The Agile Skills Library – EP2: Giving Feedback That Transforms Agile Teams

Full episode transcript

[00:00:03] Paul Goddard: Hello, listeners. Welcome to the Agile Skills Library with myself, Paul and my good friend Geoff. And over the years, we’ve collected hundreds of techniques and skills to share with you. In every episode there’ll be something new, something you can try, and even downloadable content to help you along the way. Let’s get into it. Here we go. Hello, Geoff. Welcome back.

[00:00:31] Geoff Watts: Hey, Paul. You’re right.

[00:00:32] Paul Goddard: Well, yeah. I’m good. Welcome back to all of our listeners as well. welcome back to the Agile Skills Library, the new podcast from myself and Geoff. And if you first time listener, then we’ll briefly tell you what this is all about. This is Geoff and I have, got our heads together and we’ve written down as many different exercises, techniques, models that we’ve been using and, and still use as agile coaches, as leadership coaches. and we thought, you know what, we need to give all this away. And we’re going to. Literally over a series of different episodes.

[00:01:06] Paul Goddard: We’re going to theme and give you as much as we can remember, as much as we’ve written down of all the different things that we’ve tried. and using our workshops and our coaching in our engagements. So, this one, this episode is largely around introducing the idea of feedback. And as there’s so much to this as this is such a big topic, we’ve decided to split it into two episodes. So this is episode one of two, and this episode is just going to be around giving feedback and, some exercises, some theories, some concepts around helping teams, become more effective at giving feedback in that in their scenarios, in their context. so, let’s get straight into it, Geoff. and we’ve called this giving feedback. I’m going to come to you first now. Should you tell me in your words, why do you think giving feedback is so important for us to share to our listeners?

[00:02:12] Geoff Watts: That’s a massive question. I do I think it’s absolutely crucial. And the reason I think it’s really important is because of the culture that you and I are often trying to to nurture and grow within an organization.

[00:02:26] Geoff Watts: So. But even if we weren’t trying to create this culture of empowerment and agency and self-management and, you know, decentralization, even if we weren’t then just getting feedback on performance and behavior, even if it’s just top down, is really crucial to getting better. So if I don’t know my impact on other people and processes and outputs, if I’m not getting that information, I can’t necessarily get better. I’m just blindly carrying on. So that’s really useful. And it’s even more important in an organization where it’s not just about your line manager telling you what you think, but your teammates. If we’re creating a self-managing team, then we need to be able to tell each other how things are going. We need to be able to give each other that information and take that information on. But it’s really uncomfortable for the vast majority of people. It’s really uncomfortable. And if we’re not skilled at it, if we don’t practice it, then we can often make things worse rather than make them better. That’s why I think it’s important.

[00:03:29] Paul Goddard: Yeah, I agree, it’s it’s the part of a workshop that I’ll run that generally has makes people’s skin crawl at this point. Because why do you think that is. It’s just something. Is it a cultural thing? Is it something? There’s where there’s an absence of feedback. Then people seem to grow, in my opinion, more fearful of using it.

[00:03:51] Geoff Watts: Well, you say cultural right. And it would be. I think it’d be really interesting if if we get an international list here, because a lot of people in the multicultural courses or workshops that I run, there’s a massive difference like. And it’s often very stereotypical, but just there are some cultures where telling it like it is. It’s just ingrained from a young age and they don’t take it personally. What can feel really rude and disparaging to one culture can be just normal, liberating, generous information in another. So I think the Brits are generally terrible at it.

[00:04:32] Paul Goddard: Yeah I.

[00:04:32] Geoff Watts: Agree. And obviously we’re looking at it predominantly through that lens.

[00:04:35] Geoff Watts: But we have been lucky enough to see other cultures. And there’s there’s the opposite as well in that actually we, the Brits are potentially much better at it than others. So it’s a yeah, it’s a fascinating. But I think mostly it comes down to ego. Not not necessarily in an egotistical bad sense, but people seeing feedback as a critique of them as a person and taking it to two personally. That’s, I think, at the heart of it a lot of the time.

