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Coaching for Leaders

10: The Way to Give Constructive Feedback

Coaching for Leaders

Dave Stachowiak

Careers, Business, Management

4.81.6K Ratings

🗓️ 24 October 2011

⏱️ 28 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In his book What Got You Here Won’t Get You There, leadership coach Marshall Goldsmith warns against the habit of leaders adding too much value and stifling the motivation of an employee’s independent ideas. He says that when we start improving an employee’s idea, “You may have improved the content of my idea by 5 percent, but you’ve reduced my commitment to executing it by 50 percent, because you’ve taken away my ownership of the idea.”

Does it even make sense to give someone feedback? Here’s a helpful guide.

Minor issue?

  • If the person is aware: ask what they plan to do to resolve it
  • If the person is unaware: let it go

Major issue?

  • If the person is aware : ask questions and help brainstorm
  • If the person is unaware – redirect by using EXPECTATION -> EXAMPLE -> EMPOWER

Saying something “nice” first can get us in trouble as a leader:

  • It doesn’t sound sincere, since it’s often done only before constructive feedback
  • It’s not credible since the leader will often fail to cite evidence and examples
  • The leader ends up gliding over the real issue and the person never really hears the constructive feedback

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Transcript

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0:00.0

Hello everyone you're listening to coaching skills for leaders this is episode number 10 recorded on October 21st

0:07.0

2011 innovate learning, maximizing human potential.

0:14.0

Welcome to coaching skills for leaders.

0:22.0

My name is Dave Stahovia. This is the show for leaders who want to develop

0:26.2

their coaching skills so they can influence the success of others, their organization,

0:31.3

and themselves.

0:32.6

Whether you're a season leader or you're leading people for the first time,

0:36.2

improving your coaching skills will drive your success and most importantly the success of others.

0:42.4

This week's topic is giving constructive

0:44.9

feedback to others. Well last week we looked at how to give positive feedback to

0:50.3

others and so this week I thought we'd take a look at the other side of this

0:53.8

equation which is sometimes a little bit harder which is how to give

0:58.1

constructive feedback to folks. But before even jumping in I'd love to hear about how you utilized the process of giving positive feedback from last episode if you tried it out and use the model and had an opportunity to give someone

1:15.3

positive feedback and had a good result or maybe even didn't have a good

1:19.6

result, send me a message. I'd love to hear what it is you did and what results you had.

1:25.0

So you can, and of course you can also reach out to me with questions or comments about this show as well.

1:31.0

And that number is 877 Learn 45 so again 877 learn 45 and you can

1:39.1

also reach me by email at

1:43.0

Innovate learning.com.

1:45.0

Again, that's feedback at innovate learning.

1:48.0

So look forward to talking with you

1:50.0

over phone or email and learning about what you've been applying and also questions

...

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