What Is Your Team Afraid to Tell You? | A Bit of Optimism: Feelings at Work | PART 3

22:55Simon Sinek:And the consideration for FBI is the feedback you give has to be based on something specific. So general feedback doesn't work. Like you're always late to meetings because they'll tell you the one time that they weren't late to the meeting and you're like, yes, that time you weren't. And they're like, well, then what's the problem, right? Well, every other time, But I wasn't that time, and it derails it. And even if it is repetitive behavior, you choose the most egregious or the most recent for the behavior you want to demonstrate. And you should always prepare your FBI statement before you do it.

23:26Simon Sinek:It should never be done on the fly. So it could sound something like, I'm concerned. Okay? when you came to the meeting late on Thursday it made the rest of us feel like we were less important to you than anything else you're doing and my fear is that if you continue to come to meetings late it will have serious implications for morale and then you shut up and you go into listening mode if they get defensive or deny it the reason you've written it down and you know before you go in is you can't get flustered or take the bait. And if they start getting into so like, well, I need to talk to you about the time that you, you're like, let's talk about that later.

24:08Simon Sinek:Want to hear your feedback. Right now, what I want to talk about is I'm concerned because on Thursday when you showed up to the meeting and you simply repeat the statement. And what it's designed to do is make somebody take accountability. It's designed to make somebody listen, right? It works really, really well. On some occasions that things get out of hand, you end the feedback session. You say, clearly this is the wrong time. This is no longer constructive. Why don't we try and revisit this again another time? But the minute they start talking, oh, I hate being late to meetings, you immediately become the listener.

24:42Simon Sinek:Even though you're the one giving the feedback, you then become the therapist. They say, oh, I hate being late to meetings. Tell me more. It's something that, it's chronic. I didn't know that it was affecting the team so badly, but you have to understand I struggle. Go on, what else? And you just let them go through it and you let them solve their own problem, they'll be like, you know, I should probably just like put it in my schedule. That would probably be better and I can set the alarm on the schedule. Go on, what else? Well, I think that would really help. Okay, I'm really glad you gave me this feedback.

25:10Simon Sinek:Thank you, you know? And that's what it's designed to do. The best thing about FBI is it works fantastic for positive feedback as well. It makes positive feedback even more powerful than just saying, hey, good job. Like I am so beyond inspired. On Thursday, that presentation that you gave was so good and the effort that you put in was so clear, I know that if you continue to do work like that, that this company and your career skyrocket, like rocket ship. Yeah, I feel amazing even though that's fake. Right? It worked, yeah. But doing all three really makes someone feel good. And it also helps positively reinforce the behaviors that you want to see more of.

25:50Like vague praise, like great job last week. I don't know what I did well. You know, like if great job on this, this and that, it's like, oh, great, now I know I can do more of that.

25:57Simon Sinek:And the other thing is it labels behavior. It's not you, you're always late when you showed up late. You know, I think you and I both know this. You criticize the behavior, not the person. You're a liar. No, no, that's criticizing someone's character. You told a lie. That's a behavior. Like you told a lie on Thursday. What I also love about the specificity of on Thursday, like the specific time. Because all mistakes happen on Thursdays. the other thing that i love about it is that it strays away from what i call never never land which is like when you're like you're always like this so you're never like this it's so hard you discount them yeah because you can think of the one or two that that's not true and you just discount the rest yeah never never land i love that you're always this you're never that so good yeah so i think when we think about feedback when people hear that word i think people immediately associate the concept of feedback with criticism.

26:51Simon Sinek:And feedback is just that. It's getting information to me. And feedback can be positive. Feedback can be negative. Feedback can come in the way of recognition. That is a form of feedback, right? It gives you information about how you're doing and how people think about you, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And that is also desperately lacking in companies, which is systems of recognition. Yeah, I think systems of recognition are one of the lowest lifts and most powerful ways to help people grow, like to positively reinforce behaviors as opposed to only negatively reinforce behaviors. I heard this thing probably 10 years ago that I still think about all the time, which is this idea that credit is free.

