Leadership: Giving Feedback to Senior Stakeholders

1. Introduction: In theory, it should be easy to share your views with another person, but this becomes much more difficult when that person is in a position of authority, they maybe have more power, or maybe they're not the best at listening or having a two-way dialogue. This can make it really tough. It can sometimes feel like overkill preparing for feedback conversations. But this is what makes the difference, and this is what allows us to reach a really powerful outcome. This class is going to cover everything you need to consider so that you come out of the conversation with a good outcome and with the relationship intact and perhaps even enhanced. Hi, I'm Abi Ireland and I run leadership and training consultancy called Understanding Performance. So we specialize in peak performance and productivity for executives and teams. I deliver training, coaching, and talks for companies across the world. I've worked with thousands of people over the past seven years. So I'm going to break things down for you in each lesson using a simple but effective seven-step framework to guide you through. We're going to cover preparation, personalities, planning, practice, plotting, proceeding, and pursuing. The trickiest part is actually taking action. There is no way to improve our ability to give feedback upwards if we don't put the theory into practice. We just need to get out there and be brave enough to try it out. You're going to come away with the framework that you can use to plan and execute on your next feedback conversation with confidence, objectivity, calm, and composure. You'll also have clarity in what to do next after you've had the conversation so that you can really maximize your impact. As we go through each lesson, take a moment to complete the class worksheet so that you have a plan of action ready to go by the time we finished. Now, let's get started. 2. Preparing to Give Feedback Upwards: It's really important that we feel able to give feedback upwards because this promotes open and honest communication, it helps us to improve and make progress, and it helps us to have healthier relationships and interactions. So the first step we need to take is to prepare. We'll walk through an example to bring the feedback formula to life in each lesson. For example, we could be in a situation where we are reporting to a manager, who has a tendency to make fast decisions and then change their mind without really consulting the team or explaining the rationale. This manager's behavior makes the team feel unfocused and confused about priorities as the goalpost keeps shifting. So we know that we need to raise this issue to get ourselves and the rest of the team focused and directing efforts towards doing work that matters. At this stage, it's important to reflect on any concerns we may have about giving feedback. For example, we might be worried about the consequences and focus on these more than the benefits. Giving feedback upwards can be one of the biggest challenges people face in organizations. It's often easier to give feedback if someone has less authority, so we need to recognize that we can hold ourselves back from being honest because of a few factors. There could be a lack of psychological safety, which makes people fearful of giving their opinion in case they're shut down, they're told off, or they're perceived and treated negatively as a result. In this situation, you might be thinking, I'm worried about the repercussions and consequences if I speak up. Cultural norms and beliefs also have an impact depending on where you are in the world and what the company culture is like. So for example, in a hierarchical culture, people don't feel that they can challenge upwards or give feedback as it can be dismissed or even seen as a sign of disrespect. So in this situation, you might be thinking, I don't have the authority to speak up, it's not my place to do this. Alternatively, you may be frustrated when it comes to giving feedback. Maybe you've tried it in the past, and it hasn't been received well, or maybe no action was taken as a result. So you might be thinking, why bother, it's not worth the effort or the stress because nothing is going to change. Why would I bother doing this? You may just not have a plan for how or when to give feedback. You might be thinking, I don't know how to do this successfully, and so you don't do anything at all. The first thing to do is get clear on your reason for giving feedback. This could be because you want to improve communication, the working relationship, processes, workload, project or team performance, expectation management, or there could be something else. Then think about what it is that's holding you back from getting feedback. Be completely honest about this by choosing from the reasons I mentioned or another of your own. The next thing to do is come up with a more positive belief to override that limiting belief that you hold. So for example, I'm worried about the offending my boss and damaging my career prospects. This could become, I'm excited about the opportunity to focus on achieving real results and regaining control of my time. So now take a moment to look at your class worksheet and write down what holds you back, reflect on why this is and then brainstorm at least one impairment belief that you can adopt to overcome your barriers and creates a more proactive mindset. You might also want to watch my class on giving and receiving impactful feedback in a hybrid world, where I recapped the benefits of giving feedback. 