lesson feedback final
Tue, May 23, 2023 8:29PM • 25:35
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
feedback, coach, talk, give, people, culture, work, learning, players, process, leader, criticism, good, leadership, paul roos, conversation, environment, person, year, important
SPEAKERS
Paul Barnett, Ric Charlesworth, Thomas Frank, Helene Wilson, Damian McGrath, Tom Ryan, Ricky Stuart, Paul Roos, Steve Glasson, Rohan Taylor, Rodney Eade, Rikard Grip, Briony Akle, Jim Woolfrey, WV Raman
Paul Barnett 00:00
Welcome to the lessons from the great coaches podcast.
00:04
I've learned that you don't do it alone, you learn so many different things from so many different coaches. That's an elite learning environment.
00:13
How you deal with how to be resilient, how important it is to infuse joy in the process of learning. To be
00:20
a good candidate, you've got to do more than you take. What an interesting way it is to be a leader.
Jim Woolfrey 00:29
Welcome to the great coaches podcast, where we believe there is no algorithm for leadership. And so we interview great sports coaches from around the world, to try and find ideas to help all of us lead our families, our colleagues, and our teams better. As the podcast has grown, the great coaches we've interviewed have shed so much insight and wisdom that we decided to create episodes dedicated entirely to the ideas that have resonated with us the most. Today's episode is on the topic of feedback. But here at the great coaches podcast, we're working to create one of the world's best leadership libraries. From the lessons our interview guests have shared with us, you can help support our project and get access to the leadership lessons episodes, where we collate insight and wisdom from the great coaches on key topics like culture, vision, or behaviors, as well as other exclusive content by joining our Patreon community. All the details on how you can be part of this journey are in our show notes. And now on to the topic of feedback.
01:39
You're listening to the lessons from the great coaches podcast,
Paul Barnett 01:43
feedback is the breakfast of champions. If you're like me, you would have heard that hundreds of times in the workplace or in the groups that you belong to. The premise being that the best of us are the ones who dine out regularly on a diet have feedback on things they can improve. And yet in my experience, the act of giving and receiving feedback is a precarious one that needs to be treated with care and preparation, if it is to lead to performance or behavior change. And therefore it is not nearly as common as the act of eating breakfast. Feedback is, however, a critical part of leadership. And one that even now 30 years into my professional career, I still struggle with be too positive, and you're accused of being naive to negative and you can erode self belief too critical and you can alienate people. And if you say nothing at all, then you run the risk of being seen as too lenient. It's a fine fine balance. And it's one that we've asked many of our interview guests about in order to try and find better methods or routines for ourselves. In this episode, we will explore the topic of feedback, and some of the things that we have learned along the way. To start the discussion on feedback. We've chosen Dr. Rick Charlesworth. Rick is a medical doctor, a politician, gold medal winning coach, and has coached at the elite level across multiple sports. His thoughts on leadership teams, and the use of feedback to drive performance have been referenced by many of the other guests we have interviewed. Here. He talks about the importance of candor, as a leader when it comes to feedback.
Ric Charlesworth 03:26
And so for me, increasingly, that became an important thing to do to be to have real candor. And over the period of time that I was the coach, then increasingly, Canada was, in my opinion, the most important thing that you needed, you had to say what you think. And I was happy to lucky to work with a very good sports psychologist. And she used to say to me, yeah, you know, this is, this is what it's about, you've got to tell people what you're thinking, and they will appreciate it, even though they might not like it. And so that became me feel like one of the things that I was constantly vigilant about doing.
Paul Barnett 04:08
However, candidate needs to be moderated to an extent that it can be understood and acted upon by the individual. This interesting balance between being too honest and honest enough, was something the rugby league coach Ricky Stewart spoke to us about.
