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In this episode, we’re diving deep into one of the most common challenges leaders face: giving effective feedback. Forget the myth that feedback is an innate skill – it’s actually a learned and teachable tool that can transform teams, boost engagement, and drive success.
Listen in as I break down the S.A.I.D feedback model (Situation, Action, Impact, Develop) and share actionable strategies to deliver feedback with confidence, kindness, and empathy. Whether you’re leading a team or navigating professional relationships, this episode will empower you to turn feedback into a tool for growth.
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Transcript:
Hello, welcome to today's episode of LeadWell with Jacqui. My name is Jacqui Butler, and I am your host. I am an executive leadership coach and facilitator, and today we are going to be talking about feedback.
The reason we're focusing on this today is because feedback is one of the most common challenges that comes up in leadership coaching sessions. There's a bit of an urban myth about feedback—that it is some sort of innate gift or skill, and that you can either give it or you can't. But that's just not the case. Like any other leadership skill, it is something that can be taught, learned, and developed.
And I'm not just talking about giving feedback—receiving feedback is also a skill that needs to be taught, learned, and developed. Today, in the interest of keeping things short and sharp, we're going to focus on giving feedback. However, I’ll make a note to cover receiving feedback in a future episode.
You know I love a good statistic, right? I think that when we validate things, it helps us feel a sense of comfort—that we're not the only ones facing certain challenges and that these are common obstacles to effective leadership. Here's a big one: only 26% of employees report receiving feedback regularly.
This means only a quarter of people in the workforce know whether they're on track, doing well, or need improvement—and how to go about improving. I'm going to say probably a few times during today's episode that feedback is a gift. Clichés are clichés for a reason! Feedback truly is a gift.
74 % of you out there listening to this don't know what you're doing well and don't know what you're doing poorly.
Employees who receive regular feedback are 3.6 times more likely to be engaged at work. So, if you're a leader wondering why your team isn’t giving you the discretionary effort you're looking for—why they aren’t going above and beyond—there's a good chance it’s because they’re disengaged. And one of the drivers of that is not receiving feedback, positive feedback, constructive feedback, they all lead to higher levels of engagement so that we know how we're tracking. So for example, if you are playing a game of netball and you don't know what the score is, you never see whether one of the goal attacks or goal shooters gets a goal. So you have no idea how you're tracking. How does that feel? Do you lean in? Do you try harder? Do you grit and persevere? Or do you take your foot off the pedal and save yourself a little bit of energy for the next game? Who knows? It's the same when you don't receive feedback.
One of the things that I find really interesting is when I work with senior leaders, so people who are really successful and are sort of climbing the corporate ladder, if you will, one of the great gripes that they have is that they don't receive feedback. High performers are actually less likely to receive feedback.
Usually the conversation goes a little bit like this. Hey boss, what could I work on? What could I be doing better? Do you have any feedback for me? Because side note, I'm a high achiever. I want to know what I'm doing well. I want to know what I could be doing better so that I can do even better again. And so I can continue to progress because I'm driven by constant improvement and this is not a validated statistic, but nine times out of 10, the leader will say, no, you're doing great. Keep up the good work.
I have had a conversation before or multiple conversations with leaders where I've said, yep, I hear what you're saying. Thank you. And also I would really value feedback. Could you please have a think about one or two areas that I could lean into so that I could be more effective? I'm still waiting years later because giving feedback is a skill and it's a skill that all leaders really need to develop.
So another study showed that 92 % of people feel that negative constructive feedback when it's delivered in a supportive and appropriate way improves performance, which of course is true because you don't know what you don't know. Only 23 % of leaders provide regular negative feedback.
And from what I see, one of the reasons for that, and I literally had a client yesterday who said this exact thing, I don't want to upset them, or I don't want them to think I'm being mean or I don't want to have the conversation that I feel is likely to get uncomfortable.
And so people just completely shy away from it. Or they just don't give the feedback at all because they don't want to upset someone. And that's something that we're going to talk a little bit more about in today's episode. Well, you know what, let's talk about it now. Why do we feel that giving someone constructive feedback is going to upset them or is going to negatively impact upon their opinion of us because we're assuming and we're projecting usually.
So I don't want to give you feedback that helps you to understand how you can grow and improve because there is a very slim chance, well there is a chance that it will offend you or that it will upset you. And I don't want to take on that level of emotion and I don't want to have to take responsibility for upsetting you or, and this one is really popular, I don't want you to stop liking me.
It's really common where leaders want to be liked and so they don't give feedback. But you know what? It makes you a less effective leader. And there is a way that you can give feedback that is so kind, clear, so supportive that the recipient of that feedback leaves the conversation going, that was great. Thank goodness, thank goodness that person told me what I could be doing differently. I feel really empowered. I'm gonna go make those changes and my life's gonna be better or I'm gonna be more efficient or I'm gonna be better at my job. Or I'm not gonna be moving into performance management or I will be more likely to be secure in my job, or now I know the impact that I'm having on others.