27:31You can always give people credit. You can give them recognition. It doesn't need to be anything financial. You can always, out of the abundance of your heart, just say like, hey, great job on this thing. Or like, I just want to celebrate so-and-so because they did an incredible job on this. I think it goes against what a lot of us think, which is that credit is a scarce resource. Like, oh, you get credit or I get credit as opposed to kind of like celebrating your piece of it, also uplifting my piece of it and recognizing everyone. I think a lot of people know about love languages, like acts of service, gifts, all the quality time, all of those.

28:00I think there should also be recognition languages. Like there are different ways.

28:04Simon Sinek:Amen. Yeah, that you like to be recognized and praised versus how I like to be recognized. Yeah. A hundred percent. And the irony is, is people generally know. Like people know how they like to receive criticism and people know how they like to be complimented or celebrated. I think another one is kind of public praise. Public praise. Of like a channel on Slack where it's like, so-and-so did this thing, you know, celebration emoji. Yeah. And everyone's like, yay! I think acts of service for some, like, hey, you did a great job, take a day off. Or awards for some, like, here's a trophy. I think private recognition also.

28:41Yeah. That can go in both ways, right? like either your supervisor complimenting you or also someone you supervise you know like i was talking to a friend of mine the other day and he said yeah you know i i got a raise at work and also i got this letter that my supervisee wrote me about how i make him feel on the team and this thing made me cry yeah you know and so it really depends what actually will move you might be different from what you expect how do you like to be celebrated like i don't need to know i don't

29:06Simon Sinek:need awards of course i'm always grateful for whatever kind of recognition somebody gives me but the stuff that like feeds me, you know, that's what we're talking about. The stuff that inspires me, that's what we're talking about. So what feeds you? So I want to be valuable. And the way I feel valuable is to feel included. And so for me, the best reward is to be invited in to contribute. Simon, can you attend the meeting? Yes. I just want to have a seat at the table and that is the single greatest recognition you can give me. At your own team, that's what makes you feel the most. So amongst my own team, I just want to know that I'm inspiring people.

29:46Simon Sinek:Like I want to know privately. I don't need it publicly. But I want to know that someone is grateful or inspired by the work we're trying to do to help them be the better versions of themselves, the best versions of themselves. And if they feel like the work they're doing is like that they're a part of something. Because that's what I care about. you know, that we're all sort of fighting the good fight together and we have different, different jobs and different roles. And I really like knowing that people are like by my side and as a member of the army with me. I asked my chief of staff the other day, like I was asking her about what makes her feel good.

30:26And she said, Oh, you, I mean, you brought me banana bread last week and it was really sweet. And so I said, great.

30:31Simon Sinek:That's such an easy thing for me to do. So every once in a while, whenever I can remember, I get her a little sweet treat and I bring it and it makes her day and it makes her it makes her know that I was thinking about her and I think we have this kind of idea that it's unromantic to ask somehow like asking someone how someone wants to be recognized or supported or uplifted or listened to is like somehow bad because we should have already known I think it's incumbent upon all of us to find out how do you want to be how do you want to receive negative feedback how do you want to receive criticism and how do you want to receive recognition it's interesting that you think that everyone knows my instinct is that a lot of people don't know I think more people know than you realize for me i think most of us are not in systems where we have enough reps and so it might be that the concept of introducing feedback for the first time it's like whoa it's something for the listeners to go try right yeah which is go to your team colleagues whatever um and say you know if i have to give you hard feedback how do you want me to give it to you do you want it in private i'm going to schedule it like do you want it flat out and somebody i think people be like i think i like this or you know what i'm not sure can we try it all the ways and that way even if even just the the process of trying to find out allows for the experimentation that if it blows up, everybody's like, all right, we tried that.

31:40We tried that. Didn't work. Let's tweak.

31:42Simon Sinek:Okay. But I think, but the problem is, and I know this is a huge thing for you, which is bring it up. Like just by bringing it up and starting the conversation, it allows at least a process to get to something that will be helpful and productive. Yeah. I actually love the way you did it as you asked the broad question, but then you also gave options. So that, that to me feels really helpful. Like the big question of how do you like to receive feedback? I wouldn't necessarily know how to answer. But if you're like this or that, this or that, this or that, then I can be like, oh, this, that, and this.

32:09It's like debriefing the feedback. Like, how did that feel? What felt, you know, what makes you feel motivated? What makes you shut down? I feel like we should think about what are tactical ways that we can give feedback. And then let's talk about ways that we can learn to receive it.

