Welcome to the new manager podcast. I'm your host, Kim nickel. Hello and welcome. I'm glad you're here. And I specifically want to welcome you if you are not a manager yet, or if you are a manager and you have been managing people for a very long time, I mention this because in the last week, I've had a couple of conversations with folks, who said, oh you have a podcast for new managers. I'm not a manager, but I really want to hear Hear what you have to teach and say about it.
And so I just specifically wanted to shout out to you folks who are not officially people. Managers of course you're welcome here because you'll learn things that will prepare you for that next level and you'll learn things that you can start to use. Now even before you have officially a team or a person reporting up to you. And this also is true if you have Managing people for a long time and you might simply want a fresh perspective or a new way
of managing people. My objective is that for you listening wherever you are in your career and want to equip you, to people better with people at work. I really think that is how we manage effectively, as when we think, in terms of I have to, I have to be a person with other people. How do we do that? At within the work context. So welcome. I'm glad you're here and I want to talk to you today about
feedback as a service. And I think of this topic as something that helps to relieve the pressure. When you think about giving feedback, what I see most often is that people tend to either become over controlling or over avoidant. Meaning, you're giving feedback In an attempt to Over Control, a person's behavior and how they do things, this can turn into micromanaging. Or it can also look like simply being very reactive.
The reason I'm giving feedback is because something is happening that I don't like, and I need to change this in this other person now. So we get over controlling over prescriptive overbearing, we Just overdo it, on the control side, the corollary to, this is being over avoidant, which is when we avoid giving feedback, we don't do it because it's uncomfortable. We are avoiding a confrontation.
We are avoiding. What feels like conflict, we're avoiding the other person's emotions or worried that they won't take it. Well, we're avoiding our own. Ins because we think we want to do it, right. We're already judging ourselves. Like, I don't want to do this. I don't know how to do this effectively. So when you're a manager, either one of those will get in the way of working effectively together, and it just gets in the way of having an enjoyable work experience.
Let's be honest when we're either avoiding giving feedback or we are trying to overcome Our control of giving feedback, both of those create really difficult, like a really difficult environment to do best work. So one story that comes to mind that I wanted to share about this with someone, I was coaching and she had been friends with someone at work and then she got promoted to that person's manager and she was really struggling with trying to balance. How do I give feedback to this
person who is my friend? But they're also. They also report to me and like they're not like something is not happening that needs to be happening. And this person really demonstrated both of these. So first she was overbearing and oh, like I need to help my friend out and give her a very precise and specific feedback about what she needs to do. And that was not met well that created friction. So then she overcorrected and was like fine, I'll just be completely hands-off.
I'm going to trust you to figure this out on your own, but then didn't provide any perspective or ongoing, you know, like response at all. And then, at the end of the half of the year, did the performance review, and was like, yeah, like there are all these things you didn't do, right. And this person was understandably, very upset. Like the why didn't you tell me? And this manager had felt so
conflicted and so confused. And so, you know, frustrated and sad because the sense of Like I want to be a friend to this person but I'm also their manager and how do I give feedback? Like I just felt she. She really demonstrated something that a lot of us go through when we're trying to navigate, like how do you give
feedback? So what I offered to her and then I want to offer to you is this perspective of feedback as a service and what's nice about feedback as a service is, it starts to ease the pressure from Instead of thinking, like I have to give feedback correctly, which gets you into self-judgment instead, you're thinking of part of my job, as a manager is to be of service to this person and give them feedback, I need them to know what they're doing.
Well, I need them to know where they might be off track with respect to our agreed upon goals and expectations. I need to communicate with them so that they have the information they need. They need to be able to make adjustments, so they can be successful so that if they need extra support, I can understand what that is and I can see where resources are available for them.
When you think in terms of feedback as a service allows you to connect more clearly with the compassion part of, being a human interacting with another human. But it doesn't end tangle you in a friendship Dynamic, which sometimes can happen. You can give feedback as a service to somebody. Whether there they are your friend or not. And this is so helpful because there will be times when you work with people that you really might not be friends with. And that's okay.
You can have different personalities, different styles. It might be difficult to find a sense of rapport with them, but when you're thinking in terms of feedback as a service, it kind of brings you back to the sense of we're on the same side, we're on the same team and it's okay for us to be different kinds of people. Like my role as a manager is not that you like Like me or that we want to be best friends.
I mean if that happens great, but my job as a manager is, I really am here to be of service to the people on my team, to the organization in which my team sits to the customers and clients that we serve, I'm here to be of service to the community and the ecosystem that I am a part of in my professional life. And I found that that perspective makes it a lot easier to wrap your head around. Why am I giving this person feedback? What am I trying to accomplish? What is the outcome?
