Deliver Performance Feedback Like a World Class Leader

1. Introduction: Hi. My name is Lauren Strub. I'm an executive coach and leadership consultant, and I support leaders to create careers and lives that fulfill them and the leaders that I work with. No, that while it's incredibly important to keep developing leadership competencies like negotiation skills, what has created the biggest shift in their experience of coming toe work and in their ability to lead as world class leaders, is there self awareness when they start to learn the skills to become more aware of their emotions, their habits, their assumptions, the way they talk to themselves, then they can identify more opportunities to make a change. They have more choice points about how they want to lead, and through those choices their leadership starts to change. They feel more fulfilled by the work that they're doing, and they feel more capable to take on increasing responsibilities and challenges. When I thought about what I want to teach about my first skill share class, the first thing that popped into my head was performance feedback conversations. Now I am a former executive myself. I worked for 14 years at a prestigious biotech company, and I've had my share of difficult performance feedback conversations, both as the recipients of the feedback and is the person delivering it. And when I talk to my friends and colleagues, it breaks my heart that there's so many of these kinds of conversations that go poorly now . We talked to the people who received the feedback. I've heard stories about having managers be very distracted and giving que through the body language that the conversation wasn't a priority to them. I've also heard stories about managers who gave feedback that wasn't specific or actionable enough for the employees, and that confused the employees now is someone who's been on the other side of the table. I know why this can happen. I know how emotionally charged these conversations are. I know what it's like to be the person soliciting the feedback from senior leaders and getting feedback that feels unusable or that doesn't pass. The red face test will talk about what to do with that in this class. When I think about what helps someone deliver, feedback is a world class leader, they're two elements that were especially important to me. The first is how the feedback is filtered and structured, so in part one of today's class will go through the care model C A r E and that the formula for how you structure the feedback we will talk about some examples of what works well when you're following this formula and some other examples of things that actually aren't very effective and are watch outs. And I will use specific examples from my work experience to illustrate these points. And the second part of my class will talk about the emotional intelligence that is so critical toe having these difficult conversations. Part two of the class is called three keys tohave performance feedback conversations with self awareness. And we'll talk about things that you can dio to be fully resourced to be aware of your emotions, to be able to make effective, present based choices. During these conversations, however they unfold, and in the third part of the class we will talk about the project and the project will involve three elements dissecting feedback that you've received in the past. To understand why it didn't feel effective planning feedback that you intend to given employees and looking at what you know about yourself, what you will need to feel resourced and self aware during the conversation so you could make a plan for how that can be requirement for how you go forward in managing performance . I'm so glad you join me for this class, and I can't wait to see your projects in the discussion that comes from it. 2. C = Context: so in the first part of the class will talk about the care feedback model and the introduction. I talked about that kind of experiences that I wanna have for our employees when they receive feedback. Wanted to have a clear understanding of what's expected to have feedback that share, that feel specific. That gives them a sense of whether change is needed or what they can continue to focus on. I also think it's important for managers to have a structure like this to fall back on so that they know they're asking the right questions to only deliver effective feedback. So they know they're talking about specific events in a way that can't be argued with. They're talking about the facts they're talking about stakeholders experiences in a way that's constructive for the employees here in this message. And so I'll go through each of these steps and talk about what works well to bring me to one of these talk about some watch outs and how have effective conversations with the stakeholders who are giving you the feedback that informs this conversation. There lots of opportunities for misunderstanding or misalignment, and I want to share experiences for my career that really helped me become better at aligning with stakeholders to be able to deliver an effective message to my team. So the context is the relevant background for the event that you're describing. It is factual. It talks about when the action occurred, and you may frame that in terms off particular meeting project or deliver verbal. If it's important to know who else was present, then you conclude that specificity is really the most important thing here because it's going to help trigger the employees memory of the event so you could be on the same page. So effective way to describe context would be like this last Tuesday during our team meeting. What have you reviewed overdue action items and employees gonna get a very clear sense of what was happening as context for the action that I plan to describe general terms like you always or you never really are not helpful. They create lots of opportunity for the employee to have a different experience in a different memory of how things went, and we're not talking about specific instances. You're talking about assumptions and impressions, and that doesn't give the employees something specific to review and make