32:20Simon Sinek:Let's talk about timing also. Yes. For a lot of companies, and your friend was an example of this, they give feedback once a year. And of course, it's grossly unfair because you're not getting feedback on what you did for the year. You're getting feedback what you did the past month or two, if you're really lucky. And the reason they do it once a year is usually because that's when it's tied to sort of promotion and raises and those kind of cycles as they build in the feedback and tie it directly to. And those are formal evaluations, especially in larger companies. That usually goes into a file somewhere.

32:47Simon Sinek:And then there are the regular feedback. Feedback is spontaneous sometimes, you know, like Spears. It happens all the time. There's no set date for Spears. And so that's a mechanism. But I know you have experience with sort of the weekly and monthly model as well. And it's a different form of feedback in those, sometimes with a different person. But at the end of the day, the cadence of weekly feedback is very different than an annual review session. Totally. And what we're suggesting is, sure, sure, go do your annual review session despite all its flaws. What we're talking about here is like, how do we bring feedback in more regularly so that people feel like they're growing?

33:23Simon Sinek:Like, how horrible that you only find out how you're doing once a year. or if you do something wrong, that's another thing, which, you know, catch people doing things right. Yeah. As opposed to catching people doing things wrong and you'll get more of the stuff you want. And I know why we catch people doing things wrong. It's because, you know, when somebody's doing their job, they're like, yeah, they're doing their job. I didn't notice because they're doing their job and what the heck was that? You know? And so I get that, you know, and I'm guilty of it. We're all guilty of it. They get a note from me when the social media post is off, but like I forget to be like, great social media post.

33:56Simon Sinek:This whole month where nothing happened, everything was great. I'm aware of it. But the whole idea of catching people doing something right gives an unbalanced positive impact to just catching people when they do things wrong. That reminds me of the number one thing that I feel strongly about feedback, which is to have feedback, to do it regularly, to take it seriously, to make it a habit. For me, I can't imagine working with someone directly and not having feedback at least every other week. That's just me personally. But I'm also an extreme. I really, really, really care about learning and growing as a person.

34:29And I really care about making sure that everyone on my team knows that I deeply am invested in their learning and growing.

34:34Simon Sinek:So how do you do it? If you do it weekly or biweekly, what is the format? It's a meeting. I do it typically on Fridays every other week. Every Friday, I want to push it. Because it's not directly tied to any output. So always there's going to be something that I feel that I want to prioritize over it. But I always prioritize it. Because even though it's not urgent, it's important. Got it. So because you have to do work, you're like, oh, I could always cancel the feedback session. Totally. That is the thing that enables, that graces the wheels of doing all the work. I'm going to use your terminology.

35:03Simon Sinek:It's preventative medicine. Yeah. It's really easy to, you know, start eating healthy tomorrow and cancel the workout today because I have work to do. But if you keep canceling the workout because of work, you die of a heart attack. Yeah, exactly. Okay. So first of all, I do it. Like that's the most important thing. I prioritize it and I do it regularly. So for me, that's a big one. Yeah. The next thing is that I think about it in advance. So I have a series of questions that I answer. So let's take with my chief of staff. She has a series of questions and I have a series of questions. I can give you an example.

35:30Simon Sinek:Her for you and you for her. Yeah. It's often the same ones. It'll probably take me 20 to 30 minutes to prepare, which is a lot of time. That's a lot of time, yeah. And we will answer something like, what is your summary of the last two weeks? What did I think I did well? What did I think I can improve on? What I think she did well? What I think she can improve on? And then we go through. First, we start with one of us and then we go through the other one. And it's incredible. We've come up with systems and what are ways that we can improve all the things that we that we want to improve on. And then at the end, I always ask, what are you afraid to tell me?

35:58Simon Sinek:What was the last thing she was afraid to tell you? Did something in your teeth? I think she said, she's afraid to tell me how much she's working because she's afraid to let me down. And then I could show, like communicate to her how much she's not letting me down and how I'm grateful for her every single day, which is true. Do you know what I like about your system there? We used to do 360s and the format we used, we sort of came up with it ourselves. Your team was not the people who were like, this is the marketing team. The group that came into the room were the people you work with regularly.

