me first before we do it. Some small steps that we can do to reinforce what we just said.

I think those steps are so helpful because a lot of times too, you find people have that spiral because There is some complaint, help request barrier that even that person doesn't know how to verbalize. Of course, if they ask the same help request, the same question, and they're not being heard, that's for sure one of the reasons why they do it. But also, sometimes they just don't know how to ask for what they actually need. So they have this spiral. And if the leader actually, as you said, sits there and listens, they may pick up on something that the person's not even aware that they need in the first place.

Oh, Josh, if it wasn't for my plastic surgery, there'd be a tear here because you nailed it. Again, it goes back to really listening to the person and if they felt really listened to, because you picked up something that people love to learn about themselves. That's another reason for feedback. That's why self-help books are so popular. I'd love to learn, what do you think of me? But what do you think of me and how I can learn and grow from this?

Mm-hmm.

And if 2 people go into that feedback session with that idea, which is, look, it's about learning and growing. It's not about when we were kids, we never got called into the principal's office because we got an A.

Right.

And so, that's the idea of feedback we think of right now. We got to change that dynamic because it has a huge impact on the culture when an organization knows that there's a feedback model that's conversational and that's focused on learning and growth versus— disciplinarian.

Yeah, I think with all of that, setting the stage for what the feedback's supposed to be and having that agreement up front is very important. And as we talked about the motivation, also what I have found in my past is understanding the person you're giving the feedback to and how they like to receive feedback is also important. Because I'm the type of person, my leadership style, my management style is I'm not gonna have a feedback session with you and make you walk out thinking that You just got a gut punch, that I just tore you a new one. Because tearing somebody down doesn't help them grow. It's the opposite of what helps them grow. But I've had other people that I've managed that have been like, listen, I've played sports my whole life. I've been told that when I'm not doing well, just do better. It's very blunt. It's very direct. I don't need any beating around the bushes. I want you to be blunt and direct. Compared to some other people that want still that growth perspective and that feedback, but not as in your face with— This is what it was. Go do better. And then that's it.

And, and, and because those people who were the athletes, when they become leaders, that's how they're gonna give feedback. And that's what the trap that they get into. But you picked up on such a huge point, which is even before you have feedback is exactly what you just said, which is how would you like to receive feedback? Do you wanna receive it in the moment? Maybe you were just doing a presentation and it really failed miserably. Do you want me to give feedback right afterwards? Do you want some time to digest as an example? Would you like us to have some rapport? Would you like me to be more direct? Yeah, like, how would you like to receive feedback? Josh, as you said, sets the tone for every person is different at this point until we become robots. But at this moment, we're all different.

Yeah, until the takeover.

Until the takeover. That's right. Yeah.

And I think part of that, and you just touched on it, the timeliness of the feedback is important and understanding what each person appreciates because I've been part of tours at our plant where we've had upper leaders come through and they've toured our manufacturing lines. And I've had leaders literally during the tour pulling somebody aside and giving them feedback on something. And I'm like, you want to give feedback in the moment so it's not too late, but that's way too in the moment. Other people shouldn't be able to see those kind of things. But then you also have people who are like, I don't know if I should give them feedback now. Joel looks like he's having a bad day. I'm not going to give him feedback today. And then it's 2 weeks later.

Yeah.

And then you get back to your original points where it's like, yeah, you wanna be specific and you wanna give examples. And by the time you're giving these examples, somebody's like, I have no idea what you're talking about. I don't even remember what I had for breakfast this morning, let alone what happened 2 weeks ago. And then it doesn't land cuz you waited so long.

Absolutely. And you'll hear people say this all the time, which is, I can't believe they gave me this feedback in my performance review about something that happened 6 months ago. And it's like, why didn't you tell me then? Now you tell me this? So, absolutely, timeliness is so important. And as you said, when you're talking about a specific moment that happened 2 weeks ago, there's been so many things that have happened since then that, yeah, possibly they forgot about, unless it was a really impactful moment. Yeah.