choices about. So when you're talking to stakeholders, they may not always be used to giving feedback about specific events in this way. So quite often will come to you with on opinion that they formed about the effectiveness of an employee, about a specific skill, that they think the employed as well or needs to work on more. And you have the opportunity to do two things. One is to strengthen the relationship with the stakeholder. To keep the channels of communication open, let them know how much you want to continue to receive feedback about your team to help your team developed and also to the stakeholder can get the services they need from your group. The second opportunity here is to receive the feedback and continue asking probing questions so you can get to specific, measurable, observable behaviours that can then create a more productive conversation with the employees. So here are some of the challenges that I've had come up. When stakeholders have given me feedback, they have a new impression or skill set that they want to talk about, but they can't think of a specific event that describe that they are talking about something that they have not experienced themselves, but that someone on their team told them. And the opportunity there is to ask if you can follow up with a team member directly, and then you might get a more specific, firsthand account of what occurred. If the stakeholder is unable to think of a specific event, then you can say, you know, thank you so much for alerting me to this, and I'll continue to look at this competency and try to get other feedback of specific instances when it was a problem or what it was demonstrated effectively. And it also gives the stakeholder the message of what's gonna be most helpful to you in the future. And they'll start to look out for specific about. There's one stakeholder conversation that I wanted to share from my personal experience. Senior director came to me and let me know about a communication challenge they were having with someone on my team. So I continued to ask probing questions and really wanted to understand more about this event that I had not had the opportunity to witness myself when I probed a little deeper what I found out was that the event had happened over two years before, and that was outside of our annual performance cycle. That was not an opportunity for me to tell the employees how they had done in that year, but it did alert me to a competency that I wanted to get more feedback about. Is this something where the employees had shown improvement in the last two years to other stakeholders? And so I think, the person giving me the feedback. I didn't share that specific event during my performance conversation with the employees, but it was still valuable information, so to watch outs when gathering information about the context of the feedback. Depending on the policies that HR said for your company, sometimes feedback can be given anonymously, and in that case you still want to be able to provide specificity. But if the if the event was something where it's going to be so clear that the person giving the feedback was one involved, then you need to navigate how best to do that, letting the person who gave the feedback know what your choices are about having a conversation with the employee and being there for Peter follow up discussions or trying to work with other people to find examples of the same behave. Another watch out can be if the event did occur within the performance review cycle. But it happened nine or 10 months before. The best practices, everyone knows, is to deliver feedback close to when the events themselves occur. But sometimes people don't come forward with feedback until the end of the review cycle. The challenge here is that the employee may not remember the event at all or their memory maybe a little foggy, and they'll have a different experience of what happened then the person who gave the feed . But so you need to use your best judgment about how to include details like this and look for other opportunities to find more recent events that illustrate the same points. 3. A = Action: So now that you've established the context for the feedback you're going to give it's time to get into the action. The action is the observable behavior, and this is a factual description of what was, Diner said. You can imagine it as something that you could take a video recording off or an audio recording of. If you put five people in a room, they would all say that this thing had occurred. So for it to be something that everyone has the same impression of, it needs to exclude the interpretations that we put on top of your back. So this does not include any assumptions about the motivation for the action or for the intention of the employees when they did this. So in other words, the language to describe the action is descriptive, not evaluated. So here's an example of what works well when describing an action. You did not solicit input during the discussion before making the decision. Now this is very specific to what occurred, but it's not making assumptions about, for example, whether input was solicited before the meeting. It creates an opportunity to talk about what else happened that I don't know about and to engage the employees so that you can come to closer alignment about what did happen. What is less effective were described in action is to talk in terms of your assumptions and your judgment about what occurred. So a statement like you were rude, not helpful in a statement like You didn't care about other's opinions, go straight to intention and is again not what we're trying to accomplish when we're describing the action. So when you're talking to stakeholders, what I found most often is that people don't lead with what the action waas. They start talking about their assumption about whether behavior was effective or not, why the employees did it, how this does or does not match up with the impression that they formed from working with the employees for some time. So it's OK if they don't come leading with what the action waas. But through appreciative questioning, you can get to okay, what what