36:32Simon Sinek:So, you know, sales may work with somebody and marketing may work with somebody and whatever, tech. So whoever you have regular contact with, that's the group that came into the room. And everybody had to fill out a form in advance that said, what are the five specific examples of weaknesses or areas of improvement? Five specific examples of strengths or areas that I have improved. And everybody filled out their own form. The forms were distributed and collated. And then when you came in, we'd go around the room and we would take turns and you would read your form to everybody. So first you would read where my weaknesses or areas of improvement are required.

37:11Simon Sinek:And then anybody else is allowed to add to your list. And the only thing you were allowed to say was thank you. And I used to give this little speech. We would say, we are here to help each other improve. to help each other grow. The people who are going to give you some of this feedback would rather not give it to you. It is difficult, it is uncomfortable, and it is much easier for them not to. But they're going to because they care about your growth and they want you to see your blind spots. So when they give it to you, that's why you say thank you. If you disagree with it or think they're wrong, then just disagree with it and think they're wrong in your head.

37:47Simon Sinek:Don't worry about it. And the way you did thank yous had to be genuine. It couldn't be like, thank you. You're like, oh, no, no, no, no, no. You know? Say it for real. So it was amazing because anybody could add to the list and all you were allowed to do was say thank you. I really love that. It sounds intense. It was super intense. So the negative ones were intense, but then we always ended on the positive ones because, sure, you found out your blind spots in the first five, but the second ones you found out you were having a positive impact in people's lives that you didn't even realize. And there were very often tears.

38:15Simon Sinek:Okay, safe space. And the first one was awful for everyone and what i mean awful meaning it was hard but then the second time we did it it was like i liked it and the third time we're like all right bring it on and again like the muscle we got good at them it could only be done in person that's the caveat like you can't do it you got it because it's it's it's intense and it's done with love but the the point is is you're you're bi-weeklies it's basically the same thing instead of five it's one yeah uh which i love i love but it's the same format we also did it publicly yeah we do many things too just not Yeah, it's true.

38:49Simon Sinek:It is public. I love. I mean, it's intense. But part of what we were doing is creating a very, very safe space. Like I said, there were very often tears of joy or anger or sadness or any of those things. You had to learn to filter out stuff that you knew was just somebody's got to be in their bonnet, whatever, let them say their thing. You know, you can choose to take in or ignore whatever you want. I would not recommend any company doing this unless you have at least a good foundation of psychological safety. If you're just introducing it and you haven't worked on the psychological safety, it will be a disaster.

39:21What I love about that is that it's collective. It's building the culture of feedback, which I think is -

39:25Simon Sinek:It's enforcing the culture, not building the culture. Yeah, you're right. And so I think if you are in a company where you can do that, amazing. And what I personally love about taking my one-on-one feedback really seriously is that I can do that anywhere I work. Every job I've had since my first job in management consulting, I have said when someone offers me the job or when I hire someone else, is I want you to know that feedback is an inherent part of working with me, that I'll be doing feedback with everyone I work with directly. I really like the adaption of the biweekly. What else? The one that I really love, this is also when I first start working with someone, is I have a collaboration meeting with them.

39:57This is something that someone did to me, someone who I was working on a project with maybe five years ago. She said, do you want to sit down? I have all these questions before we start working together. I just want to like, it's kind of like a stylistic check. It's an alignment check and figuring out what are our strengths. And so she sent me all these questions. The questions were things like, what are three things that support you in a working relationship? What are activities that drain you? What is your style of giving and receiving feedback? What does a typical day look like in your working life?

40:23It was both really high level and also got quite granular. And I answered all these questions. We had this meeting.

40:28Simon Sinek:Was this your onboarding? This was part of our decision to work together. It was like, okay, we wanted to work on a project together. I mean, now I do it as onboarding when I hire people. That's amazing. Yeah, it's like part of the interview process. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, so I will interview someone. And if I want them to do the job, then I'll have a collaboration meeting. And so be like, okay, what do you love to do? What do I love to do? Are our skill sets complementary? Are our values aligned? And it's truly incredible because it gives an opportunity to surface things that will one day become problems.