[00:05:07] Paul Goddard: Yeah, I agree, I think. However, however, as however scary this stuff is, when me and Geoff introduce this and when when we if it’s teaching. If it’s coaching. The benefit that I’ve generally seen after the event far outweighs the fear that was there at the beginning. So where where I felt that feedback was essential in this case, in this team, at this point in time, it feels like the scariest thing to do right now. But when teams have gone through that very scary, very icky process, they generally come back to me and said, you know what? That’s absolutely what we needed to do.

[00:05:51] Paul Goddard: That’s absolutely the conversation that we needed to have. And now as a result, it is so much better As a team, we have come together and we have gelled so much better, and it’s mainly off the back of that first difficult conversation that we’ve had time.

[00:06:06] Geoff Watts: Timing is, well, not timing necessarily, but frequency is a big part of it as well. Often because it’s uncomfortable, we’ll we’ll delay it will defer it will avoid it. And then it just gets bigger and bigger and bigger. And then you’re having this one big conversation once a year. And it’s overwhelming and it’s not timely. And so then it’s bad. So then we defer it and avoid it even more. But if you’re doing it if you do it every day, like every every hour or whatever, then it loses its pain, it loses its stigma. And, you know, it’s just what we do.

[00:06:39] Paul Goddard: Okay, good. Let’s, let’s get into it. Let’s get into the, let’s put some meat on the bones on this.

[00:06:45] Paul Goddard: So giving feedback. All right. We’re going to start with giving feedback. And we’re going to give you as listeners firstly some traps. And the traps are usually quite fun because it’s the easiest thing to talk about when you start. When you start the conversation about giving feedback, I will generally ask a group saying, think about some of the times, when you’ve been given feedback before, or when you’ve been giving feedback and some of the traps that you might have fallen into, and there’s some very classic, feedback scenarios and feedback structures, if you like that. I’ve, I’ve had in my time, and I’m pretty sure most of our listeners will have come across some of these before. So there’s the, the kind of the, the, the famous one, which is a more politely named the praise Sandwich. or it could be, depending on the feedback. It could also be known as the shit sandwich, where you receive some feedback, but it is sandwiched between two nice pieces of feedback. And the stuff that that person really wants to tell you is kind of what, somewhat lost in the middle of that.

[00:07:53] Paul Goddard: so it’s just it kind of dilutes down what you that person really wanted to say or the the feedback that’s most essential because you only really look at the the beginning and end of the conversation. And I can remember emails that I received back in the day, Geoff, where it was, you could almost cut and paste the, the beginning, the middle and the end of the sandwich. out of those conversations, a few others, that I come across, that we gotta be careful we don’t fall into is the idea of hearsay or gossip. So, you know, when you want to give someone some feedback, but you say, you know what? So you know what Geoff’s saying about you? I heard what Geoff said about you over the over a coffee of the day. Or, you know, the talk in the office is that when you’re and then you follow up with something that really you think, but you’re trying to disguise it because you’re not really being prepared to own it. You’re trying to make sure it’s a you’re trying to give the illusion that it’s a group, opinion rather than your own opinion.

[00:08:54] Paul Goddard: the long wind up is another one. so, you know, especially if we’re quite nervous about giving that feedback, we’re taking a long time to get to the, the real main event. And the person that’s listening to you will probably sense that. So you kind of start with some pleasantries, but then you might you really skirting around the issue and you’re building up to something, which is the feedback itself. And that sense of anticipation may well be amplifying or even, exaggerating what the feedback actually is. It might make it out to be a lot worse than it actually is. and the last one that I can think of off the top of my head is the idea of sugarcoating. So trying to put something a nice some niceties around what is essentially that the harsh, harsh truth that you want to you want to give or you want to, that person to hear, it’s like, Geoff, you know, you’ve got really bad dress sense, but but really, you’re a nice guy. Everyone else thinks you’re a nice guy, but.