occurred? Can you please help me be more specific? I really like to make sure that your team gets what they need and that this employee knows what kind of choices they could make differently or what they should keep doing that was affected. So one thing that could come up with stakeholders is that they're not describing an action there, describing a lack of action, something that they thought the employees should have done but did not. So this is still a point that you can talk about because you're stuck talking about a specific event. You can provide the context you can talk about what action might have been more effective than what was done and go from there. The other thing that I've happened have it happened several times in my career is during the same review cycle. I'll have one stakeholder tell me about a competency that my team members fantastic out and have a different stakeholder. Tell me that the employees really not very strong at it at all, and they have different examples, different context. And what is quite often true is either the employee is developing and trying out different ways to do this skill. Or there's one type of communication that's appreciated in one context or with one team and not with another. And so as a manager who's delivering feedback, you need to be able to whole paradox and be comfortable with nuance and gives specific feedback about this is what Teammate refers. This is what Team B prefers these air, the expectations of the role. Let's talk about what you'd like to do as you continue to develop this skill, so some watch outs for the action stuff. As I said, the results in the action easily get blended together, and it's actually really important to go sequentially here to talk about what stuff was taken before you give feedback about what the results of that step waas. And you'll also find that people often make assumptions about motivation, and you may as well you may find yourself leading with Oh, I'm sure you meant to do this. Or from what I know about you, this was unintentional and actually more effective to just laid out there. Here's what was observed, and then that opens up the discussion where you can check in with the employees for any additional information they want provide that helps you understand their perspective matter . It's a mother watch outs have to do with the language that you use. So effective adjectives when describing in action are those that describe the action not person. This is so important because when we're giving feedback, it already feels so personal. And we want to de personalize in a way that helps us know that we're talking about skills and competencies that take time to develop. We're not judging the person themselves. One other watch out has to do with the language that stakeholders use when they give us feedback, as sometimes you might hear a word that catches your attention because it feels by it. Or it's reflecting an assumption that doesn't treat your employees equally. So. One example of that that I can share is I received feedback about a female employee that she was bossy in a meeting. And bossy is not a word that I often hear used about men. So it was not a word that I was comfortable sharing with my employees. So I asked the stakeholder for some other words that might mean the same thing to them. I asked about what the observable action Waas and I settled on some other language to describe the behaviour, and it was language that helped me like I was an integrity. When delivering the message, Would you hear these kind of words during a feedback discussion. It's also an opportunity to talk to that stakeholder and call out what you're seeing. Say I'm uncomfortable using that word and this is why. What do you think about that? You engage them in a discussion rather than just judging. They may not be aware that they're using the word at all, or that it's not perceived as a word that's used equally for different groups. 4. R = Result: So now that we've described the context in the action, we're ready to go to the results. How did the action impact you or other stakeholders? This is such a crucial step in the care feedback model. What I see a lot of managers do is they go straight to an evaluation or judgment, and it's very easy for the employee and the manager to become misaligned at this point. If instead you use a nice statement. If you were the person observing the event and you talk about the thoughts or feelings you experienced at the time of the event, that's not really something the employee can argue with. You're talking about your experience. What's true for you on? The employee can take that in his information to which they might at their experience, which could be different. If you're including feedback from a stakeholder, then he won't use an I statement, but you will be talking about the thoughts or feelings of the other person who was impacted by this choice. So let's talk about some example. If you say I felt rushed and had concerns about moving to the next topic, you're talking about your experience. If you're saying instead, you shouldn't have done that. You should not have moved to the next topic so quickly. That's a place where you're gonna have different opinions and the employees might not be able to hear. The message is clearly Here's some other phrases that would be less effective. I think the team was frustrated, so this shows that you didn't verify the experience of the other people, and you're making an assumption about what was true for them. A phrase like you lost their trust is again making a lot of assumptions about someone else's experience, and it's a pretty profound accusation. Honestly, if that's true, then it's a very serious issue to work on. No one will support. Your decision is a projection. There are a lot of assumptions built in there about how the team was impacted and about other opportunities to influence that the employees not take so when getting feedback from stakeholders about the results of inaction. We spoke earlier about the tendency to blend that action, the result and so it's really helpful to be clear. One thing that can often come up when you're managing more