I want this feedback to facilitate. Am I looking for a behavior change? Am I looking to build trust? Am I looking to Improve my own communication skills around uncomfortable or difficult topics feedback as a service. When you think about it in that way, it changes, you know, the lens through, which you're looking, as you're thinking through how you want to give
feedback to somebody. So let's think about, you know, when we're not thinking of that, what tends to come up is will feel pressure or afraid of messing up? And how we give feedback will feel fear about damaging the relationship. If I give the feedback wrong it'll create more friction. There can be a fear that if I give them this feedback, it will create more problems which can
create that sense of avoidance. I don't even want to have this conversation, and if you're managing, people who have more subject matter expertise than you, This one can also like if you're in this Dynamic it can create so much self-doubt and so much insecurity. It will flare up because you'll think who am I to give this person feedback? They have more subject matter expertise than I do. Maybe my feedback is wrong or if they challenge me I won't know
what to say. All of that can come up and get in the way of how and when we give feedback also I want to I want to remind you like you don't want to rely on feedback as something that happens only in reaction to a problem. I really think feedback is one of the kind of most misunderstood opportunities for how we build relationships. You can use feedback as a way of Highlighting. Hey I trust you. I see the work that you're doing. Did you realize you're really
skillful at this? The way I've seen you, you know, do this thing. Like I just want to make sure that you see that because it's so effortless. You might not realize that this is a strength or a skill that you have. You can use feedback to build relationships that have nothing to do with things being wrong, or not working. And when Back is something that we only use in reaction to a problem. Then, of course, nobody likes it.
Of course, every feedback conversation, feels fraught with pressure and a sense of things going wrong and, you know, are like we get defensive our sense of defensiveness flares up, and we think I just need to explain myself more. This person just doesn't understand And it we does. It's not it doesn't have to be like.
That is really the short story. It like it doesn't have to be like that and when we think of feedback as a service that also allows us to think in terms of, hey, there's something I need to share with you. That might be hard for you to hear. But it's important that we talk about it because, you know, I care about what you're doing, I care about the work we're doing. I want to make sure that this
isn't a surprise. Let's talk about this now and figure out like what's going on. It allows us to access this perspective of like I mentioned, like I'm on your side, we're on the same team. And another thing I like to remember is that at work, we We have these daily regular relationships with people that are not forever relationships.
I mean, maybe you become friends with folks that you maintain for a lifetime, but very often you're working with people not of your choosing for a period of time. That is uncertain. And my perspective is, we want these relationships to be as Healthy and satisfying and effective as possible. The sense of hey, as long as we're here working together, let's make this good. So feedback, as a service is, I want to be able to communicate
to you. Like what I see, I want to be at to be able to ask questions if things are not on track. I want us to have a relationship that is highly functional. Highly, Of and ultimately satisfying for all of us. I think that's best both for the humans within the organization but ultimately the organization benefits from that as well and when we think in those terms it allows us to connect with compassion to release the sense of pressure.
And to really have a sense of clarity about like, why are we here? What are we here to do? Right. We are humans. We are human being together in this organization and we all want to have the best experience we can and that might look different for all of us and that is, okay. Comes back to feedback as a service. Here's why I want to share this with you because I think it will
be of service to you. This also helps to check us If you're feeling offended if your sense of self defense is flaring up. If you're feeling like you want to give feedback as a kind of small Revenge, I want to be really honest, sometimes we give feedback because we're angry about something and we think I'm I know exactly what I want to tell them. I'm going to tell them in this way, I'm going to be strong about it and we bring a little bit of a fight. Into this conversation.
It's normal. It is human. It is not always effective and it is not sustainable that kind of motivation, always ends up burning out because it is something that we talk through, like, in your mind over and over and over again. So not the best use of time or
energy. But, hey, I'm acknowledging that we are humans and sometimes we do this when you think in terms of feedback as a service, It can provide you with that touch point or that point of reflection for yourself where you can be honest and say, yeah, I really want to say this in this way because I am angry and I there's a part of me that wants, you know, to lash out because I want them to see this. And I want to get a little bit of Revenge on them for the way
that they've been behaving. Instead when we think, okay what is it that I want to create here? Maybe what I want to create is some understanding, maybe what I want to do is clear the air like what is happening here. Maybe what I want to do is really have an honest conversation about, what are we doing? And how do we want to work together? Maybe we need to reset the relationship. Or maybe we just need to understand is this person. Okay. I've shared this story in the
past so you I don't remember. For which episode but someone that I know had gotten this really hard performance review, very hard feedback and when they thought about it and were like, what is going on like why am i showing up and not being a great manager, but they realized was in their personal life. They were having a really hard time with in their marriage and so it was taking all of their emotional energy.
She and then when they came to work, they just didn't have the emotional bandwidth to be present, compassionate strategic. They showed up reactive impatient very like authoritarian in a micromanager kind of way. And so you know, once they're able to see oh I can see where this is all coming from it, allowed her to really understand and then shift the way that she Is behaving and building relationships at work. So this is really what I wanted to share with you today.
Is this idea of feedback as a service allowing you to connect with your sense of compassion, allowing you to not become entangled in friendships, or in grudges, to stay aware that we are on the same team. We are on the same side here. We are only here for Or a limited time.
And as long as we are let's make this good being willing to offer feedback from the perspective of I want to give this to you to be in service of you and what you're doing and what our objectives and goals are I have enjoyed sharing this with you. Thank you so much for listening. I'll talk to you again next time. When you're more effective at work, you're happier in your life. And when you're happier in your life you're more effective at work. I can help go to my website.
Kim nickel.com and sign up for a coaching consult, it can get better.