40:55So for example, when I first started my company, I met someone and we decided we wanted to be business partners. But he was in his 40s. He had already sold two companies. He loved what I was doing. And he wanted to do it together. but he was not going to put in the work. And so we had this meeting. I said, what are you afraid to tell me? And he said, I'm afraid to tell you that I really don't want to work that hard. And I thought about it and I was like, that is totally fair. Yeah, you're not going to work that hard. Like if I'm picking you as a business partner, you're not going to be in the day-to-day with me.

41:27And then I could think about it, decide if that was for me. Turned out I was down. It worked well for us because -

41:31Simon Sinek:Because it came up, because it was known. It was a known quantity. Whereas if we hadn't, if I hadn't known that, every single day I would have been like, why aren't you doing this? Like, why am I doing this? And he either gets defensive or, or shames. Yeah. So that's another thing that I like to do is like the preventative work of feedback, even before I start working is like, naming, what are all the things that are going to get in our way? One of the things I'm learning from you is how much of feedback is preparation. Like we've talked about like, finding out how people like to receive negative feedback, finding out how people like to receive positive feedback and recognition, onboarding people with, you know, to eliminate surprise.

42:00Simon Sinek:I mean, so much of it is, is so much of what we're talking about is preparation and building the muscle. Okay, so we've talked about specific feedback. We've talked about doing it, prioritizing it, thinking about it in advance. How do you think about, I'm curious, when is the right time to give in? I don't know what it is. It's another military story. But all of these things, I swear, are applicable in any organization, big and small. They're really good at people. They're people organizations. They're people organizations, right. So there's this woman I know in the Air Force who three things happened to her simultaneously.

42:31Simon Sinek:Any one of them is difficult, and all three happened at the same time. She got promoted to senior leadership, she got her first command, and she was deployed for 365 days to the Middle East. Any one of those is hard, and all three happened at the same time. And the command she was given, she was in charge of Balad Air Base for base operations. So housing, mess hall, food, laundry, morale events on the on the base. She was in charge of all of that. And the previous two or three commanders had all been fired, but for doing a bad job, right? She's a hardcore, high performer. I'm going to blow the doors off.

43:09Simon Sinek:I'm going to be the one that succeeds. Me, me, me. I'm going to get it done. Watch me. I'm a star, right? And she shows up and it's an unmitigated disaster. Nobody's taking her seriously. She's in charge of soldiers and airmen who are more seasoned than she is, bigger than she is, older than she is. They're ignoring her, even though she's the commanding officer. And she admitted that for six months, she cried herself to sleep every single night. And it was going so badly. She just regretted being there, didn't want to be in the Air Force. All she wanted to do was go home. And after about six months, she resigned herself to the fact that she had failed.

43:49Simon Sinek:And she accepted the failure. And she changed her strategy. She said, well, I failed. So I'm not going to even bother trying to do all the things I said I was going to do. Instead, what I'm going to do is everybody here is away from their families. Everybody here is under a lot of stress. I'm just going to work really, really hard to help everybody just enjoy their time while they're here. And something happened. All of a sudden, things started to go really, really well. The way she adjusted doing things, just because she had this new strategy of helping people rather than being successful. After the next six months, she ended up being a huge success, completely turned things around and everybody missed her when she left.

44:28Simon Sinek:And one of the things she learned in this change of strategy was when to give feedback. So when we're obsessed with making the machine be the higher performing machine, we give feedback at the time things happen. So for example, you've organized a big corporate event, right? And they put the coffee table far away from the cups and the cookies. Even if you do it nicely, like, hey, move the coffee over there, right? Catching things and fixing them in the middle of the situation. And that's what she used to do. She'd be like, move this to there. Don't forget that. Especially even in the middle of fun things, she'd be correcting.

45:05Simon Sinek:And she thinks because she's trying to make it higher performing work better. And what it did is it ruined it for people. They're in it. It's going. People are stressed. They're taking their job seriously. And she just kept ruining it. When she changed from changed her strategy to like i just want people to like do well have a good time you know she wouldn't give the feedback in the middle unless it was like serious serious serious but that was rare right she wouldn't give the feedback in the middle she would do it at the end she'd be like all right event was great it's over let's just go through what we can do better next time hey the cups and the coffee were really far apart from each other i noticed that was really annoying for people next one make sure the cups are next to the coffee people like got it got it got it.