senior leader is that you're getting feedback, not just about competency or the way that they did a task. You're getting higher little feedback about that leaders brand or the perception of their effective. Now this is actually very valuable in foot and, you know, has anybody who's managed senior people knows when someone starts to have a challenge with their brand in the organization, it can take a lot of effort and thoughtful strategy to shift the way people perceive their work. But what you want to be very clear to differentiate between is is this feedback about performance? Or is this feedback about Rand and you would message differently based on which of those is true? Another thing that often comes up in conversations with stakeholders is that they make projections or assumptions about how people in their team feel about this employee or about a task or behavior they did. It's very natural that this happens because, you know, when someone is leading a site or very large function, they like to feel like they have the pulse of their team. And so it's easy for them to say, Oh, I know how other people feel about this, too. The opportunity for you is to ask if you can talk directly with more people in the organization to get more details that would be helpful for a conversation and proceed from there. So here are some watch outs were describing the results of an action. Some organizations have different timelines for talking about performance feedback and for talking about development planning discussions in the company that I worked in. Most recently, I was able to do both in the same conversation. But I wanted to be very clear when talking to the employees about if I was giving feedback about an action that already occurred and measuring that against expectations, which is a conversation of performance, or if I was talking about how we would support them going forward and what kind of competences they would need to focus on to continue to excel. Another challenge that I see is that so often the people managers who are giving the feedback got really geared up for this meeting, and they feel like they need to get all of their points out. Their objective is to lay out their case to show the data they've put together, and they're going at it from the angle of wanting to justify a certain compensation decision or a certain performance rating. And if you go into the meeting with that kind of energy, sometimes managers bowl people over. They don't create the pauses to engage the employees and check for their experience to listen. If there's other details that were relevant, toe listen for where the employee agrees or wants more information for clarity. And I think it hurts the relationship between manager and employee not to look at this performance feedback conversation as a dialogue, but rather as a message that needs to be delivered in its entirety. 5. E = Expectations: So now that we've described the action, including the context of the result, the feedback has been given about, we're ready to talk about expectations. I think this is actually one of the most overlooked steps of giving feedback, and so it was important to me to include this in the model. When you reflecting on the expectations with the employees, you're letting them know if the action that was described met expectations or signal that there is an opportunity to continue to develop a particular skill. This is an opportunity to reflect on the performance that has already occurred. And it's also an opportunity to set a plan together for future performance and development in this graphic, calling attention to the fact that some of the feedback you deliver will be about performance, what was expected in that year and what was demonstrated. Part of the feedback may also be about future development, about advanced skills that will be needed if the employee is going to achieve the goal of the next role they're interested in or some other future development. So if you start from the left moving to the right when we're talking about competencies that were expected in the current role and were demonstrated well. The message to the employee is, Keep doing this. This is really important that you continue to demonstrate the skill and it contributes to your success. If you're reflecting on a current expectation that was not demonstrated, well, then the messages improvement is needed. No, this is another opportunity where I see a lot of managers have challenges because a lot of research has demonstrated that in a conversation like this, employees can really process five pieces of positive feedback for everyone. Piece of critical feedback. And I've certainly sat two reviews where I had an equal number of pieces of positive feedback and pieces of critical feedback. And then we got to the end of the review. I was shocked to find out that I had an excellent rating. What could be but challenging is if you are delivering feedback to someone whose performance is really not meeting expectations and chained absolutely need it. You can still stay in this five positive toe, one critical ratio, but your messaging, when you're delivering the critical feedback, needs to be very clear. Yes, this does not change. Your performance will not meet expectations when you're giving feedback about a competency that's required for future development for future goals. And it was something that was done, well, then you can say, Oh, I see this strengthen you. This is something to continue emphasizing will make sure that people outside of our team know that you do this well. And here's how I see it supporting your development goals if it's something that the employer will need for the next roller interested in. But it was not demonstrating effectively. It's important to highlight that your feedback about this is not going to be reflected in the performance review. It wasn't an expectation right now. Then you're just talking about future development goals and ways to help the employees develop this skill. So there two challenges. I often see when managers are discussing expectations during a performance review the first , and I've experienced this myself. Quite often, employees