This is not all flowers and rainbows. Yes, sometimes you will give someone feedback and they will crack the shits or they will have an emotional response or they will be upset or they will blame you. But those things are not within your control. What is within your control is how you provide the feedback, how you do it in a clear, direct kind way and then the rest is up to them in terms of what they do with it.
So as you're probably identifying from the last, if you've listened to any of the other episodes of this podcast, I am very passionate about supporting more women in leadership. And so I like to highlight the gender disparity in all of the topics. according to a study done by the Harvard Business Review, women leaders are more likely to receive vague feedback that lacks actionable insights. Men are more likely to receive feedback that is tied to specific business outcomes. This, as you can imagine, in turn holds women back from development, from performance opportunities or performance improvement opportunities because we don't know what we're doing. My experience, from my experience, I overlay and I'm kind of extrapolating from that and from what I see day to day that people are fearful of emotions, and even more fearful of women's emotions, there is an assumption that women are more emotional than men and that they won't be able to take it. Whereas if it's a male team member, I can be direct with them because men aren't allowed to have emotions in our society and so I know that that will make me as the feedback giver more comfortable.
And some of that was a little bit tongue in cheek and some of that probably was laced with a little bit of judgment, but it is based on what I see.
So the other thing that further compounds that, and this is research from Stanford, is that managers are two and a half times more likely to give feedback to male employees than female employees. So we do see this level of unconscious bias in terms of the provision of feedback, which also doesn't help anyone. Well, it probably helps the male employees, right? So what I want to do is spend a little bit of time walking through a feedback framework. love frameworks. Side note, I think they can be so helpful. They scaffold our thoughts or provide scaffolding for our thoughts and allow us to plan and prepare and be more effective in our communication until we have built a new skill and a new habit and then we can do it in a way that is more organic. So the feedback model that I share with pretty much all of my leaders who are clients and in workshops is the S.A.I.D feedback model.
S A I D. Stop your treadmill and write it down or you can always google it. I'm sure there's plenty of articles and websites. This is not a model that I've created.
The said model refers to S is the situation or the standard. A is the person's action. I is the impact of that action. And D is how they can develop or what they could be doing differently.
Situation, Action, Impact, Develop.
Before you get into the said model, there are a couple of considerations that can be game changers. Before you move into a feedback conversation, it is essential that the person you are giving feedback to knows they're walking into a feedback conversation. So if this is at the end of a one-on-one, you may say something like, I'd really love to share some feedback based on some observations that I've made over the past week.
Are you comfortable if I share that feedback now or would you prefer to set up a time tomorrow morning? So we really want to make sure that the recipient of our feedback is an active participant. We don't want to be saying, hey, by the way, I wanted to tell you what you did wrong yesterday. Or I want to give you some feedback right now. Nine times out of 10, they'll say, yeah, okay, we can do it now. But the point is that we want them to feel as though they are an active participant. They have a choice because that will keep them out of fight or flight. That will allow them to emotionally self-regulate and to be in a mindset and in a position where they can receive the feedback constructively. So that's the first step. Let them know that they're embarking upon a feedback conversation and give them the choice of when they do it. Sit next to them.
This is such a straightforward thing, the psychology around it or the impact of it is massive. So if you've ever reported to me in the past, you will now be connecting the dots that I always sit next to people when I'm having a one-on-one, when I'm having a feedback or performance conversation, you name it, I will get to the meeting room first. I will sit in a place where you have no choice but to sit next to me.
Or if the meeting room doesn't allow for that, I will get to the meeting room after you and I will sit next to you. It means that you are putting yourself and your team member on the same side and you are, it's you two against the challenge. When you sit opposite, when you're at your desk and they're at the other side of the desk or when you're sitting opposite sides of the table, it's me against you or it's you against them.
So that creates a feeling of divisiveness. And I actually had a client today, in fact, who said that they have started incorporating this strategy and sitting next to people and she has been blown away by the difference that it has made in how open, how comfortable and how productive her one-on-ones have been.
The point is when you're giving feedback, we want to make sure that the recipient of the feedback is in a mindset where they can receive it when they're feeling comfortable and not moving into fight or flight, because that's when we're going to have that really big emotional response or they're going to shut down. So, we've sat next to them. We've invited them to receive the feedback. They have agreed they want you to give the feedback. One more lens before we get into the model, and that is you are giving feedback on their behavior or how they have performed a task. So the how they've done their job or the what that they've done. We are not giving feedback on a person's character.
We are not giving broad sweep. You're a dishonest person type feedback. We are giving very specific feedback and we're going to try and do it in a timely manner. It's not good enough to do this every six months when you are having your performance and development conversation or even worse every 12 months. If someone does something that needs to be course corrected, then you need to give that feedback once the dust has settled. So maybe it's that afternoon, maybe it's the next day, maybe it's the next week, but not, hey, six months ago you did this thing, I want to give you some feedback on it, because that's not helpful and that's going to put them into fight or flight. my god, what else have I done the last six months that they haven't told me about? How embarrassing, I've just continued doing that thinking that I was doing a good job.