3. Understanding Your Stakeholders: To give feedback effectively, you need to understand the person you are dealing with and how they are likely to react. So some questions to ask yourself include is your feedback about the stakeholders approach, their decisions, their behavior, or their personality? What is your stakeholders personality like? What is important to them, and what is likely to trigger them. And how can you assess what mood they're in? How will you know it's a good time to have your conversation? So gather as much information as you can so that you can feel more prepared for your conversation. Using the scenario we introduced earlier, let's think about this further. The manager we want to give feedback to is quite impatient. They're easily distracted and very action-oriented. This manager likes to keep busy, but this means she's often got too many projects on the go at once and she finds it hard to lead effectively on all of these when jumping from one to the other. So it's really important to this manager to stay busy, to feel like she's in the driving seat. She likes to be in charge and she doesn't like to be challenged. So we can assess how to deal with this stakeholder by determining where she sits in the feedback attitude model. This shows various stakeholder persona's based on whether they are self or team oriented, and whether they are generally open, or closed to feedback. We have four persona's. We have the self enhancer, the self preserver, the collaborator, and the director. So, let's go explore each of these now. The self-enhancer is open to feedback if it is going to benefit them personally. The self-preserver feels threatened by feedback, and so he's not really open to listening. The director thinks that they know what is best for the team, but they don't like their authority being challenged. And the collaborator wants what is best for the team and is open to feedback that is going to make things even better. In our example, it's likely that the stakeholder is a director persona, team-oriented, but closed to feedback. She likes to lead, she likes to drive things forward, but she doesn't like being challenged. There are many factors that contribute to a stakeholder's persona, and these include their motivation to listen. So you really need to think about what's in it for them, and why it would be beneficial for them to listen to you. Their personality profile, number two, whether they are task or people focused and what their preferred communication style is. And if you'd like to learn more about communication styles, you can check out my class on impactful and productive communication. Cultural differences can also influences someone's attitude to feedback and who they are open to receiving this from. So this can differ from country to country, but it can also depend on company culture. And the organizational structure will play a role. If a company has a flat structure, it's going to be easier to interact and communicate across levels, whilst if you have a hierarchical structure, this means it's not always gonna be easy to access senior stakeholders. So this lack of approachability means that giving feedback freely is a lot harder with mental and physical barriers in the way. Even senior stakeholders have fears and hesitations about receiving feedback. For example, they might be worried about their credibility, their reputation, or their authority being damaged if you can see areas for improvement that they can't. This can be the reason for resistance to ask for welcome or accept feedback. So those fears and hesitations can manifest also as negative reactions, such as explicitly disagreeing with feedback or suddenly ignoring and dismissing it. Now both types of reactions aren't going to be helpful because they stop people from sharing their honest opinions and ideas. Being aware of these challenges can really help us to have more productive conversations with our stakeholders. For more tips on giving feedback, checkout my class on impactful feedback in a hybrid world as I dig deeper into content structure and approach in those lessons. Remember that the four persona's gives us a simple guide to assess how best to approach our stakeholder, but everyone is different and there are nuances when someone could be a mix of two or more persona's. For each stakeholder, think about, what is going to be most important to them in your conversation, i.e, what's in it for me? What questions might they have so you can plan ahead and plan your responses. Are there any critical points you need to weave into discussion based on what you know about your stakeholder? Select this persona that sounds most like your stakeholder and answer the questions on your class worksheet to help you prepare for your conversation. In the next lesson, we're going to look at how to approach your conversation. 