Because if we're not doing this, it doesn't matter what we say. We can use the best tools in our belt, but if we don't do this first, it's not gonna go well. We have to first take inventory of where we're at, what's going on inside of us, before we have a feedback conversation. Welcome to the Managing Made simple podcast where you get a masterclass in managing your team with ease in 15 minutes or
less. I'm Leah Garvin, your host and team operations consultant. Through this show and my programs with small businesses and corporate teams, I condense a decade of experience driving Team OPER in some of the most influential companies in tech into strategies to save you time, money, and most of all, stress. Doesn't matter if you're a business owner who realize that running a team isn't as easy as you thought it would be. Are a new manager learning the ropes
or are a seasoned manager ready to up their game? Everyone is welcome to hang out with Managing Made Simple. From conflicts to feedback to delegating and more, we leave no stone unturned when it comes to what makes us love managing. Kind of hate it and everything in between. Let's go. Welcome back
to the show. I am flying high. Just got back from the California Conference for Women where I did a booth advertising the new Manager Playbook and not only did I have a line of folks coming up to get a copy and talk to me, I sold out of a hundred copies in almost an hour. It was just so exciting to see people so excited about the book. And I think what people like about it is it's something they can get for themselves if they're a new manager. Something you can get
for a team member. If you are about to promote someone into a manager or hire a manager, it's something you can give to a friend. It's a refresher. And really true to its name, it is a playbook. And so it doesn't have to be read in sequence. Each chapter dives into specific skills. It's got worksheets and exercises and tools. It's just so easy to up and reference something just that you're feeling stuck on in that moment. So if you have not gotten your copy, oh gosh, what are you waiting
for? Go to the new manager now. Wait. Go to leahgarva.com new manager playbook or Amazon. Search for the new Manager Playbook and get a copy today. And I just can't wait to help make managing easier for for you or your team member or your Friend or whoever that might be. All right? And once you get a copy and dive in, please let me know what you think. I love, love hearing from folks
on how it's helping them in their role. All right, so today, though, I want to dive into one of the skills that I talk about at length in the new manager playbook, a topic I talk about a lot on this show. And it's a topic that's whenever I do an episode on this. This is one of the most popular episode types because, folks, we're hungry to learn about this. And drum roll, please. It's feedback. Because no matter how long you've been managing,
feedback is a doozy, right? Because what we might have nailed in one situation, you know, we got a new team member, or maybe we're managing folks over different time zones or managing folks, some are remote and some are in office, or we're managing folks that are way younger than us or way older than us or some new situation. And it just throws all the rules out the window, right? Or it makes it hard all over again. I hope you do still keep
the tools, not just throw them out the window. But you get what I'm saying. Some moments it's easier, some moments it's harder, and most of the time, it's somewhere in between. And usually with a feedback conversation, it's like the way it goes is something we never expect. We prepare, we prepare, we prepare. And then our team member says something that throws us off. Like, they handle it way better than we thought or way worse even than we prepped. So we always
want to be building our muscles. Now, I've talked about my favorite feedback framework a number of times. Situation, behavior, impact. I talk about it again in the new manager playbook. I've talked about the importance of recognizing work, right? Giving positive feedback so that we kind of rebrand Feedback is not all bad. But today I wanted to talk about what we have to do even before having a feedback conversation. Because if we're not
doing this, it doesn't matter what we say. We can use the best tools in our belt, but if we don't do this first, it's not going to go well. And what is that? We have to first take inventory of where we're at, what's going on inside of us before we have a feedback conversation. Because a lot of times this is for constructive feedback. Typically when we have to deliver a message that something didn't go well or, you know,
something's been a pattern, we really just gotta nip it in the bud. Or something has to be fixed because we're the manager and we're under a lot of pressure and maybe this person's done this a bunch of times and maybe we've already said something. A lot of times we bring an emotional charge to the conversation that results in us saying the feedback's about
one thing, but it's really about something else. Or we are overinflating the significance of a piece of feedback when it was a minor thing because we've been holding on to all this other stuff. And the problem is when we don't let go and work through whatever we're carrying with us, it becomes confusing to our team member. Alarming. They're like, whoa. Like they don't really know what to expect. It's hard to calibrate the severity of this. It can break trust with our team member. They can feel
like, ah, like you know, under attack. And I don't mean that you just come in yelling at someone, but a lot of times people can read it on your face if it's not okay. They can read it in your body language, your tone. I think they say like 70% of communication is non verbal. Right. It's not just what we say, it's how we say it. It's how we're showing up. And so we do not want to give feedback until we have processed whatever's going on. Let me
give an example. Like if your team member has been late to the team meeting, they're the old coming in 10 minutes late carrying an iced coffee, saying there was a traffic jam, right? Every morning at the 9 o'clock meeting, they're coming in 9, 10, flustered, out of breath, holding that iced coffee and you're so frustrated and you haven't said something because you don't really know. You haven't
figured out what to say. You don't want to be nitpicking. And then that team member one day sends a deck out to your VP and they forgot to attach the attachment. And you see that come through and you're like this freaking person again with their bullshit. And you get triggered by that. That's not because of the email attachment. You were already triggered about this feedback you hadn't shared with them. Or maybe you shared feedback about the late thing and it hadn't gotten
better. But you're carrying this emotional charge and if you go right then walk down over that task or open up your slack or your email or your chat and you send them in a piece of feedback right after it, cause you want to Give it timely. We're supposed to give feedback right away, and you're carrying that emotional charge. This is not going to be about that attachment. Trust me. We don't want to bring that over there.