[00:09:57] Paul Goddard: But just try and change what you. That jumper doesn’t see you at all. But you’re really a nice guy, Geoff. You’re a really a nice guy. So? So again, you’re trying to hide what the actual feedback actually is with some kind of nicety, some kind of pleasantry. And it just it doesn’t leave that. But give that person the opportunity to hear what you actually want them to hear.

[00:10:18] Geoff Watts: Can I give you a couple more traps that I’ve seen?

[00:10:20] Paul Goddard: Go for it.

[00:10:21] Geoff Watts: So there’s labeling and extremes so often. Say always and never are two words to always remember never to use, right? So say you’re always late, right? Or you never shave. Paul. Right. Those are two that they’re not true. They’re just not true. And people will focus on the bit of the feedback that will that will make it more comfortable for, oh, they don’t know what I’m talking about. I do shave sometimes. So they’re losing the impact of it. And then the labeling thing is something I’ve always been, I’ve tried to be conscious of with my kids.

[00:10:53] Geoff Watts: And rather than saying you’re all lazy. That was that was an example of lazy behavior. They’re not naughty kids. That was an example of naughty behavior, but they’re not naughty. So there’s a label to try and avoid that and to try and avoid extremes.

[00:11:09] Paul Goddard: Yeah. That’s good. Love those. Love those. Excellent. And I’m sure our listeners have heard and experienced some of those before. So what we thought we would do is give you some genuine kind of, models to think about here. Some, some, some structures to try, which might help you, practice some of that, that giving feedback, in a more structured way. The first of which, which I use a lot is NVC, which is Nonviolent Communication. And I think we have to credit, Rosenberg with the original, idea of creation of this, structure. And what I love about NBC is it’s, for the logical part of our brain, it breaks down, the feedback into some a really nice, simple structure. It’s in four parts and we’ll go through those parts for you now.

[00:12:03] Paul Goddard: and the first part is generally observation. It’s something that you’ve seen happen that is not up for debate. So, if, if Geoff, turned up late for the daily, daily stand up. Geoff, I noticed that you came in the room at 9:15 rather than at 9:00 when the meeting started. So that should be unequivocally, everyone would say the same thing. It’s an observation.

[00:12:33] Geoff Watts: It’s a.

[00:12:33] Paul Goddard: Fact. It’s a fact. It’s it’s not based on my judgment, my interpretation. that Geoff’s lazy or that Geoff missed the bus. This is just the fact that Geoff turned up 15 minutes after an event started, and that’s you try and try and, name that that that factual Information. And then the second part of this structure is how that event made me feel. A very important part of this is that it’s how did that objective event affect my feelings? It’s a very important part that how did it make me feel? So Geoff, being late for a meeting made me feel anxious. And that’s not really then for Geoff to question that, because that is my feeling and I own that.

[00:13:21] Paul Goddard: And that’s that’s how that event made me feel as a as a facilitator. Geoff being late made me feel anxious. And the third part of that is to kind of delve into why did I feel anxious, what what need was missing for me that that caused that anxiety? So Geoff, being late put these structures to this structure together. Geoff being Geoff was 15 minutes late for our meeting. That made me feel anxious as an organizer because I feel the need to make sure everyone is is fully utilizing the time that we have available. And I feel that if I’m not providing that to all our attendees, then that’s going to make me and those attendees feel, pressured, rushed and not got a great resolution to our meeting. And the fourth and final part of NBC is then to make a request, make a request to Geoff for something I’m looking for him to do in the future, which may well prevent this from happening again. So therefore, Geoff could ask you to try and turn up on time and perhaps maybe even five minutes before the next meeting starts so that we can wait and make a good start on time and future.

