Using feedback (summit)

Often, people confuse coaching with feedback, but they are actually separate. Coaching should be scheduled and focus on leveraging strengths and opportunities for improvement. Feedback alone doesn't prompt action, so it's important to combine it with coaching. A simple model is to present the feedback, insert "hearing that," and ask a self-actualized question to encourage positive steps towards improvement. This approach adds value and helps individuals move towards growth. Often we make the mistake of feedback and coaching being intertwined and what I mean by that is a lot of times people will denote coaching as feedback and feedback as coaching. The two are really separate, yet they can work very effectively together. Recently we were talking to a leader and they kept defining the conversations they were having with their people as coaching conversations and I said, well, what are the plans for the next time you get together? And they would make comments such as, oh, we don't have anything scheduled. We typically coach based on observation. I'm not against that. I get worried when I hear that because most of the time when we observe, we are triggered by what we want to fix or what we want to correct. Remember coaching should be a scheduled interaction, leveraging strengths, leveraging the good things people do that open up the doors where they have opportunities to improve. Feedback when given alone is just simply feedback. So when you're coaching someone with a negative attitude and you say, Charlie, you know, you got to cut it out, you're really pushing yourself away from your teammates, I've noticed your attitude and I really need it to stop. Now there's nothing wrong with that, yet that feedback just sitting on its own doesn't prompt them to take action of positivity or action of improvement. So how do we get feedback in coaching to work together? Here's a very simple model for you. Present the feedback, insert the words hearing that, and then you ask a what question, typically a self-actualized question. So let me demonstrate. One of the things that I think we really need to do is raise our game in terms of positive interactions with our teammates. We need to be much more positive with our teammates and influential positively as well when they exhibit the good things that they're doing. Hearing that, what are you going to do, what are you willing to do, what are the positive steps you're going to do to embrace this feedback and put it into action? So what you're doing is you're using the feedback, you're presenting it like a statement, and you're going to insert the words hearing that, and then you insert your what question. And what that does is it really provides greater value and substance and foundation to the feedback provided, but it gets them not to stew on the feedback. It gets them off the feedback, moving psychologically in the direction of improvement.