Welcome to the Manj Tools Podcast for Friday, February 17th, 2006. Hi this is Michael Lozen and behalf of my partner Mark Horsman and myself, and welcome

to Manager Tools.

Now if you're a regular listener, you know that we normally roll out new shows on Monday, more

or less. Well, this weekend I'm out of town so instead

of putting out the show late as sometimes happens Mark and I endeavor to get it out

early this time. So we hope this Friday show comes as a pleasant surprise into the weekend.

Now it's been quite a while since we talked about feedback and we think one of the reasons for that is that there's some negativity to it.

What we mean by that is that one-on-one's are an easy winner.

It's about your team, they want more time with you and a half hour with you every week,

seems too good to be true.

And if you stuck with it, you notice improvements in those areas that go beyond just employee

relationships.

Maybe they're kind of hard on your schedule initially, but they're perceived positively.

Not so much with feedback.

I bet when we even said feedback, some of you cringed.

Even though we encourage affirming as well as adjusting feedback,

for some reason managers have a somewhat negative reaction to the feedback model.

And we think we know why. Because adjusting feedback

introduces conflict or tension. Now let's not argue the merits of the value of

sandpaper and what it delivers to find woodwork here today. Rather, we have an additional level of learning

for you to use when you deliver feedback. Or put differently, we have an add-on to this tool that

will make you even more willing to use it. And, although those of you who use it will find this hard to believe,

...