4. Planning Your Talking Points: Once you know who you are dealing with and what motivates them, you can start sketching out what you want to say at a high level, and this is what we call the planning stage. Now you can't create a script as any two-way dialogue is going to require adapting, being agile, and being able to flex in the moment. However, you can preempt and plan as best you can so you're prepared and you have more control. A simple structure to follow is to firstly check for rapport before going straight in with your feedback. Even if someone is more senior, take some time to warm up the conversation before getting into the important bits. This part of the interaction is going to give you clues about their mood, whether they'll be receptive to feedback and even what else they have going on. You can then decide if now or later would be a good time to discuss and you can think about how you flex your approach. Once you've established rapport, reiterate what you want to discuss, and why you want to discuss it. For example, it's great to hear that things are going so well with the restructure, I know you've been really focused on that. I've been working on project dawn and I wanted to check in with you as we have three weeks to go before the next milestone. Then, depending on what's important to your stakeholder, you can highlight the benefits of listening to you. When giving feedback, be really conscious about language and tone used as well as we don't want it to come across as criticism. If dealing with a self enhancer, we know that they are concerned about their performance, their perceptions, and future prospects. They're going to be open to feedback because they want to know how they can be seen even more favorably. Therefore, it pays to focus on the benefits to them personally. For example, we could say something like by adjusting the data in this report, it could really help you in conversations with the MD when she's deciding which initiative to go with. On the other hand, if you're speaking to a self preserver, they're going to be worried about protecting their credibility. They're going to be skeptical about your agenda and they might even be suspicious and untrusting of you. In this situation, it can help to focus on reassuring and affirming them, highlighting what you think is going well and emphasizing what can be done to achieve even better outcomes. Also remember to ask their opinion to show that you really value their expertise. You could say something like, you're great at driving so many projects at once. For project dawn, we could enhance the client experience by including a one-page summary so they can review key milestones easily in advance. Do you think that would help? Next, we have the director. This individual is very concerned about maintaining their authority. They're not really interested in your opinion or your perspective. In fact, they believe they know what's best and they definitely don't want to be criticized. This character requires careful treatment so that we can subtly introduce suggestions which this person can buy into. Dealing with this character also requires humility, as we often need to provide feedback in a way that makes them feel it is their idea. We may even want to ask for permission to add suggestions that improve the way things are done. You could say something like, you mentioned that the client likes to see lots of options, would you like me to develop a third option that focuses on new markets? I agree that having more options is a great way to increase our chances of securing the next phase of the project. Finally, we have the collaborator who is most open to feedback and likely to proactively ask for it. You can easily share your views, but still remember to be respectful and conscious that this person is in a senior position. Lead with how your ideas are going to help the team perform even better. In this situation, you could say something like, I'm really excited about being involved in project dawn. I'd love to share my ideas with you on how we could reach the next milestone smoothly and without any issues. Here's what I'm thinking. Then you can always add your suggestions, your feedback, and your ideas. I'm going to also share with you some extra tips for success. First one, tell your stakeholder what would help you to do your job more effectively so that you are putting the spotlight for improvement on yourself and not on them. Second thing you can do is watch my class and impactful and productive communication for a more in-depth look at how to communicate with stakeholders based on their style and preferences. You can also check out the class on impact with feedback in a hybrid world for even more ideas to try out. Now it's time to go to your class worksheet and start mapping out your conversation outline based on your stakeholders persona. Write down some bullet points for now that can guide you through the real conversation. 5. Practicing the Conversation: Once you've prepared your conversation outline, it is time to play it out before going into the actual conversation and this is the practice stage. Role-playing and getting familiar with what you want to say is going to help you to be so much more prepared and compose on the day. This doesn't mean having a word for word script, as you will not be able to stick with this in a two-way dialogue. It does, however, mean practicing enough so that you say what you want to say and it doesn't sound forced, awkward, or uncomfortable. If you say the words out loud, it also helps to settle nerves and it will start to sound more natural the more that you do it. If you role-play with someone else, you can also observe how your feedback lands and you can check and prepare for potential reactions. You can use all of this data to fine tune the way you do things, come up with better ways to approach the situation and stay calm when in the actual conversation. Visualization is another great way to mentally prepare for the conversation. Now this involves imagining what will happen and how it feels to have a successful outcome. You can run through the scenario in your head and visualize how it unfolds. Visualization is a really powerful technique used by top