Ricky Stuart 04:24
You want to know your player, and how he understands different messages. So I'm going to handle a strong, strong criticism. And that's where I talk about trust. And if they trust me, they know that criticism is to try and help them. Some boys need need a little bit of criticism with an arm around them. We're all different. We all learn differently. But you know, I, I've, I've seen coaches get into arguments with players in regards to trying to critique them. You isn't critical information, which is important. And there's a confrontation. Now, sometimes wanting to be honest and tough as a coach to a player. Digging, you're right. You sometimes miss the point the players got to, there's got to be communication all the way. I think it's important to share that communication. It's not just all about the coach getting his point across, give me your feedback as a player. Now, I've heard people say to me, and I don't mind, I don't want to tell them people that don't want to hear mate. And I say, that's all well and good.
05:38
As long as you're right.
Ricky Stuart 05:40
You can always think you're right. When I promise you, it's easy to tell someone what they don't want to hear. But it's a lot harder to handle if I'm wrong. So, balance communication is really important in regards to being honest. So no, I don't think you'd ever be too honest. But I think it's really important how you handle the honesty and the feedback to people in plays.
Paul Barnett 06:03
Ricky talks about the importance of two way feedback. And many of our guests talk about the importance of the environment that surrounds the giving and receiving feedback when it comes to achieving this. In this example, gold medal winning lawn bowls Coach Steve Glasson explains that he tried to make sure that the environment when He delivers feedback is respectful.
Steve Glasson 06:26
One of the first times I'll always use is that I'm providing feedback to you, Paul, and you have made the team as Paul, we're going to have a conversation today. And, and some of the things you're probably not going to agree with. But let's talk about and let's break it down and work through it sort of thing. So really, again, having that ability to have the evidence, and then provide an environment that is respectful, and safe is really important.
Paul Barnett 06:49
There is also the element of timing to consider when delivering feedback. In this example, American wrestling coach Tom Ryan talks about connecting feedback and training as close as possible to the execution of the skill.
Tom Ryan 07:04
I think human beings love feedback. I think feedback is just really important for us. And I There are times when we don't give feedback, right? The mind can wander to what what is my coach thinking, right? So as a staff, we try to give feedback often. Right? So right in learning a skill, right? In practice and learning a skill. The moment that we recognize this skill is not done properly, right? You have to intercede in a way that's productive, and not What in God's name are you doing, but hey, listen, you're let's talk about this position, your head is a little high, your turn to the side, your hand is out of position. So feedback, and being able to communicate that instantly is, you know, is an incredibly important, but I think which which gets to just young people and competitors, the great ones, one love assessment, but two, they live in reality, right? They live in there, they're willing to honestly, and truthfully assess themselves in a way that allows an accurate plan to be put in place and assessed. And I can tell you, a lot of people don't live in reality. They don't they live in a fantasy world, they allow excuses to become the norm. And that only delays progress.
Paul Barnett 08:18
However, it can take multiple sessions for feedback to land. And so there will be the need to follow conversations up. And this may occur at a time later on. Given the distance between the event or action in the feedback is why the environment and communication style is important. Here is Rodney, Ed, Australian rules football coach talking about this.
Rodney Eade 08:41
Again, taking the feedback the right way. So having that feeling so hopefully generated enough that players will talk to some coaches or someone will come to me and say hang on this is this is happening. So it's about then having a chat with a person. So listen, I understand you're not happy about certain tingling, what are your thoughts? What are your feelings and having that conversation? The best advice I can give about having a conversation with one I wasn't very good at early I learned on the way that we've got two ears and one mouth. So listen to whatever they're saying, you may not agree with but don't interject and knock it down. Because I won't talk again. So just take it on board because that way they'll get you more understanding what how they think and what they're like, they're not going to change the world. That's okay. And they don't want them to, but okay, and then you have a an emotional response to how you can work them through. They may just be happy that they're spoken about it and go away. It'll leave them with a couple of things to think about just leave a couple of little green sprouts, just sow the seed and then you can go back to that next time rather than try and solve every we try and solve. Then you'll get emotional. Gargan means if you're clipping more you're you're bad. They're what they're saying. And then I put the head up again. So it's a bit of psychology psychology. So as a coach or an amateur psychologist, anyway,
Paul Barnett 09:59
one idea that resonated with me came from cross country skiing coach Ricard grip. Ricard coached Olympic gold medalists from a relatively young age, and so had a nuanced appreciation of the way people receive feedback from someone who might be younger than them. He talked about the importance of being present and engaging with the person you're speaking to something which can be difficult when it is annual review time, and you have back to back feedback sessions arranged.