What we want to do first, let's say that attachment doesn't go through and you feel super wound up and you're like, this is it, I'm done. Let's say that happens. Taking a deep breath and saying, okay, what's really going on right now? Okay, Asking yourself, take an inventory. Take some deep breaths. What is showing up? What's here for me right now? You're gonna see. I'm really fed up about them being late. And the detachment actually really, in some sense has something to do with it. Maybe
disrespect and, like, not paying attention. But, like, this attachment's not about the being late. And so what I need to do first, well, maybe I gotta address the being late thing first. But if I'm gonna bring up the attachment, because again, you do wanna bring things up right in the moment when they happen or shortly after. So the person has that context saying, right now I can't make it about the being late because that's not what this instance is about.
And then letting that go and approaching the conversation from a different level, kind of like diffusing some of that emotion. Because if you bring in and then. Then you were late and then this happened, and this happened, the person, it becomes so overwhelming to that team member, and they're thinking, gosh, what else have you been tallying up? Right? We've been there in those personal arguments, or the other person's like, whoa, like, didn't realize that much she
hated me. We don't want to do that to our team members. And this is one thing triggering you is not the moment to realize that you had this laundry list that you didn't give the feedback, right? So this sometimes is a reflection on us too, that, gosh, I gotta be giving the microfeedback so that I'm not piling up these examples, okay? And that's not easy. And
trust me, like, I get there a lot. And I'm like, gosh, well, I get so fed up with something that I'm like, well, I gotta say it right now and I gotta do this and I want to deal with it. And actually, sometimes the timeliness, it's less important than making sure you are showing up to the conversation the right way. And I know it kind of contradicts some of the leading best practices
around feedback of giving it In a timely manner, giving it right away. But if you are showing up, like, really charged, that has so much possibility of harm to your relationship that I would wait. Maybe you need a night, maybe you need a few hours, maybe you need a couple days and saying, hey, this is. Something happened last week. We haven't had a chance to kind of connect with you, so apologies
for not dealing with it earlier. When we're communicating and sending out stuff to our VPs, we gotta double check stuff. It's really important. That's part of your job. And my expectation is that you double check and maybe you make a checklist. And when you're sending something to our vp, you say, hey, double checking the grammar, double checking that attachments are sent, and reading through it even after you send it, and giving a piece of feedback, that's just about that work, just about that
behavior. Right? Because then that person can fix that. And now you're having a conversation about that incident and how they can do better, not about, like, this whole other bunch of stuff. And then if they're late to the next team meeting next week, have that conversation about that thing. Okay? But you're only able to get there when you take stock. And, like, what are you even so mad about in the first place? So, again, this is what
we want to do before we have any feedback conversation at work. And come on, are you listening? Listening to me like, well, I should do that in my first life too. Yes. Yes, you should. Before we have any confrontation with anyone, we always should be taking stock about what am I bringing to this conversation so that we can be both communicating on the same plane. And when we do that, we start to find that things aren't explosive and they're not so bubbly. And
maybe if we're reactive, sort of, we default a little bit reactive. I know I do that. We. We figure out how to. Oh, you know, when I've sort of thought and reflected before the reaction, things go a lot better. They go a lot more smoothly, and my team member hears me a lot better. And then we start to see, okay, people are listening to our feedback. It's being actioned. There's less defensiveness. We're not in this weird kind of who's proving right
and wrong. And then you can get so much further. And when you do that, feedback feels a lot less scary. Because I know when I was managing in the corporate world, I was always so worried about saying the wrong thing and doing the wrong thing, or I was frustrated at this other thing or felt like I was under a lot of pressure, deadlines weren't fair, and all these other things were adding up all inside that when I would give feedback
because I was frustrated, I didn't want to like explode with that. I would be really indirect. I'd say, like, yeah, this thing, I guess it's not a big deal, but like, could you maybe do this next time? And it's like, what did you just ask me? Right. So I think we can either be a little bit reactive or we can say nothing. And we don't want to do either of those things.
So the self management, taking inventory. This is going to be a secret weapon for actually being able to connect better with your team member and actually being able to make a request for a shift you want to see next time that really sticks. All right, give it a try and share how it goes. I always love hearing from you. Thank you. Everyone who shares feedback. Ask questions after the shows,
suggest topics. It is so much fun to hear what you think and if you're loving the show, take 2 minutes, 1 minute, 30 seconds, give a review. It helps bring the show to more people, bring visibility to help make managing easier for more folks out there. Thanks so much and see
you next time. That's all I have for today. Thank you so much for tuning in to the Managing Made simple podcast where my goal is to demystify the job of people management so that together we can make the workplace somewhere everyone can thrive. With that said, let's spread the word. If you love this episode, please pass it along to someone who might benefit from it. See you next time.