Hello, everybody. Welcome to the Radical Canter Podcast. I'm Kim Scott.

And I'm Jason Rosoff. Amy is out today. So Kim and I will answer a listener question about

how to tell a direct report that your feedback is not a suggestion. The listener writes,

I am a young manager of a team of four. We have a big feedback culture in our company, which

has made giving and receiving feedback really manageable and somewhat easy. When a direct report

is in the stages of learning something to eventually own and lead it, reviewing work and giving

feedback as part of the process. For example, leading the overall strategy or narrative of a project.

I have one direct report who responds to feedback quite differently than the others, and I'm struggling to know how to

balance giving them feedback to implement and giving them feedback to consider and then decide

if they should accept it or not. Recently, this person led a client-facing project and sent it to me for review.

I kept in mind the story, strategy, and narrative are ultimately what I'm reviewing. There were a few

things that I felt misaligned, which I did comment on and shared an alternative approach. However,

they didn't quite accept the feedback, but rather explained why they didn't agree with me, which is completely okay. I'm always open to being challenged and collaborating on the way forward. For my perspective, with this being a client-facing report, this needs to be in the best possible form. More than that, it's not just about having a report that works, but one that's of acceptable quality. If I am giving them feedback so that they can

lead and own this one day, then understanding what that quality looks like is really important.

I want to pause. Can I pause you there? I think that's really what this person is saying is really

important. One of your jobs as a leader is to explain to people where the quality bar is.

And I mean, obviously, they may have other points of view, but part of this person's shop is to hold the quality bar high.

So I'm feeling this is a great question.

I'm excited to talk about it.

Keep going.

Sorry. Okay. No, that's great. I get the sense that my feedback is never well received by this person. They're referring to this individual. And they more often than not reject it instead of receiving it as a learning opportunity, especially when it comes to quality. And quality matters. Am I overthinking it? Am I being nitpicky?

I did listen to your podcast about this and don't feel that I was. How do I balance giving them

...