athletes, business people, entrepreneurs, and performance and it helps us to get comfortable and grounded before a conversation. You're going to need a few minutes on your own to do this exercise. You can start by closing your eyes and visualizing where you are when having the feedback conversation with your stakeholder. Are you watching yourself having the conversation or are you in the conversation itself? I'd like you to bring all senses into the equation. Think about what you can see, what you can hear, what you can smell. What are you holding, what is in front of you, what are you wearing? Are you standing, are you sitting? Think about your tone of voice. How you show up to the interaction and what your body language is like. Also think about the flow of your conversation. The words you're using, the words you're not using, your pace, your use of silence, your eye contact with your stakeholder. What is their reaction to what you are saying? Then visualize how you respond when your stake is talking. Are you relaxed, are you composed and calm or are you tensed and mechanical? In your mind watch how the conversation unfolds and how it comes to an end. What happens next in this conversation? How do you both leave the conversation? Are you happy and smiling or are you frustrated and annoyed? Once you have gone through this process, you can open your eyes and jot down any ideas and thoughts that may help when having the actual conversation. Now it's time to take action. Write down the name of someone you can role-play your conversation with and reach out to them to assign time for this. Really pick someone who you trust, who's going to be honest and objective with you, someone who's going to challenge you and is going to offer you a different perspective. Take a moment now to use your cloth worksheet to note down the time and date for your role-play and also take this opportunity to make any notes on the visualization exercise that we've just been through. 6. Scheduling the Conversation: Now that we've done enough preparation, we are ready for the real thing. It is time to schedule your conversation. This step involves plotting it into your calendar. In this scenario we've been using throughout this class, we have our busy manager who keeps shifting the goal posts. She's juggling several projects, she's hard to pin down because she's darting from one meeting to the next. Let's imagine two scenarios. One where we are trying to have a conversation on a very busy day for our stakeholder and one where we have more time for the conversation. If we feel rushed or if our stakeholder doesn't have the time or the headspace to talk, we're not going to have a decent conversation. We can get organized for our interaction by going through a simple checklist. Think about the communication channel you're going to use. Will this be a face-to-face meeting, a virtual meeting, or a phone call. Ideally, you're going to have a real-time conversation instead of using email to share your feedback. You can always however, follow up with an email to summarize what you've discussed but it's usually best to have a two-way dialogue so that you can hear your stake holders point of view as well even if a live conversation is going to seem a little bit scarier at times. Whether virtual or face-to-face think about the physical setting too. If face-to-face, are you going to have the conversation in a formal location like a meeting room at the office? Or are you going to go somewhere informal, like a cafe? If virtual are you going to have somewhere private with good connection and no distractions? My class on giving and receiving feedback in a hybrid world goes into more detail on this. You can watch the lesson specifically on setting up a practical feedback environment to help you to get started. The next thing you want to do is decide on the dates and time for the conversation. Two things to consider are the stakeholders working patterns and the physiological factors that can impact success. Through past experience or by checking the person's calendar, are you clear on whether they have capacity to have the conversation? How far ahead are you going to need to book in? Are they may be off on certain days, and when is their least busy day during which they may have more mental headspace to listen and engage in a conversation. We also underestimate human factors that can affect the quality of our conversations, such as stress levels, lack of sleep, and hunger. For example, if your stakeholder is highly stressed, they're going to be less receptive to feedback. If they're tired and they're unrested, they may be less receptive to feedback. If they're hungry, they may be less receptive to feedback. This is because when our glucose levels drop, it's harder to focus and we can become more irritable, short-tempered, and snappy. You may have heard of the term hangry, which is a combination of being hungry, and angry. It makes sense to have more challenging conversations when someone is well-fed and definitely not before. This brings us to formality and there are times where you may want to provide feedback more casually, either at the end of a meeting, during another conversation or opportunistically, if a small window opens up. It's not always practical or desirable to schedule a formal meeting for these conversations. You can decide what level of formality is going to work best with the person you have in mind. You might also want to consider what else is going on for the stakeholder. Check out their calendar, check there if there is enough