[00:14:34] Paul Goddard: A simple request that’s hopefully not too challenging, but again, it’s all routing back to a factual event that happened. And the important part is that it’s how it made me feel, not necessarily judging Geoff’s situation or how Geoff feels about you.

[00:14:50] Geoff Watts: Make a request to me, it’s up to me whether I accept that request or not, I. I can turn it down. You can’t demand it from it, but you can request it from me.

[00:14:58] Paul Goddard: And it’s very I think it’s very the reason why I think MVC is so good is because it’s very hard for you as a human to human interaction, for someone to deliberately want to affect someone’s emotions, deliberately upset someone if they understand what that emotion is, that that’s been surfaced, and the reason why that emotion is so important to that person. Have you got a different one for a different model, perhaps, that people might want to consider?

[00:15:25] Geoff Watts: Well, a similar kind of theme, but maybe, maybe slightly simpler, maybe. Maybe slightly less touchy feely, perhaps when I talk about nonviolent communication to other people.

[00:15:36] Geoff Watts: But I quite like it. But the, the, the first one that I ever came across and I still got the book on my shelf, actually, a tiny little book called The Tao of Coaching Teo The Art of by a guy called Max Landsberg. And in it he shares this three letter one aid. So the action. So what is it that I’ve noticed? The thing that I saw, could be in our last conversation. You raised your voice and started putting your finger at me. Then there’s the impact. So not too dissimilar to to the MVC. And how did that that that made me feel intimidated. That made me feel defensive. So my ID, the desired action is I’d like you to keep your voice to a reasonable level, not point at me, you know. So the ID, what was it? How did it impact me? What’s the desired future state or the desired future path? Quite simple.

[00:16:27] Paul Goddard: Nice. Very nice. And one final one that we’ve used quite a lot in our training.

[00:16:31] Paul Goddard: Geoff, I think, is, one called the Perfection Game. Where did this originally come from?

[00:16:36] Geoff Watts: I think it came from the core protocols.

[00:16:38] Paul Goddard: Okay. So in the perfection game, it’s basically a score that you give to your feedback out of ten, with ten being there is no feedback because it was a perfect event. It was a perfect response and basically I could give Geoff some feedback using the perfection game based on, let’s say, Geoff’s dress sense today. Geoff’s wearing a kind of a blue jumper. You can’t really see that because it’s an audio podcast, but, just wearing a blue jumper. And I could give Geoff some feedback on his dress code for today’s event, and I’d probably give it a eight out of ten. So if I gave Geoff’s dress sense an eight out of ten, I’d have to give him two ways that he could make that a ten out of ten. I’d have to justify why I’ve only come up with two ways to improve his dress sense today. And I think if I was being really critical, I think it could be, well, what I like about it, why I’ve scored it eight is it’s a good color of blue for a for a video call today.

[00:17:39] Paul Goddard: It makes him stand out from his background very well. It’s smart casual and I think that works. And so I think he looks kind of smart professional. He looks he looks quite relaxed and it makes him look quite cool. How could it be better? I think he could smarten the collar up a bit if I’m being. Being really critical now, it’s kind of a he’s got a quarter. I think they call it a quarter top. Is it, is it. That’s what they call it. My my my kids tell me so I think that could be straightened up across the shoulders. I get the sense the t shirt underneath is a little bit old and maybe not quite as new as the top, so that could be a bit loose around the collar. So perhaps a higher collar on his neck for the t shirt side of things. Those are the only two things that I can see I probably improve.

[00:18:26] Geoff Watts: Okay.

[00:18:27] Paul Goddard: That’s the perfection game. so perhaps for our listeners a few tips, general tips.

[00:18:34] Paul Goddard: Now in terms of not so much attached to a model, but if we’re thinking about trying to improve our opportunities to give better feedback, I’ll come to you first on this. What’s your what’s your tips for generally giving feedback.

[00:18:46] Geoff Watts: So yeah. So some more general tips. Well I mean that’s a good example right. Because I didn’t ask for feedback on my dress.