are recognized in previous rules for particular strength. For example, let's say communication the way they demonstrated that skill in their previous role meant that they were really a star on the team and they were performing above expectations. Now that year there in your rule, which may have different expectations or more may be a more senior role. They're doing the same behavior, and they expect to give feedback that this is again, above and beyond. This is an incredible strength, and from your perspective they did exactly what was expected. That's the kind of communication I love to cease from someone in your role and above and beyond would have looked like this. This is a little different. Second talents that I often see is that managers are really only clear about some expectations during the end of your review, either in their documentation for the role, description wasn't as clear as it could have been, or the goal setting could have been more specific. So it's important to go back and revisit those expectations multiple times throughout the year, so it doesn't feel like the review is a surprise. So an example of something that's framed effectively this behavior is a great example of was expected from someone in your role in job level. Keep doing this. So when I read a statement like this, my assumption is that the competency that's being described was demonstrated at the level it was expected, and it's something that you want to highlight Any courage. This is not above and beyond language. The the kinds of phrases that really frustrate employees are general feedback about expectations that don't create clear action steps that don't let you know how important it is. A change occurs. Races like your communication could be better, and you're doing fine. So one of the opportunities for alignment that I've had come up when receiving feedback from stakeholders is they describe something they expected someone on my team to do that is not actually in their role description. So when that's happened to me in the past, I definitely wanted to take a stand for my employees and say, Oh, I want to make sure you know, that the competency your task that you described is not an expectation that I set for my team. Here is what they do do on list out what what the expectations are. But if this is a service that you're looking for from my team, let's talk about what might be possible. I talked about the importance of setting expectations in the beginning of a year. If you notice that you're getting a lot of feedback about an area where you don't feel like expectations have been clear. You may not be ready to give that performance feedback yet. Maybe an opportunity to set expectations more clearly and continue toe. Watch out for that competency. Another watch out is to avoid comparing the performance of the person you're talking to to one of their peers in the group and when you're the manager, could be easy to compare to employees. If you see that they're the same job level, the thing, role expectations and one person is demonstrating much more successful behaviors than the other. But this kind of comparison, of course, creates tension. The group is not very motivating for the person who's being given the feedback, so instead compare their performance to the expectations and the role description, not another person. Now that we've talked about the four elements of care feedback model, you have a specific framework that you can fall back to for future reviews, something that will help you be more clear when you set expectations of beginning of the year and hopefully a groundwork that will keep the channels of communication open between you and your employees. If the employee needs to come back and clarify some feedback. If you need to talk about a specific plan for the development of competencies, hopefully it builds trust. And you can reaffirm your attention during this conversation that you want the employees to be successful and you're giving them this information because you think it will help them get a better sense of what is being asked for from them. What strength you see in them and what opportunities there are for them to do well now is the manager. The second piece that I think it's so critical to be able to deliver world class feedback is your emotional intelligence, your self awareness. So in part, two of the class will look at three keys for delivering performance feedback with self awareness. 6. 1st Key to to Self-Aware Performance Conversations: the first key to delivering performance feedback with self awareness is allowing yourself enough time, and resource is so let me share a few personal examples busy there happened to me or to a close colleague. One time there was a performance feedback conversation. Where the manager was late due to traffic certainly happens. There was another where the manager interrupted the meeting to answer a phone call, and there was 1/3 where the performance feedback conversation happened over the phone while the manager was driving. And at one point during the conversation, the manager swore at somebody else who was creating a traffic hazard and was clearly distracted throughout the conversation. Now, as we so often say, actions speak louder than words. And when you're the recipient of feedback that's delivered in this manner, you're not getting the message that your manager is valuing this conversation, that they really want to see you succeed, and that helping to coach and support you is one of their priorities. So for that reason, it's important toe. Have a container for the conversation where you as the manager, can be fully present and available on when you're sending the signal. This is important, too, to me, and it's important to you. And I want to be here as much to deliver this content as to be in discussion with you and to hear your response. And the only way that I know to be able to show up in that way is to create time for myself before a conversation. So I understand how busy our workdays can be. When I was an executive, I had 10 to 12 meetings. Most days they were often back to back, and I felt like I was rushing all the time. And I knew that