Paige Finn DohertyFounding Partner, Behind Genius · Founding Partner at Behind Genius Ventures

do not be afraid to give people feedback

12 Nov 2023 · 1 min

Watch on YouTube

0:42

In this short YouTube monologue, the speaker shares personal experience with an executive coach who emphasizes the importance of giving feedback. She suggests reframing feedback as "clarity is kindness" to make delivering tough, constructive criticism easier. The speaker argues that without clear, concise feedback, individuals cannot improve, and leaders risk parting ways with employees who never knew how to grow. She stresses that leaders, especially startup CEOs, need to become comfortable with discomfort and with delivering direct, actionable feedback to foster improvement and avoid unhelpful exits.

Chapters

I do have an executive coach and she's amazing and she's the one that reminds me of that constantly. So I have to give her a shout out because I think like that's, you know, people are really afraid to give feedback. And if you reframe it as like clarity is kindness, it just makes it a little bit easy to give sometimes the tough feedback that you need to give. Because if you don't give 'em that tough feedback, they just, they can never improve. And then unfortunately, if you have to part ways with somebody, but they never even knew what they could have done to improve, then you're not helping them either. So like really getting like comfortable, first of all, getting comfortable with being uncomfortable is key as I feel like CEO of a startup, but then also, you know, getting comfortable with giving that tough feedback in a very clear and concise way.