time before and after you went to meet with them so that they've got the headspace to listen, to reflect and to take action. You definitely don't want to rush the conversation or feel pressure to speed up the pace unnaturally just to fit a tight time frame. Another thing you can do is rate the other person on a scale of 1-10 for potential receptiveness to a conversation. You can do this by asking really simple questions to assess how they are feeling at the start. For example, you might ask, how are you? How's your day going so far? Gauge how they respond. Is there any emotion? Is there any frustration or distraction in their voice or their body language? Now it sounds obvious, but poor timing is one of the main reasons that difficult conversations don't go to plan. Think about the time needed for your conversation. If anything give yourself a bit of headroom, a little contingency. If you think the conversation is going to take 30 minutes, allocate 45 minutes just in case. You have a much better idea of this after practicing and role-playing in advance. Setting the context is also important. There are no surprises for your stakeholder. You definitely do not want to jump into a giving feedback if the stakeholder isn't ready for it. Remember to say why it's important to have the conversation now. For example, you might reach out via email to ask for the meeting, and this doesn't have to be detailed. You can simply say something like, dear stakeholder, I have some thoughts about project dawn that I would like to discuss with you specifically regarding the next milestone. I'll find time in your calendar to chat further and I'll send you an invite. Please let me know if you need any further information in the meantime. Many thanks. On the other hand, are less effective email would say something like, Dear stakeholder, do you have five minutes for a chat? Thanks. In this example, it doesn't give any context or any information that would help the other person to know what you want so it keeps them guessing unnecessarily. Finally, always go into the conversation with a clear intention on why you are giving feedback and what your desired outcome is. Keep this in front of mind throughout so that you can stay focused if the discussion goes off track. You could write down your intention somewhere so that you can refer back to it if you get distracted. Now that we've gone through this checklist, complete this section on your class worksheets so that you are well-prepared and set up for success. Then contact your stakeholder and book in for your conversation. 7. Having the Conversation: Having done all your planning and preparation, it is now time to proceed and have the conversation in real life. Now, as I said before, we can't really control the course of the conversation, but we can definitely guide it if we've planned in advance. The most important thing to remember at this stage is that nothing is going to change if we don't provide a feedback. Difficult conversations are never easy to have, so we need to be brave enough to give it a go. By this stage, you've already considered what your stakeholder's reaction could be, so this will help you to be ready in the moment. If things go to plan and your feedback as well received, this is a great time to be proactive. You can continue to lead the conversation by asking your stakeholder for their additional thoughts, and you can proactively weave these into the next steps that you mutually agree on. At this stage, it's also important to agree on accountability and determine who's going to do what to move things forward. You're also going to want to thank your stakeholder for their time and their willingness to have a conversation with you. No matter how well we prepare, there are going to be times when we have to expect the unexpected. Our conversation may go off track. A stakeholder might get triggered by something we say, or we might panic in the moment and go off on a tangent. In these situations, it is still worth planning ahead and thinking about how we would handle the situation. One thing we can do is set what we call an implementation intention. We can do this in advance so that we can quickly go to a pre-planned course of action if anything goes wrong. This is basically an if then statement which gives us a default action and reduces the need to think and make decisions in the moment. If the conversation isn't working, then you will take a certain action. For example, you might find that you are struggling to get your points across, and you may think it's better to revisit another time. If you get to this stage, then you could opt for a timeout. You might say something like this to your stakeholder. I want to take this opportunity to get the conversation started on this topic. I really appreciate that it might need further discussion, so could we put in time for another chat in the next few days after we've each had time to think about it? Alternatively, you might just need a moment to pause and think before carrying on. This can help to gather your thoughts and assess the best way to move the conversation forward. If you're doing this, be confident about openly telling your stakeholder, as it really shows that you're thinking before speaking. You might say something like this, "I think I need a minute to reflect on what you just said. If you don't mind, I'm going to gather my thoughts as I want to think about this before responding." Resetting is about mentally flicking a switch so that you can regain composure in the moment. This means being consciously