What do you believe most contributes to missed performance expectations in the workplace? Too lofty of goals to begin with? Not enough talent in place to do the work? Insufficient effort or a lack of incentives to properly motivate? Perhaps. Yet, my experience is that the more significant culprit is one of two things: 1) a leader’s failure to clearly communicate expectations upfront or 2) a leader’s failure to provide proper feedback and coaching. This is not too surprising as these are challenging skill-sets to learn and can take a lifetime to master (effective coaching in particular).
There are a few key ingredients to demonstrating good coaching as a leader. First, coaching begins with practicing curiosity and a leader will benefit from adopting a coaching style that values inquiry more so than advocacy. This is unnatural for most managers who like to speak from their experience and advocate solutions based on their personal expertise. Yet, if leaders place a premium on listening before speaking, they are more likely to build trust with their coachees and help them develop their own solutions to challenges. Perhaps this highlights one of the greatest differences between management and leadership. Managers seek to control outcomes by problem solving and offering solutions to their people. A leader realizes his or her ultimate goal is to create more leaders. Thus, he or she ask questions that inspire and challenge. Leaders seek to build capacity in the coachee and lessen dependency on the coach’s expertise.
Indeed, if a leader must do one thing exceptionally well to be effective, it’s coach! Yet, because this is such a huge topic of discussion, we cannot possibly cover all that I would like to share with you in a short article. Thus, I am going to focus on one of the most difficult coaching conversations that managers seem to get wrong more often than they get right; delivering constructive feedback and then coaching towards improvement.
Oh the agony we feel when preparing for this coaching conversation! Do
we directly deliver the feedback and simply hope that they take it well? Or perhaps we should indirectly address the feedback, which will likely lower their defensiveness? No wait! Of course. We’ll go with the “feedback sandwich” and deliver a compliment, followed by the criticism, and finally, another compliment to keep their spirits high and save the relationship! While it must be noted that most everyone likes to receive feedback differently, I believe there is a universal approach that can set you up for success. One that reduces anxiety for the feedback giver, lowers defensiveness in the receiver, and ultimately inspires change. I call this framework: The Five Pillars of Constructive Feedback.
1. Create the right mindset
Why is it so unpleasant when we have to give constructive feedback to others? All that anxiety we often experience has to do with our own ego and how we might be perceived. Will they think I am a nitpicking idiot? Will they think I am just a clueless leader who isn’t seeing the whole story? Or maybe, I’ll be seen as the a’hole manager who is a demanding tyrant! Remember that providing constructive feedback to another has nothing to do with you, and it’s not about “fixing” the other person. Constructive feedback is a service and you are engaging in a conversation to help the other person reach his or her potential. If your mindset is to “fix” everything, your voice will communicate judgement and trigger defensiveness. Yet, if your mindset is to “serve,” that will also show up throughout the conversation and create trust. Nothing opens persons (coachees) quicker to your feedback than when they sense you genuinely care about them. To help promote this mindset when delivering constructive feedback, remember without humility, expect futility.
2. Ask permission
“May I give you some feedback?” It’s a simple question, but how often do we jump straight to the assumption that the other person is both ready and willing to hear us out. After all, you are there to “serve” them and you care about their performance. Why wouldn’t they want to listen to what you have to say? Yet, maybe the other person is not in the right frame of mind. Perhaps they are having a really bad day and no matter what you say to them, they will see your feedback as an attack. If you ask the question upfront, you are giving them power and they must choose to give it back to you. In that seemingly insignificant exchange, you have already established a mutual respect that will make the feedback recipient more receptive to you.
3. Remember SBI
This is a tried and true process that works like magic when done right. SBI stands for Situation/Behavior/Impact, and I find it incredibly useful in helping me to remember what’s most important when giving feedback.
(S) ituation – This is when you anchor feedback in time, place, and circumstances and it helps the receiver understand the context of your feedback. For example, “remember yesterday afternoon in the staff call, about halfway through the meeting, Bill asked me for my thoughts on our financial outlook.”
(B) ehavior – This is when you are specific to the behavior or non-performance you would like to see changed (again, so the other person may meet their full potential). Think of it like replaying a movie for the other person. For example, “As I began to communicate the importance of adhering to the monthly budget, I noticed you rolled your eyes slightly and then began to check your phone.”
(I) mpact – This is the key to your success. If you just focus on their behavior, expect defensiveness to ensue. Yet, if you speak to the impact on you or the team, you are creating space for a more empathetic conversation. Most people care about whether or not they are disappointing others. If you speak to how the behavior made you feel, you move the other person out of their head and into their heart. For example “This embarrassed me, as I feel it made us look disjointed in front of the team. Others picked up on the tension and I felt as if I was scrambling to regain credibility with them.”
