Always reinforce what they do well.

People grow fastest when they feel safe, they feel appreciated, and they feel like you also recognize what they're doing well.

I have never, ever, ever, ever, ever seen somebody that has worked for me or under me grow quickly when they were feeling like shit.

I have seen them struggle, put pressure on themselves, work harder, but they didn't get better. And I think

there's a big difference between working harder and getting better.

What's up guys? Welcome back to Build. And today I want to share what 10 years of performance

reviews have taught me. So I just wrapped up another round of performance reviews with our team.

And it got me thinking about some of the things I've learned over the years of doing this. And I've been doing it for a decade and I haven't stopped doing them because I think that there's a lot of reasons to do them. There's a lot of reasons also not to do them, which I would say is like for anything in business. Like if you're bad at something and you do it poorly, it's like you might as well not do it because it actually can be a detractor rather than additive to the team. But one thing that I was thinking about is just like,

I genuinely believe that the number one skill that you can acquire as a leader, as a founder,

as a CEO, is to give feedback in a way that makes people feel better, not worse. And if I had to

sum up all of my learnings over the years, I think that is probably what I would say has been a superpower of mine, or at least I've made it into one, because I tried so hard in the beginning of my career to make people feel good, but I wouldn't give them feedback. And then I tried to give people feedback, but then they wouldn't feel good. And so I just spent so much time, so much effort, and so many hours reading books, reading articles, reading podcasts, testing things, working with psychologists, like trying to experiment and understand how I was going to get the best out of people. And so I thought that I'd make this episode for any of you guys who are out there and you're trying to navigate, like, how do I get people to improve without making it feel like shit? Because I think that there's a way to do reviews that drives

performance and growth without crushing somebody. And oftentimes the reason that I'm actually

against some companies doing these types of things is because the leaders of those companies

aren't yet good enough to deliver feedback in a way that makes people feel better, not worse. And so what happens is that it becomes a very negative event rather than a positive one. So what I want to do is I want to share with you guys four lessons that I've learned over the years doing this for a decade that you can apply to your business to help you navigate, not even just performance reviews, but giving feedback in general. Okay, so the first lesson is that nothing should ever be a surprise. Okay, so the first question that I started every performance review with this last round, because I wanted to see, because we hadn't done them in six months, I was like, I want to know where I stand. I said two questions for you to start. One, was any of this a surprise for you? Every single person said no. Two, was any of this unexpected for you to hear? Every single person said no. And they really thought about it too. And I asked every single person. I started every review with this question. And when they said no, it made me feel like, wow, I finally accomplished this because I remember a decade ago, right? When I first did this for the first time, getting on performance

reviews, having feedback conversations and people being like, I don't know where this is coming from. I don't understand. I thought I was crushing it here. And I was like, oh my God. And I was losing my mind because I was like, fuck. Like, I thought I gave this person feedback and I felt this. And like, but they didn't hear me. Right. And that was because I had a gap in my communication. So what I realized is like the number one thing that I did is that I didn't wait to give feedback until a performance review. Okay. Like when you have a performance review with somebody, you should be reviewing their performance. It's not make someone feel like shit review. It's not critical feedback review. It's performance review. Let's look at the good, the bad, the ugly, where we can improve, where we've done great. Like, it's everything.

It's holistic. To use it as a time to give all the microfeedback and address all the

situations that have occurred over the last six to 12 months is a terrible thing to do. It is a substitute for people who just don't know how to address things in the moment and people who like to avoid confrontation. And so that's what you don't want to do. If somebody is surprised in a performance review, then you messed up as a leader. And so those two questions that I asked were because I wanted to know how I was doing. And honestly, going into them, I felt really good

because I was like, I don't think there's a single thing here that somebody wouldn't have heard. And if they didn't, it's because I haven't yet learned how to communicate with them in a way that they're going to hear me. And so why is this important, right? One, if you do performance reviews in a way that's negative, and then if you just bombard people with all this critical feedback that you've been holding back,

almost like if you're in a relationship with somebody, it's like all of a sudden they've held in all this resentment and then they unleash it and you're like, where the fuck is this coming from? Like that happened two years ago, right? Well, one, it erodes trust because they're like, well, what the fuck else are you holding back? Like, you haven't been telling you the truth about where I stand with you or my performance for how long now? Like, how am I supposed to trust you as my

leader to know that you're going to give me the right feedback in the moment, right? So think about that. If you're in relationship with somebody and they never give you feedback until they finally explode one day, then you're always wondering, like, do they like that I do this? Do they not like that I do this? Like, where do I stand with this person. It just, it creates this unease and this eggshell walking because now

you're not sure, because you didn't get the feedback in real time. The second thing it does is it definitely makes people defensive. You know, a lot of the times when I hear that somebody gets defensive on a performance review, I'm like, well, let me see how you presented things. And 99.9% of the time, guys, it's not that the person's this egomaniac, defensive, you know, shithead. It's that the way they were giving feedback, it's like, oh, I only pointed out the five giant deficits they have that I've never told them about and pointed out all these scenarios that I never addressed with them over the quarter. It's like, well, no shit. Okay, people defend because they're in shock and they don't want to cry, get angry, be disappointed,

be depressed, and so they use anger. And so it's almost like a protection mechanism because

...