if I entered a performance feedback conversation in that state, I would be agitated. I would be distracted, usually thinking about what had just happened. Um, and it didn't allow me to show up as the leader that I wanted to be in this important conversation and when it comes to annual feedback in particular, this is one of the most crucial conversations that you will have as a manager. Even more so then, although times that you pass in the hallway or the times when you give feedback about something that's just occurred. This is the conversation where you're reflecting on potential on how to get the company results that you've all been working towards and also what you see in this person and how you can best support them. So practically what this looks like is reserving at least 15 minutes, if not 30 in advance of the conversation. Ideally, this would be in the same room where the performance feedback conversation will happen. Um, get some water, use the restroom, it's and food if you need to, so that you can be totally present. And normally I would discourage checking any emails in that time because quite often it takes more time than we expect to respond to an issue. But if there's something that you have to dio to be able to be present, take care of that quickly. Now it takes a little bit of leadership courage. If someone sees you in a room for half a Knauer, um, and they want to come in and interact with you or get an answer to something that they need urgently. And if you were really taking a stand for your employees for their development, for them having a clear understanding of how their performance measures against expectations. Then you need to have a direct conversation with the other people who come in and say I'm not available right now. Please come back at three or whatever it may be. When you have taken the time to resource your body to be available and present in the room , Then you could reevaluate your intentions for the conversation. What would an ideal outcome look like? And notice if what's coming up for you is your biggest hope is that the employee doesn't get upset. That may not be something that you can control. Notice if your intention is something instead like, I want to make sure they fully understand everything that I want to deliver, and it may happen in this conversation or it may take several conversations. So check back in to your values as a leader to what you hope will happen for the other person and for yourself in this very difficult conversation. And the last piece to giving yourself enough time. And resource is before this difficult conversation is noticing any emotions or sensations that are coming up for you. And they may not be things that you wish you were feeling. You may feel nervous. You may feel uncomfortable. You may feel like you're already assuming a defensive posture because you think you know how this conversation will go or how the employees will react. And I think when you can turn that spotlight of your awareness into your experience, whatever it may be, you have more choices for what to do during the conversation, as thes emotions play out as thes sensations in your body effect, How you're communicating. So that's the first key. And now we'll get into the second and third keys for having a self aware conversation about performance. 7. 2nd Key to to Self-Aware Performance Conversations: the second key toe. Having a performance management conversation with self awareness is taking appropriate responsibility. This could be very challenging for many managers. Most of us either take too much responsibility or not enough, and let me describe what this can look like. There is a continual, and we all fall somewhere along it and may move on this continuum throughout our careers and while managing different people. And on one side of the continuum are managers who take very little responsibility for how their actions and communication may be contributing to a dynamic in the management relationship. So these are the people who may have stories or judgments about the employees, that the conversation about performance feedback didn't go well because the employee was too sensitive or they misunderstood me or whatever is going on. And that type of manager doesn't turn their attention inward to think about what they might do differently next time, or how they may have contributed to a particular result. On the other end of the continuum, our employees who take responsibility not only for themselves but who try to take responsibility for the employees and their reaction. This is a dynamic that I know well, because it's something that I struggle with personally. It can seem compassionate, empathetic, generous to spend a lot of your time concerned with how the employees will respond to a particular message. But what it can be challenging is if in deciding that you are sure how this employ will react and you want to save them, the discomfort being upset you don't deliver feedback that you feel you can stand behind with integrity. Then the employee is missing the value, the gift of this information, about how they are or not, measuring up to expectations about how they're impacting the people around them, about suggestions you have about changes that would help them to be more effective at work . So taking too much responsibility or too little responsibility can be very challenging and , um, not productive for this kind of conversation so it could be helpful during a review to think about the things that you are responsible for. You are responsible as the manager for delivering feedback that you feel has integrity that you've tested, that you've gotten really curious and specific about so that you can stand behind the message you're delivering. That's the red face tests that we talk about. You are responsible for being available to clarify the feedback during either during this conversation or subsequent one after the employees had more time to process. You are responsible for taking care of yourself in this conversation for having the self awareness for developing the emotional intelligence to notice if you get triggered by the employees response and to breathe to