4. Get curious and create spaciousness
Now is the point in the conversation where you might transition from advocacy to inquiry and facilitation. You have delivered your feedback, now give them a voice! How did they view the situation? How might have you contributed to their reaction? Are their deeper concerns that need to be addressed? Know that this is a tender moment for many, and you can possibly expect some level of defensiveness to ensue. Give them space to be heard and acknowledge their point of view. This doesn’t mean you have to agree with them, only that you empathize with their feelings, while respecting their point of view. Note that a common diversionary technique is to broaden the conversation to where their performance is no longer the focal point. Your job as a leader is to keep the heat on them in a respectful and supportive manner.
5. Coach towards the desired performance
It is important when you work with a coachee to determine a clear path to success together. However, there is no need to give him or her all the answers. It is important they discover on their own how they can improve. You might ask, “how do you believe we could avoid this challenge in the future?” Then after hearing them out, you might offer, “If you have an opposing opinion in the future, I honestly want to hear it rather than have you feel like challenging me will offend me. My expectation is that we have a united front when engaging with the larger team in these meetings, and, if we have differences, we should hash them out in private beforehand. Is that an unreasonable expectation or can we both agree on this moving forward?”
This post is a sample chapter from my new eBook “ACTIONABLE! Leadership: Develop Your Inspirational Ability, Motivate Teams, & Achieve Extraordinary Results.” Claim your free copy by following the below link and start taking action towards meeting your full leadership potential.
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Leaders must recognize that this instinctual response to avoid accountability lives in their DNA; one can’t avoid it! Rather than attempting to circumvent this natural hard-wiring, it is best to bring awareness to it. Leaders see their reactivity, own it, and then prevent it from hijacking their thinking any further. 
This post is a sample chapter from my new eBook “ACTIONABLE! Leadership: Develop Your Inspirational Ability, Motivate Teams, & Achieve Extraordinary Results.” Claim your free copy by following the below link and start taking action towards meeting your full leadership potential.
2. Fake it until you make it – The pressure is on and you can feel the anxiety permeate the team as the reality of the challenge sets in. All eyes are on you for answers, yet you have no idea what to do next! No worries, countless successful leaders have been in your shoes before. What did they do? They pretended they had a clue. Often what is most needed in these situations is a sense of optimism and reassurance that everything will be ok. You must be the energy that is missing in your team. While you may not have a tangible next step figured out yet, you can provide a confidence that, in working together, the team will figure it out.
3. Stand taller, breathe deeply, speak more slowly, smile more – The body and the mind are closely connected. If you change little things about how you hold yourself in physical space, it can change the way you think and how you experience the world. For instance, mindfully standing taller with your chest higher and your shoulders back will cause your voice to deepen and your words to have greater gravity. Composed leaders also practice breathing deeply into their belly vs. allowing short, chest high, breaths which promote anxiousness. Composed leaders also mindfully speak a little slower, as they don’t have a need to rush to their conclusion or worry about losing their train of thought. Finally, composed leaders smile in the face of adversity, and, in doing so, project their confidence and optimism onto others. Research supports that smiling invites connection and increases a leader’s influence.
4. Crush negative self-talk in the moment – It’s not just you. We all have that voice in our head that talks to us sometimes. Most annoyingly, it shows up most often right at the moment when we are assessing whether or not we can do something challenging. We hear things like “that will never work,” or “what were they thinking putting me in charge of this task?” That voice in our head is constantly telling us we are not good enough. Why does this happen? Well, that’s your ego talking and it’s very protective of you. If we try and fail, our ego bears the brunt of that pain and it tends to not like that very much. So it works hard to keep itself in a comfortable and risk free environment.
This post is a sample chapter from my new eBook “ACTIONABLE! Leadership: Develop Your Inspirational Ability, Motivate Teams, & Achieve Extraordinary Results.” Claim your free copy by following the below link and start taking action towards meeting your full leadership potential.
Google is a company that embraces this philosophy masterfully with its cultural philosophy of “design and iterate.” As one of the world’s greatest learning organizations, they are not afraid to make decisions that will expose areas for improvement. They consistently are first to market with fresh, yet, imperfect products, because they know that consumer feedback enables the best re-design possible in the shortest amount of time. So why don’t more companies and/or leaders embrace decisiveness in their operational decision-making?