Rikard Grip 10:26
And also, when you're giving feedback, you need to stop for a second or two session if it's good feedback. Because if you just give them a fast like hug and just run away, and or you're giving some feedback, and at the same time, you have your phone in your hand and you look 50% on the phone, at the same time that you talk to the athletes or the person, then you don't have the feeling is this for true or he says something you say, because you have to do it. For me, it's important. When you give feedback, the person that should take the feedback that really feel like you mean this, and you're into it, if you don't have time to stop or look, the person in the eyes, I think it's better to not say anything, it's worse for a few times that you give the feedback when you are in a rush, or you're still passing, you can do it for a few times. But if you do it too many times, I think you will lose the feeling that you really mean it. So for me, it's really important to stop, give the time and actually look, person in the eyes
11:33
when you talk to them.
Paul Barnett 11:35
There are other instances, though, when feedback is not between individuals, but instead given in an open environment. When it occurs like this, our guests often referenced the hard and difficult conversations that prompts. What's interesting is that sometimes our guests reference these hard conversations as a turning point in the team's performance. Here is netball, Coach briny Arkell. giving an example.
Briony Akle 12:02
I think another good thing within his playing group was sort of learning how to have hard conversations. And I think that was a big thing for us moving forward of if I tell you something, don't take it. Personally, we're a netball team that needs the same common drive in the same goal. So we had a lot of role plays, and just having hard conversations around someone saying something to your netball court was possible. Like that could be the most simple thing that I think people at this level who a lot of them have high egos and high expectations. So we sort of changed the language and really tried to sort of say, well, if I'm giving you feedback, it's probably harder for me to give it then for you to receive it. So for us it was I think that changed our world in the switch can and that no conversation was hard. It was just a conversation. And we just wanted to be better than we were yesterday.
Paul Barnett 12:52
In an environment where you want feedback to flow across the group, regardless of hierarchy, than the behavior of the leader in modeling the openness to give and receive feedback is important. In this area, I am a work in progress. But it is something I'm focused on and always trying to improve. Here is the Australian rules football coach Paul Roos, explaining how he goes about this.
Paul Roos 13:16
Again, every interaction the leader is involved. And I say this all the time, the leaders are getting watched. So you're absolutely right, the young person, Paul Roos walks into an organization just finished college, 23 years of age starts working everything that the leader, the sales manager, the CEO, I'm watching that 23 year old is watching every single movement that lead and that's what I say, when I talk to leaders, and we work with leaders a performance by design, every interaction is being watched. So you can take those interactions as a tremendous opportunity equally, you got to understand if you mess up in a in a meeting, the Board meeting, sales, meeting, review, etc, etc, that 23 year old is watching it, and to your point, the younger generation are prepared to speak up, they want feedback, they want information. Alright, so So my point is in a broad sense, without being specific in terms of exactly the company in the feedback and all that sort of stuff. Just be aware that every time that 23 year old, is watching every meeting that he's in, so what we're trying to create, it gets back to my original point before when you ask about the biggest surprise, if we're not conscious of our culture, and we're not consciously working on a culture, then that 23 year old can pick up some incredibly bad habits through that process. people yelling in a meeting, people being rude to each other people not turning up on time, and then all of a sudden, what is that young person doing? Everyone wants to act the way into a culture or I want to feel valued. So I'm gonna okay at the end of the first week, or no one was on time so I'm going to be late because I want to I want to I don't want to the first one here because that looks like a cool everyone seems to Yeah, Love each other. So I better start yelling at each other. As opposed to, we start off a first meeting, I'll work walk into as a 23 year old, everyone's on time, no one's on their phones. And meeting starts, we do a gratitude session at the start of the meeting, we do a shout out, you know, who wants to give a shout out to someone in the room, but some done something really well. And then we get into the technical side. He's watching, oh, gee, that's interesting. They've rewarded is typically when the room they rewarded five people, for speaking up at last week's meeting, they rewarded for people for being really diligent and in delivering on their word and getting their work back. I just noticed that that one person, that they gave some constructive feedback, took it really well, and said, Look, thanks very much, it won't happen again, every interaction to see what I'm saying, if you're consciously working on your culture, then you will create a really good culture that when we took a performance by design, is we take the chance out of culture, I don't leave your culture to chance, we take the chance out of culture.