So we're not talking about someone's character. We're talking about specific examples and we're making sure that it's timely. So once we've got all of those caveats and those prefaces out of the way, then we can actually give the feedback. Starting with the situation or the standard. The situation might be, hey, I wanted to give you some feedback on the client meeting that we had this morning.
The standard might be, hey, did you know that we really need to be in the office by 9 a.m. every day? That's our workplace standard. Or maybe the standard is, hey, we have this agreement business-wide or team-wide that we will have our cameras on in Teams meeting. That's the standard that we've established. So, either the situation in this particular scenario or the standard, this is the expectation. Then we move into the action. And so that's specifically what this team member did. That might be, in the client meeting this morning, I noticed that you interrupted the client when they hadn't finished speaking. So that might be that action. Or it might be, hey, in our team, we agreed that we would have our cameras on on Teams meetings. I've noticed that for the last three team meetings, you haven't had your camera on.
So at this juncture, I would usually incorporate a question. did you notice that? Were you aware of that? What was driving that do you think? Or was there a reason that you were doing that? Because when we're giving feedback, we only ever have half of the information. We only ever have our perspective. So making sure that we're incorporating open questions to get the perspective of the feedback recipient. They might say, yes, I know I interrupted them. I was so nervous. I felt so badly about it. And then you can go great. They already have that level of self-awareness. Let's just go straight to what could we do better? Or it might be, yeah, I know that I haven't had my camera on. I've been having some work done in my study, so I'm in a different room. or it could be, really not feeling comfortable, or maybe I've had something, you know, maybe I'm recovering from something, whatever, but it gives them an opportunity because remember we're having a two way conversation with people when we're giving feedback, we are not peppering them or drilling them with information.
So once we've talked about the situation or the standard, the action that went away from that, that took away from that, or that didn't meet expectations, then we talk about the impact. So impact might be when you interrupt the client, it could really reduce how heard they feel by us. And they may not share challenges that they're having.
Or when you don't have your camera on, it can drive people to feel as though you're not engaged with the meeting, that maybe you're doing something else. It also reduces our opportunity to connect with you and to see your face and see your body language and make eye contact. So it makes communication more difficult and also might lead to other members of the team feeling that it's unfair because they've been asked to have their cameras on.
So then we want to move into the do or the develop. you know, next time I'd really encourage you to just slow the pace down, take a breath, write down what you wanted to say and wait until the clients finished trying to be actively listening. The do in the other scenario might be, I would really like to see you have your camera on in team meetings.
If and when you can't, could you please just pop into the chat, just calling out that you're not able to have your camera on for, you know, for today's meeting or something along those lines, just to let them know what you would expect from them, how they can remedy the situation. So we're working through the situation or standard, the action of the person. So that's their behavior, the impact of that behavior and then what we want them to do differently. These examples that I've given are really driven by a leader giving a team member feedback but this model works for anyone. Don't tell him that I have used it when I've been giving my husband feedback on you know the house day-to-day stuff but you can use it.
A lot of people, I've coached a lot of people who use it to influence up or to give feedback to their leader or to a peer in those scenarios, you may be more discerning with whether you do the D part of the said framework. You may choose to just let them know in this situation, when you did this action, this was the impact that it had and leave that with them because they are at a level where they should be able to determine their own development, they may ask what you would like them to do differently. But I think don't make it an assumption that you would give them a development tip because it may not be your place. But do all of the other things. Sit next to them, ask them if it's okay with them, if you provide some feedback based on an observation, make sure it's timely, tell them the situation, their action, the impact that it had on you. The other thing when we're giving feedback is we want to always try to give personal feedback, feedback based on our own first-hand experience. That's not always possible. Sometimes someone has come to us and shared a feedback and asked us to pass that on and that's okay. We may just need to highlight the fact that I'm passing on someone else's feedback or perhaps we would even coach and encourage the original provider of the feedback to give it directly. It really depends on your organisational culture, the level of hierarchy, the recipient of the feedback. But the goal here is that we want to be open-minded and ask some questions, so that the person is an active participant, we're gauging their level of self-awareness, and we're being clear, we're being kind, we're talking about a specific behavior and supporting them in doing things differently next time.
So I feel like that was a lot. I hope that has been helpful for you. Please make sure that you send me any questions, or feedback on the feedback episode. You can contact me at hello at leadwellco.com.au but hopefully you're able to incorporate this. My challenge to you today is try to identify some areas of feedback in at least one colleague or team member or peer or spouse or partner or friend or whoever. And see if you might be able to utilise the S.A.I.D. feedback model so that you can start to practice it. And the more you do it, the more comfort that you will have with it. And then you will be able to continuously give the gift of feedback.
As always, it has been an absolute pleasure. I hope you got something out of today's episode and I'll see you next time.
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