1. A desire to be correct – Who likes to be wrong? No one I know. When we make bad decisions, it negatively impacts our ego and self-esteem as we feel incompetent or inadequate. This is a really lousy feeling and a strong motivator to avoid making decisions until we are certain they are correct. Yet, we all know that completely avoiding mistakes is simply unavoidable. The best leaders embrace their vulnerability, and choose purposeful action over protecting their ego.
2. A desire to please everyone – When we make decisions that impact others, we want everyone to get on board with them. Yet, the best leaders know this may never happen as disappointing others is simply part of leadership. Leaders avoid wasting time on lobbying for 100% agreement and instead work to maintain trust with opponents. At some point a leader must say, “I have to make a decision here and we are going with this. I appreciate your input and now I need your support. If we need to adjust as we go, I assure you I will make that call accordingly.”
3. A desire to procrastinate – Why do we all procrastinate? It feels good! That’s right! Making a decision is hard and there are often losses in doing so. Having our options open feels good. Thinking our boss will have that answer we need tomorrow takes us off the hook, and that feels good. Yet, delaying decisions is just delaying outcomes and learning. Leaders seek not to be comfortable, but to drive results.
4. A desire to hide – Sometimes decisions have real consequences. Perhaps jobs are on the line, or maybe significant financial risks are at stake. The pressures of making these decisions can cause one to want to hide from responsibility. However, do not let a fear of responsibility impact your ability to be decisive – the most successful decisions happen because individuals had the courage to make them to begin with. One of the most powerful ways to show leadership is to demonstrate courageous decisiveness when others are unwilling to step up to the challenge.
This post is a sample chapter from my new eBook “ACTIONABLE! Leadership: Develop Your Inspirational Ability, Motivate Teams, & Achieve Extraordinary Results.” Claim your free copy by following the below link and start taking action towards meeting your full leadership potential.
1. Walk Your Talk – Call it what you like; walking your talk, practice what you preach, put your money where your mouth is, or simply doing what you say you are going to do. They are all different ways of stating a fundamental leadership truth—a leader’s credibility is a function of how well he or she follows through on his or her promises. It seems so easy, yet, life often gets in the way. With so many stakeholders to please, leaders can easily get in the habit of over-committing themselves. Then, when they fail to deliver on a commitment, they lose credibility. It is the small commitments that we need to be particularly mindful of. The well-intentioned, “I’ll call you back in 15 minutes,” to a client or “Let’s chat about your professional goals next week” to a subordinate that can get us in trouble. When we fail to deliver on these small promises, we also increase the likelihood to miss on our bigger commitments. That’s because we are practicing a lack of credibility and it becomes easier over time to shift our personal standards. So how do we build the habits that lend us greater credibility? Leaders practice managing the expectations of others, and then they over-deliver on those expectations. First, work with your stakeholders to agree upon realistic commitments, even if they are not initially satisfied with your proposed conditions for success. Then, work extra hard to exceed those expectations. For example, if a client wants to talk immediately but you are in a meeting, promise to call them back in less than 15 minutes. They may not be happy, but then manage your time so as to call them back in just 5 minutes. You have now exceeded their standard and have protected, if not enhanced, your credibility.
2. Clarify Expectations – Not fully understanding a leader’s expectations is one of the most frustrating things a follower can experience. It is likely that you have felt firsthand how demotivating this can be. You work your tail off on a project and proudly present your efforts to the boss, only to have him say “this is not what I wanted!” Credible leaders never leave the definition of success a mystery. They clearly explain, upfront and directly, their expectations of followers. The key to doing this well is to communicate expectations by explaining your intent as a leader. A well communicated intent purposefully avoids telling followers “how” something is to be done. Followers can then demonstrate initiative and create the conditions for success by exercising their own creativity. So what then does a well communicated intent include? It is made up of three focused components: task, purpose, and endstate.
3. Trust but Verify – After you communicate expectations, follow up does need to happen. This doesn’t mean that you hover over people’s shoulders while they perform their tasks and then inspect their work. No one appreciates micro-management! Instead, leaders provide the proper resources, get out of the way, and trust that great work will happen in their absence. Yet, it doesn’t end there. Leaders verify that expectations and standards have been met. First, it’s a general courtesy to those that are doing the work. If I work hard to meet a leader’s expectations, I expect that my leader will care enough to check-in on my progress. Second, if I do a great job, it is important to me that the leader recognize my work. Finally, if I have missed expectations, I deserve to know that as well. Verification is a very important part of establishing and maintaining credibility as it validates your leadership priorities and personal values.
Growing Leaders 