45:45Simon Sinek:And this profound little change of when we give feedback, and I started adopting it, make notes, you know, make little notes, keep them with you. Instead of giving feedback in the middle of the presentation, wait till the end. Instead of giving feedback in the middle of the event, wait till the end. Because you're ruining somebody's flow. You're ruining their fun. You're ruining the fact that they take their job seriously, and they're trying to do hard work. There's a time and a place. And that time and place is not the time you have the thought of the feedback. I totally agree. And I would even underscore one of the things that you did automatically is as you even as you were giving the example, okay, the cups over here, the tables over there.

46:21Next time, let's do it like this. Like it wasn't like this was bad. It's it's growth oriented.

46:25Simon Sinek:You want the affirmative language for the growth orientation. 100 % agree. Yeah. Yes. But it's not fixated on what already happened, the thing that we can't change. It's like, oh, we learned this thing. Next time, let's do it like this. Yes. And you still get the result that you And she was wildly successful as a result. I actually learned the story when she got back from deployment. And I sat down with her probably a week or two right after she got back. So all the emotions were super raw. And she tells me the whole story about crying herself to sleep and everything. And she gets to the end of the story.

46:58Simon Sinek:I said, so what did you learn? And she starts crying. And she says, I've never had such a profound feeling of having a positive impact in people's lives like I did from that experience. And it wasn't about her success and it wasn't about her metrics and it wasn't about, it was about a leader's decision to take care of their people, to learn how to give feedback in a more constructive and positive way. And the result was performance through the roof. I think you and I have been sort of dancing around the point here, which is, if you learn how to give feedback, if you learn how to receive feedback, if you learn how to crave criticism and negative feedback, if you learn how to ask for feedback, if you learn how you like to receive recognition, if you learn how you like to receive criticism and you tell somebody what they don't know so that you can get it in the way that you need to hear it, the result is you love work, you feel psychologically safe, your performance is through the roof, the company's performance is through the roof, and everybody, quote unquote, wins.

48:02Simon Sinek:If you choose to ignore all of these things because we're a performance organization, and blah, blah, blah, right? You will accidentally break the machine and burn your people out. I love that. It's a beautiful story and I totally agree. Talking about feedback is like talking about exercise or talking about eating well, which is the results don't happen immediately. And it is a muscle that you have to build and it is a practice that you have to work on. And it is something that you need to ask other people to watch your form because sometimes you're not good at it. You know, am I bending my back?

48:34Simon Sinek:No, keep your back straight. Okay, thanks, because you can't see yourself. That's what feedback is. I cannot see myself. Tell me what's in my blind spot. Tell me what's in my blind spot. Tell me what I can't see in the mirror. The result is everything is healthier when organizations and leaders and people and teams get good at feedback. And that's the most empowering part of what you just said is like it's a muscle you can build. And even though it'll be hard at first, so quickly you will be able to feel the positive impacts and you won't need to be like trusting that they'll arise. It's a beautiful, self-fulfilling prophecy.

49:05It's a virtuous cycle as opposed to being in a vicious one.

49:08Simon Sinek:I'm curious what you've learned in your practice about how we can learn to receive criticism better, feedback better. Like, how do we build that muscle to receive, learn how to receive, or learn how we receive? Yeah, because not just giving feedback is also receiving. Yeah, it's both. We kind of talked about it earlier, but for me, the most important thing is to ask for it. I ask for it regularly. I ask for it big and small. I always say, what are big things that are really hard to say? And then also, what are small things that I can improve? I ask as many people as possible. I'm obsessed with asking for feedback.

49:39And I ask for it like I mean it. There's a way to ask for it where you're kind of just giving it lip service. And everyone can feel that. And they won't actually give it to you. And so I ask for it. When I receive it, I get curious about it. It's not just like hearing the first thing that someone says. I'll ask questions until I genuinely understand.

49:54Simon Sinek:You receive the feedback and listen to understand. Yeah. I receive the feedback. I listen to understand. I get excited about it. Like what you're talking about of like craving it is, oh my, this is the information that I need in order to get better, in order to fix this thing, in order to improve it. It's like an endorphin brush when you start exercising. Yeah. You start really wanting it. Yeah. Yeah. That's another one. And also I try to model for other people how to receive it. So I always express my gratitude first thing, even if I disagree with it, or even if I know it's valid, but I can't implement it because I have a picture that sometimes the person giving the feedback doesn't, they can't see the full picture.