And we talk about, and you mentioned this before, about leaders not liking conflict. But a lot of times, we're focusing on ourselves as the leader instead of the person that we're trying to help. And again, it's the mindset of this is a helping grow conversation. It's a growth conversation. And you gave a great example. I'm going to go give feedback 6 months later at a performance review at the end of the fiscal year about something that happened 6 months ago. Not only does the person not remember what happened and they can't really internalize the feedback because it happened so long ago, but as a leader, I just let them continue for 6 months possibly doing what I'm giving them feedback on to go fix, which is a huge detriment to the person.

And as a leader, they've lost some respect for you. Like, Josh, man, have a bit more courage.

Exactly.

Maybe you're a pushover.

Okay.

All right. I guess I can get away with this for another 6 months if I do this. But what you're saying about going into it with the confrontation, and as you said in my intro, in a galaxy far, far away, I was a professional actor. But one of the biggest tips from acting, which I still use and share with leaders, is Take the focus off of yourself. Stop thinking about yourself and your lines and your character and put the focus on the other person. What that means is be fully present and just allow what's gonna happen. Be in the moment. Listen to what they're saying. Make eye contact with them. Don't be thinking about your lines 'cause if you're thinking about your lines, then you're gonna be acting. It's gonna seem really weird that someone says something and then all of a sudden you go, ah, but— But all of a sudden you come to life. Be in the moment. So take the focus off of yourself. Put the focus on the other person.

And I think that has so many more impacts than people think. I think everything you just said is extremely important. And we already talked about kind of presence as well, because being present in the moment is so important. Because if the person does take this personally, or they do get defensive, I mean, feedback— the phrase that I'm always used to is feedback's a gift. Well, people don't always love receiving feedback the way they do gifts, but whatever. But If you're possibly having a conversation, if you're having a bad day, Joel, and I'm like, I got to give you this feedback because your day's about to get worse if I don't, I have to understand that this probably isn't going to land great. It may just be one extra thing on top of what you're dealing with today. And if I do that and I'm sitting on my phone or I'm not really paying attention, it's just this huge other impact alongside what we're talking about in the first place. And it's not great from a Human perspective.

No, no. And that's where the humanity has to come back, especially before, as you said, before the takeover. But that's what's going to separate us is how we deliver this, how we understand what's important to the person, and even acknowledging, look, I know you've had a really tough day, and this has gone on. And I get that. And I have some ideas here moving forward on how we can improve ABC. And again, I want to get your thoughts on this. And they just might say, you know what? Today's not the day. Let's talk about it tomorrow. Perfect. Great. Let's do that.

At least you've started it.

Yeah.

And how— I have my own opinion and thoughts on this one, but in your mind and in your experience, how does tone impact those conversations as well?

A couple of years ago, I did a talk at Disrupt HR and it was called Your Acting Sucks, which is exactly that. When we sugarcoat our tone. Like we pretend we're interested, we pretend we're empathetic, and it affects our tone.

Oh no!

Oh, that must have been really frustrating. And it's so obvious that, yeah, tone is so important. And back it up again, it's at the very beginning. If you don't go in with an intention of, my goal is not to change this person, my goal is to be able to move them.

Yeah.

And to be able to move them in a way that it feels like They're getting value out of this. This is something that's helpful. This is something helpful to them. This is something helpful to our organization. This is something helpful to our relationship. And to borrow an acting technique, it's not the lines that you say. It is about the intention. And the intention drives the tone. So if you're not clear on your intention, your tone will mirror that.

It's so important too for this person to have just their normal authenticity because hopefully your people know who you are. You're not this different person with a mask on when you're at work. And so, To your example with the different tones, when you come in and if you're this normally serious or semi-serious person, you've got this bubbly tone as you're trying to give somebody feedback, it's not going to come across as authentic and it's just going to completely fall flat.

Or if you never talk about personal stuff and you go, hey Josh, how are the kids? Yeah, good. Where's this going? Yeah, here comes the shark. Yeah, feedback, feedback, feedback.

Or even on the other side of it, and that's where I think we need to check ourselves and what kind of day we're having, because I've also seen it where Somebody's there to give some very simple feedback, but they've just been having such a bad day that their tone and approach is way on the more aggressive side. And so, Joel, you and I can have a great conversation, a great relationship. We sit there and now I tear you a new one over something tiny and minor. And maybe I'm not doing intentionally, but that's the tone I bring to the conversation because of the day I'm having.

