Leadership skills and the way we communicate can empower team members to new heights. Do you give feedback or feed-forward?
We’ve all been subjected to feedback at various points in our lives and careers, and I’m sure you’ll agree that sometimes it’s not pleasant! Have you ever considered the reasons for that? Essentially–especially in executive coaching–feedback is past focused, and can be critical and very personal. As such, our receptiveness to it can be low, as we are too busy trying to defend ourselves when fight, flight or freeze engages!
I’ve been fortunate enough to be trained personally by Marshall Goldsmith, the world’s number 1 executive coaching mentor, who shared with me a simple, yet super effective system to take feedback to a whole new level….it’s called FEED FORWARD!
I’d encourage you to try this exercise with your teams and peers–it will change the way you do this forever! The system is simple: The feed forward process happens in one-to-one conversations. Pick a behaviour that you’d like to change, and explain the behaviour, e.g. “I’d like to be a better listener”. Ask for 2 suggestions for the future to achieve a positive change in the behaviour. It’s the other person’s job to give you 2 ideas. No expression of judgement is allowed by the recipient. Even when a good idea is presented, all you are allowed to say is “thank you”. No feedback about the past is permitted.
The other person then tells you the behaviour that they would like to improve (so everyone has an opportunity to get better as part of this process), and you give them 2 ideas.
The benefits to this process are numerous:
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It’s future focused;
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It teaches people to do right, rather than being focused on the wrong;
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It’s not personal, so people are more receptive to it;
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It helps everyone improve;
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When you do it in a group environment, you can generate a lot of improvement ideas very quickly;
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It’s still possible to correct undesirable behaviours, just by focusing on a forward moving positive behaviour;
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It’s repeatable – it’s not often that we change a behaviour immediately;
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It’s fun!
How much more effectively could you create behavioural change in yourself and your team by using feed forward instead of feed back?
If you would like to know more about executive coaching for you and your team visit here.