[00:18:52] Paul Goddard: No I did. I just gave. I inflicted feedback on you.

[00:18:55] Geoff Watts: That’s it. That’s how you go around inflicting your help on me, whether I asked for it or not. So I think generally offer feedback is quite difficult to say. No. If somebody says, do you want some feedback? But getting into that, well, I’m not going to go around and just throw my opinions at people whether they want it or not, you know? And so we know each other well enough where you can give me feedback about anything you like, and it’s not going to hurt my feelings. But not every relationship is like that. So offer it first.

[00:19:20] Geoff Watts: Then I’d say frame it. So why are you giving me feedback about my dress? How is that going to help me? You know what’s what’s the point of it? What’s the context for it? Is there is there something that there’s a there’s a bigger purpose for it here and. Yeah. Okay. So you’re going to give me feedback because we’re going to discuss this in the podcast. It’s going to be a demonstration I get that. That’s fine. But then there’s an interesting paradox here in that I do encourage people to personalize their feedback. So make it a relevant to that individual. So it’s not just generic feedback. I mean you talked about hints and indirection. It’s not just about, you know, personal hygiene is a good thing isn’t it. That’s, that’s that’s hinting at it. But actually if it’s about me, you know, Geoff, don’t let you shave for a while. You’re right. Then that’s about me. But equally deep personalize it because it’s not about me as an individual necessarily.

[00:20:13] Geoff Watts: It’s about the behavior. So when it’s when it’s at work or the behavior and going back to that idea of like, my child’s not a lazy child or an only child, it was just an example of naughty behavior. So taking the label away from it, those are some of them you’ve probably got for yourself.

[00:20:28] Paul Goddard: Well, I was just thinking about, this is maybe again, you mentioned around safety and I think almost preparing someone, giving people some pre warning that it’s coming in terms of and it helps you create the, the right environment for giving feedback. So rather than just catching people out with. Oh, and by the way, with and throwing feedback around somewhat incidentally, almost creating the environment. and that safety for you as someone that’s going to put you in that, that mode that you know, that that person is then expecting it. So kind of almost saying pre warning, I’m going to give you some feedback on your dress sense at the end of this Geoff, if that’s okay. So you’re kind of it’s less of a of a, it makes less of an impact or perhaps is less of a shock.

[00:21:21] Paul Goddard: And I think timing is quite important. Thinking about when you give feedback, it’s it’s certainly not a great time at the end of a heated argument. you know, when, when emotions are very raw to lay feedback on top of that. So sometimes the old adage of people going away and sleeping on it, so sometimes coming back the next day and having that, that conversation in a much more calm, almost in a, a completely different environment. So your environment, I think, plays a huge part in that impact of that feedback will have, even things like maybe what’s your opinion on eye contact with this stuff? Geoff. Sometimes, sometimes feedback can can is a bit can be better delivered, less direct eye to eye, some kind of kind of maybe, even just side by side, going on a walk when, when things are generally quite slower paced and less in that kind of heat of the moment type situation.

[00:22:29] Geoff Watts: So my opinion and we will come back to this when we do an episode on receiving feedback, is that I would tend to defer to the preferences of the feedback receiver.

[00:22:40] Geoff Watts: So if that person likes to, you know, have a look you in the eye or actually doesn’t like looking you in the eye if they prefer written feedback rather than verbal feedback. It’s more likely to land if it’s more palatable to the person receiving it. So take my comfort levels out of the equation in terms of giving it, and try and meet them where they are. That’s my general perspective.

[00:23:04] Paul Goddard: Yeah, I think you’re right. I think it’s, just on a general theme. General feedback, giving tips is just to own it. and don’t be afraid to own it. It is. And own how it makes you feel. I think that well, that’s.