Paul Barnett 16:03
Another aspect to consider when setting up a space where hard and difficult conversations are had is that of psychological safety. A topic that is so important that we dedicated an entire episode to it in 2022. Here, the Indian cricket coach WV Rahman talks about how the type of environment he tried to create allowed people to speak openly without fear of recrimination.
WV Raman 16:29
And other things that also make it very clear is to tell the players, whatever the issues are, it's got to be ironed out within that particular group. It's it makes no sense to take it to somebody and bring some arbitration from outside. Because after all, we spent a lot of time together, it's always best that we sought it out. And everybody must have that confidence to be open about what it is that they want to say, in this particular dressing room. And each of them and all of them are free to express their views. without having any fear of that might coming mean to play later on when it comes to their selection. So that kind of courage, I give them that kind of culture, I insist. Wherein if they are of the view that I'm not doing certain things, right, they are welcome to tell me because it's no guarantee for every person to be doing everything right all the time. And hence, it's very critical that even the players constantly give a feedback to the coach as to what exactly is doing right, what exactly can do better inasmuch as a coach does to the players. So once you get this kind of an atmosphere going, then everything you know will fall in place.
Paul Barnett 17:59
However, when setting up feedback sessions, you need to be mindful of the fact that not everyone will want to participate. So you need to make sure that you are educating the team on how to take and receive feedback. Rodney IID, who you heard from earlier, felt quite strongly about this. And here, you can hear him explain why.
Rodney Eade 18:19
And that comes back to the leadership. I think leadership and culture and TBN are all linked in the same circle. And you need you're one of those wedges don't work properly, they can all fall down. So good to have a voice, encourage that. Encourage them to think but we need a good culture, how that crowd and how that's developed. And then leadership, overseeing that or uniting that together to say Hang on, yeah, okay, gotcha boys, but this is the way we're going to go or give them a thought process that they think they're only where it's going to go rather than as I said, before the lunatics run the asylum. And with a leader, I can coach anything. Sometimes you gotta have tough conversations with guys. They might like room for improvement feedback or so. But there's got to be some way you deliver it and how you talk to them about that. And I think one of the education processes that we've lost with this feedback system in the world is how to take feedback. We're very good at how to give feedback, but how do you take it and how do you interpret it? And then education and talk process on that? And given the mindset into mindset, I had the mindset, the growth mindset, okay, I'm getting better. It's not a criticism. It's not putting me down, it's about how can I get better, therefore, the team's gonna get better
Paul Barnett 19:33
in either a group or a one on one environment. When delivering feedback, there is always the chance that it can lead to an escalation in emotion or worse still, as neuroscience research is now showing us lead to a fight or flight response. But an interesting idea on how to deal with this came from English Premier League coach Thomas Frank, who talked about his use of a technique called Appreciative Inquiry
Thomas Frank 19:59
but I would say in terms of criticism, I mean, of course, I'm if they had a lot of charisma that I speak to them about, if they actually are watching a lot of on social media, or they try to close down their account on fire for a period, and I try to back them as much as I can, and they need to listen to themselves, that the key persons around them not too many. And of course, hopefully, their coach, that's the criticism they need to take in. Because I'm always I will also be criticizing them if they're not up to standard. But I really believe a lot in Appreciative Inquiry, that way of teaching that I think the more positive you can be, the better of course, honest, it's been not good, because they're very normally players a very harsh, harsh on themselves.