resource. To do the things that you need to do to show up is the leader that you want to be as a world class leader. Here's what you're not responsible for. You are not responsible for the employees agree with your feedback. And I think this is a trap that I see people get stuck in a lot. They believe that if they wrote the feedback effectively enough, or if they get enough people who can confirm having that experience of the employees that the employees will say, Yep, you're right. I don't just great all. I didn't have a different experience of this. That's not how humans are right, so the employee may disagree, and you may have other evidence other ways that you can back up your message. It's fine to continue that conversation. But success does not look like having the employees say yes, Everything you said is right, and I will do everything that you recommended, and I have no concerns that I'm not emotionally triggered by this at all. It's just not realistic. Something else that you are not responsible for is having the employees come toe all the conclusions about how to move forward during that initial feedback conversation performance management goes on throughout the whole year. Hopefully, the feedback wasn't a surprise because you are responsible for giving feedback when you hear it on dure able to test it and talk about it. Um, but it can take some time for people to process information that feels new, even if you told them to told it to them before. And it can take several conversations to talk through what an annual feedback means, how the conclusions were reached and what possible choices were available next. So notice during the conversation throughout the conversation. If you are spending more of your attention on the employees and maybe falling into this pattern of trying to take care of them and their reaction, or if you're leaning back a little bit and your disengaged, and you're saying this isn't something that I've contributed to And how can you take some healthy and self wear steps to develop, to beam or in the healthy middle of taking appropriate responsibility during this conversation? 8. 3rd Key to to Self-Aware Performance Conversations: the third key toe. Having a performance feedback conversation with self awareness is taking time to debrief after the conversation, so, ideally, that would be immediately after the conversation ends. But it can be later that day or in the evening or a month later, when employees it's had some more time to have conversations with you. The reason why this is such a crucial step in your development as a leader is because it helps you learn. It helps you notice things about yourself, about the employees, the dynamic, the communication so that you know what you want to continue to dio and what you like to do differently. So here are some of the questions that I've asked myself, um, after performance conversations that I've had, what did I do? Well, I think it's so important to stop and reflect their because so many of us have very strong inner critics, and we can just pick apart all the things that didn't go the way we planned. Another helpful question can be What did I learn about myself? What did I learn about the employees? What is the most important thing that I want to do or say in my next exchange with this employee. Is there anything that feels like it's unresolved? Do I feel like there was something that the employees I didn't fully understand or maybe didn't assess the significance off the same way that I did? I know this has been a challenge for me and past conversations. I think I've been very directing the feedback when I check in again with the employees. Turns out it's going to take two or three times to message so that they understand how important it is. The change occurs. Another question you can ask yourself as you reflect is, Was there anything about the way that I prepared the feedback that I would do differently? And is there anything about the way that I communicated the feedback that I might do differently next time and last, it could be helpful to reflect on what surprised you. Were you surprised by the level of your anxiety during the conversation? Were you surprised by the intensity of the employees response? I've certainly had that experience. Were you surprised that you felt really present and you felt like you were stepping up? Is the leader you wanted to be and you said a difficult thing very effectively or you expressed praise very effectively and the person felt proud. So all of these questions can be a great way to check in with yourself to notice, to grow toe, learn and keeping a file of these reflections through multiple employees. Conversations throughout your career can help you a line. Can you help me make choices to create the leadership legacy that is important to you? 9. Class Project: So now it's time to talk about the project, and I'm so excited to see what you learn and what you try as you go through the different parts of this assignment. So the first step I'd like you to take some feedback that you've received in the past that you felt was not effective and diagram it using the care model to see what might have been missing or what might have been done. Not as well as it could have been. Was it the context that was missing? Did you not understand what the expectations were? And so on In the second part of the project, I'd invite you to plan some performance feedback that you're about to give, or that you would have given to an employee in a former role. Used the care model, check for any language of bias or any feedback that doesn't pass the red face test for you . And then in the third part, you'll be planning, uh, the self awareness support that you need during the conversation. So in that 15 to 30 minutes in advance of the conversation, what do you know about yourself that will help you show up fully present, fully resourced, fully engaged so that you can have an intentional conversation using your best skills. I look forward to seeing your questions, your projects, your posts on the board, and I'm so glad that I got to share this information with you and will continue to learn from you as well.