[00:23:23] Geoff Watts: I think that’s a big part of it. Something we haven’t touched on yet. So my, my, a lot of my work is around the sort of psychological traits that you need to master in yourself. And one of the things that holds people back in terms of being good at giving feedback is their people pleasing trait. They don’t upset people.

[00:23:39] Geoff Watts: They don’t want to, you know, they want to say nice things, but they don’t want to say. And it’s given away a little. little snippets like bad feedback or it’s not. And what they mean by that is feedback about something that they could get better at, rather than I’m going to tell you all the things that you’re good at, but bad feedback is feedback delivered in a ineffective way, not feedback about how you could improve a particular behavior, but that that people pleasing thing too. I can’t remember who it was. it’s basically, do you like this person enough to actually tell them the truth, rather than tell them what they want to hear? And just like you’ve probably got some friends, a few friends, I call them Telus friends. They tell it like it is that they won’t hold back because they like you so much, they won’t hold back. But you’ve got a lot of friends, and I’m using the sort of inverted commas thing here that won’t tell you that stuff, because they’re worried about losing your friendship or they don’t think the strong, the relationship is strong enough.

[00:24:42] Geoff Watts: And I think being that person, getting to that level of relationship where you can like us. I can tell you that your hat’s terrible or whatever, and you know we can get there. Do you know what I mean? It’s that people pleasing thing that gets in the way. But actually, feedback done well is such a powerful gift. Yeah, that it’s the best way to please people.

[00:25:04] Paul Goddard: Yeah. And I think I’ve written I’ve written down some notes here for myself little and often. That’s I mean that’s those those are three words that generally still make me shudder with fear, because it’s how my mum used to get me to revise my GCSEs. And she’s I remember her saying it over and over, but I think with feedback, especially if you just get into a good habit of giving small amounts of feedback on a regular basis. And if you find it easier to give, I’m not okay, not good or bad, but generally highlighting positive behaviours that can still be a feedback. And some people find that a lot easier to give than something that they want someone to change.

[00:25:42] Paul Goddard: So just just getting into a habit of creating regular short opportunities for feedback in an everyday setting. and you’ll be surprised, I think about then how much easier it becomes to perhaps give some hard, harder feedback. in a different setting in, perhaps in a more 1 to 1 basis. That would be my my general tip. Little and often.

[00:26:10] Geoff Watts: Yeah. Avoid the, the once a year visit to the comfy chairs, as we used to.

[00:26:16] Paul Goddard: Hate those chairs, Geoff, didn’t we?

[00:26:18] Geoff Watts: Our old boss. Then once a year, come and sit in the comfy chairs. Geoff, I want to give you some feedback. Oh, really? Okay, here we go. And he’d have a clipboard with pages and pages of stuff that I can’t remember any of this stuff, but he can.

[00:26:29] Paul Goddard: Oh, exactly. And especially when you knew it was around appraisal time. You just knew that that feedback was going to be something that he’d found that you need to improve on. So people ran away from it.

[00:26:38] Paul Goddard: Okay. That’s great. That’s good stuff. That’s that’s really good for now, Geoff. So just to remind people that we have got we’ve got so much on this that we’ve we’ve got to split it into two episodes. So stay tuned and make sure you’re subscribed for the next instalment on feedback, which will be much more around receiving feedback. And we will have at the end of that episode, a downloadable template for you to use and for you to, to play around with. which will be a nice little exercise that you can run with your team or with your, your colleagues on how to get better at, feedback generally. So stay tuned for that. yeah. And that’s I think that’s pretty much it for this one. Geoff.

[00:27:20] Geoff Watts: Well, it would be, it would be terrible of us in an episode on feedback to not invite people to give us feedback about this episode. So please let us know what you liked about it. Use whatever model you like and give us some feedback.

[00:27:33] Paul Goddard: Absolutely love that great stuff.

[00:27:35] Paul Goddard: So, hopefully we’ll we’ll, we’ll pick up with you all on our next episode. That’s all for now. Cheers, Geoff. Cheers, Paul.