Well, Josh, this is gold, by the way. This is another important part, which is What I always like to say is that somebody has to be the adult in this relationship. And hopefully it's you, the person giving the feedback, and hopefully it's the person receiving the feedback as well, that you can also be the adult in this relationship. But being the adult means that you have to have self-awareness and check in before I deliver this feedback. Am I clear on my intention? Am I calm? Did I just get off the phone or come from a Zoom or Teams meeting and I was really frustrated? And then because I had the feedback session scheduled right after that, I got to go through with it? No, I'm not ready, and I'm going to send our relationship back 10 years with this person if I go on that call with that— with them.

Yeah, I think that self-awareness is so important, and you bring up such a great point that it's okay to change and pivot. Everybody thinks their calendar is like the Bible and we can't change it, but if you just had a terrible conversation, you get off the phone, you're like, oh man, I've got this feedback session, I just have this touch point. Push it a half hour as long as it works when you're not screwing up the other person's schedule, because you will do yourself, as you said, more of a disservice trying to keep on schedule than you would pushing it and making sure the right you shows up to give that feedback.

And the same thing also, even if you're not having a bad day, if you're not prepared in just some things that you want to say with the feedback and you're like looking at your notes, or like you said before, you're checking your phone, it's like, come in prepared that you're fully present for this person, that you've given some thought. And that already shows a lot of value. You've given some thought to this conversation, even if it is a brief 5 minutes.

That's great. And you also keep using the word intent. How do you make sure at the end of the feedback session, the intent you walked in with actually landed the way you intended it to and the impact wasn't different?

Well, I think one of the biggest surprises when I do the feedback courses is that the ending is so important. And the ending is because we let it go often, which is, Josh, you got this, right? I know you got this. So you're good, right? You're smart. You got this. You're good. Go.

Yeah.

You have to ask a question at the end. If you wanna create any kind of change, the other person has to own it. And then also, you know, if what you've been doing so far has landed or it hasn't landed. So at the end, it's a simple question as, Josh, based on what we discussed, what's one thing you wanna put into practice from this? And when do you want to do that? And how do you want to check in? But you have to ask them what they got out of this, what they're going to implement. You can't tell them, so based on this, you're going to put ABC into process. You're going to clean up XYZ. And it becomes a laundry list of 10 things. Get them to say it. And if they say it, they own it.

It gives them some buy-in into the whole conversation and some control coming out of it.

It becomes also a verbal contract. They said it. And so if they didn't implement it, then you could say, based on the last session, I heard you say at the end You were going to put XYZ into action. I'm looking forward to seeing when that's going to happen because you had said you were going to have it done by this date.

That makes a lot of sense. I have truly enjoyed everything we've talked about so far. Do you have any final thoughts that you want to share with everybody before we wrap up?

Josh, thank you so much for having me on the show. And I think, yeah, feedback is so important. And one of my final thoughts that I just want to leave is soft on the person, Hard on the problem. Don't make the other person the problem. Look at the problem together. So soft on the person, hard on the problem.

I love that. Soft on the person, hard on the problem. Hopefully everybody can internalize that and take that to heart because I think that is another step in the human factor before the robot takeover that we have that comes over.

Yeah, exactly.

I love that. Like I said, I truly appreciate everything. Anybody who wants to either get in touch with Joel or find out more about him, I'll have his information on the YouTube page, on the description of the podcast for this episode. So you can go and do that and any links that he wants to share with everybody. You can like, follow, and subscribe to the podcast found on all the podcast platforms, to my Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok at Leading Quarters. And you can email me with any questions that you have for myself or for Joel, or any ideas you have for future episodes. Or if you want to be like Joel and be a guest on future episodes, you can email me at leadingquarters@gmail.com. But again, Joel, I really appreciate everything that you did share today. It's so important. And I know sticking to the theme of the podcast, we kept it relatively short, but there's so much to talk about on these topics. And even just us scratching the surface with this was, I think, really helpful for everybody. So I truly appreciate you doing that today.

Thank you so much, Josh. This was a lot of fun. Appreciate it.