Paul Barnett 20:50
I also liked the way Roland Taylor, the coach of the Australian swim team talked about using questions in his feedback routines. As we have heard time and time again, in the podcast, a good question can be a powerful way to raise awareness and bring about change.
Rohan Taylor 21:07
Well, I'm the developing upon reflection, I'd say, I know what works probably the best. I think that the combination of asking questions was really important, instead of just giving direction, I think, you know, so what did you What did you think about that? How did you feel about that swim? You know what, because what I thought, let's get some feedback. What do you think you did really well? What are the areas of improvement? And then go okay, and then let the athlete asked me for what I thought.
Paul Barnett 21:36
There is broad consensus, though, that when it comes to the goal of your feedback, it has to be to improve either the individual or the team's performance. And so it must, in the words of rugby seven coach, Damian McGraw point a way forward.
Damian McGrath 21:54
I think so I think how you deal with defeat is far more important than how you deal with winning, because if you project it as the end of the world and becomes a blame culture, then it's very hard to get that back. I've always been of the mindset, you know, you never lose, you learn. And that even when things have gone badly, I'll always try and a bit like the feedback in we talked about you feeding back to a losing team, you can't just say you're rubbish you are. But that's not good, you have to find something out of the remnants of defeat that points a way forward.
Paul Barnett 22:24
One of the things that can be a challenge is processing the level of feedback that you receive, then yet sifting through it. And choosing what you want to act on is critical if you want to role model, the type of behavior you expect in others. And so to finish here is New Zealand netball coach, Helene Wilson, talking about how she goes about the process of reflecting on feedback.
Helene Wilson 22:48
And the first thing I think, with that process, when you are coming out of not good results, you have to go back and make sure you get the right people around you that you are self reflecting through feedback that you get. So the process that we talk at the end of that year was the external feedback from the team and the players. But there was also feedback from someone under pendant as well. And then I made sure I had a mentor that when I reflected on all that information, I could sit down with them and kind of process it so that rather than getting consumed with the small things that happen and lots of the bad things that happen in a bad year, I could take the key rocks out of that year to try and learn from it and put it into the next year. So that learning from that year was the key information that I took forward and my planning and my communication with my team. But the way we recruited the team the next year, and it set us on a pathway a trajectory of improvement and learning.
Jim Woolfrey 23:49
You've been listening to our episode on feedback. And I hope you found a few ideas that you can bring to your own dinner table, locker room or boardroom table for discussion. Some of the key highlights for me were the importance of tailoring your honesty when giving feedback. And the role. The environment, timing and frequency that you've given feedback before will play in how effective it is. The need to model the process of asking feedback yourself as a leader, and being mindful of how you react when it is given the use of questions when delivering feedback, and the importance of putting in place routines to help you process the feedback that you've been given. I hope you enjoyed the thoughts of our guests on this topic as much as we did. And just before we go, if you have any feedback, then please let us know. Just like Sean Craven, who after listening to our Dachstein episode said, Guys, thank you for putting together that job stain podcast. Absolutely incredible. As a lifelong Celtics supporter, it deeply touched me. Thanks, Shawn. We'd love doing that episode. It's the interaction with people like Shawn from all over the world who listen, give us great energy. And so if you have any feedback or comments, then please let us know. And also, if you're interested in helping us create one of the world's best leadership libraries from the lessons our great coaches share with us, then you can sponsor us through Patreon. All the details on how you can do this or just connect with us are in the show notes or on our website, the great coaches podcast.com