aware of your emotional and your physiological reactions to conflict, tension, and challenge. For example, you might feel like you're getting warm, your heart rate is rising or your tone of voice is becoming more intense. Now, in this situation, it helps to pause and notice this. Take slow deep breaths, smile, and remind yourself that the conversation is going to be much more productive if you can maintain rapport and stay calm under pressure. Finally, having these difficult conversations gives you a huge opportunity to practice, to learn, to get comfortable with the uncomfortable. Remind yourself that if it doesn't go as smoothly as you would have liked, this is still a learning experience, and being able to have feedback conversations with more senior stakeholders is only going to get easier if you do it often, and you learn from your experience. Now take a minute to look at your class worksheet and write down 2-3 implementation intentions that you can use. This will give you a safety blanket to fall back on if you get caught out in the moment. 8. Following Up: The final step in our framework is pursue. This means planning for the follow-up conversation with your stakeholder. Now, this is an important step because often we summon the courage to give feedback once and then we never revisit the conversation. This can be frustrating because we don't know if our comments have been taken seriously, and we may feel anxious bringing up the situation again, if nothing changed the first time. Often we breathe a sigh of relief after giving feedback because it takes so much energy encourage, and then we forget that we might need to follow up later. A follow-up conversation allows us to check in and it allows us to ensure accountability. We want to know that things have or are changing, or that progress is being made. To prepare for follow-up conversation, you can think about a few things in advance, timing, intentions, derailers, and evolution. With timing determine how much time you want to pass between your first conversation and your follow up. When you reach the end of your initial feedback conversation with your stakeholder, you can say something like, it would be great to reconnect with you on this again soon so we can check how things are going. Would the Friday after next suit you to catch up? If you agree your next touchpoint before ending your initial conversation, it's in the calendar and therefore it takes effort to remove, and if we don't get this commitment at this point, it's going to take more time and more energy to organize a follow-up meeting later. In this way, we're going to keep momentum going. It also helps to be very clear on your intention for the future. What do you want to have happened by the time you have your follow-up conversation? What will success look like after giving your initial feedback? If you are clear on this, you can measure progress when you have your next meeting. Another thing to consider are derailers. These are the things that can get in the way of success or progress. It could be that your stakeholder gets very busy and they don't have time to take action on what you both discussed. Resources could be a challenge or maybe someone else's input is needed but they're hard to get hold of. Or maybe a change might take longer to implement than expected. Think about the potential derailers in advance and speak to your stakeholder about how these can be avoided or mitigated. Your follow-up meeting is going to provide a perfect opportunity to talk further about these challenges and obstacles to success, and talk about how you can support your stakeholder in overcoming these. The final thing you will want to discuss in your follow-up meeting is what's next? How can you keep the momentum up whilst maintaining a good relationship with your stakeholder? Talking through these points shows that progress requires ongoing discussion, and that will also help your stakeholder to get used to more frequent two-way conversations in the future. Now let's revisit your class worksheet and let's make some notes about your follow-up conversation covering timing, intentions, derailers, and evolution. Now you are well-prepared to have your conversation. 9. Final Thoughts: Thank you so much for joining me in this class. I really hope you now feel more confident and prepared to give feedback to a senior stakeholder. Maybe you've been putting off the conversation out of fear or you just didn't know where to start. However, now that we've covered all seven steps in the feedback formula, I hope you are more than ready to get going. Remember, senior stakeholders need feedback and they need your perspective even if they may not realize it. Giving feedback to anyone can be challenging and we only get better with practice. This involves putting ourselves out there and being brave. So if anything, aim to relax, aim to enjoy the conversation as this is going to put you and the other person at ease. As always, I can't wait to hear how your feedback conversations go. If you have any questions, if you need extra tips or you're stuck, reach out to me in the discussion section of this class or get in touch directly. In addition, please do upload your class worksheet. If you didn't get a chance to complete it in real-time, take a few moments now to fill it in and upload it so I can give you feedback. Giving feedback is a uniquely individual experience, so I'm here to help you move forward and overcome any challenges. Now, it's time for you to give it a go. Thanks again. Good luck and see you soon.