50:27So maybe they're telling me something, it's true and it's not changeable. I'm still like, thank you so much. I'll think about it.

50:32Simon Sinek:When people give me feedback, I first tell them that they're wrong.

50:39I mean, sometimes you're joking.

50:41Simon Sinek:Unless it's positive, then I tell them that they're right. Of course. But it's real, though. You know, like I got feedback last week. I just ran a month long program. And as I am one to do, I ask for feedback after every single class. And at the end, someone who didn't fill out her feedback form the whole time gave me a piece of feedback at the end that was about the structure of the program. And I got a little defensive. Or I got frustrated. It's like, okay, well, now it's too late. I said, thank you so much. I sat with it. I tried to hear what actually the information was, even though it was too late and I was still frustrated.

51:09It's okay to be frustrated. And then I tried to figure out what can I do to repair? What is something that I can tangibly do? Because it's one thing to say, sometimes there's nothing you can do. And then other times it's like, okay, well, this person is feeling this way. What are other ways that I can make it up to them? And not being shy about trying to get creative. And I think that's another one. And so especially as leaders, modeling how we want feedback to be received is also helpful for other people who we're giving feedback to. If we can show that we're curious and open and grateful and excited to receive it, then that also creates a psychological safety for when we give it.

51:39And so it becomes this beautiful cycle between people. Virtuous cycle, yeah, that's true.

51:43Simon Sinek:One of the things that I've tried to, and we can't avoid talking about the generational differences. And again, it's not a rule. Like I know people put in the comments, I know plenty of young people who love negative feedback. It's like, yeah, yeah, yeah, I know that. Younger people say they want feedback, but what they want is positive feedback. and negative feedback is more difficult for them. And the younger generations at work, there is a trend that they really try and avoid anything uncomfortable. And to the point where, and I've seen this happen, where they confuse discomfort for toxicity.

52:16Simon Sinek:Nope, just uncomfortable, you know? Or they confuse an uncomfortable situation for somebody who's a terrible boss. I went for a walk with somebody and she literally started the conversation with me, like, my boss is a horrible person. I was like, oh my God, does she like kick her dog when she comes home? And she's like, no. I'm like, okay. So we don't know that she's a horrible person. We know that she's not a good leader, okay? There are very different things. It goes back to character versus skills, right? Learning to be uncomfortable and learning to sit in discomfort is hugely valuable. And I don't mean you put up with everything.

52:49Simon Sinek:That's not what I'm talking about, right? What I'm talking about is learning to crave. Crave is the word I would use. Learning to crave negative feedback, right? And there's a very simple way to get into that habit, which is no matter what, if somebody pays you the compliment, because everybody loves a compliment, no matter what you do, even if somebody offers you nothing, you do a presentation, everyone's like, thanks for the presentation, and you walk out of the meeting, get in the habit of saying, hey, what can I do better? Not tell me what was good and what was bad. What can I do better? Because you're asking for it, it eliminates the fear, the discomfort, it opens the door to it.

53:22Simon Sinek:And what starts to happen is you start craving the feedback because it's making you better. It's making you more aware. And it's really funny how even somebody who is uncomfortable getting negative feedback or somebody who really likes positive feedback, you actually start craving the criticism because you're getting better and stronger. It's wonderful. Yeah. It's wonderful. We've talked about so many different things. I don't even know how to begin to summarize it. First of all, we have some big picture things. Yeah. We talked about feedback as preventative care. Yes. About the kind of like food in your teeth phenomenon.

53:55them. You had a few amazing examples about culture of feedback of like spears as a culture and recognition, being able to recognize each other, remember that credit is free and figure out how to recognize people in the way that they act, that actually lands and impacts them. Those are cultural ones. But I think also we talked about a lot of ones that even if you're not in a culture that values feedback, you can also implement it in your working relationships. For me, the most important thing, if people are going to leave with one thing, it's to do it, to care about it, to prioritize it, to put thought into it and literally to do it.

54:23send me regularly ideally every two weeks do it once you start working with someone and i also do it before but then we also okay with giving we had fbi which is a technique for how to have a

54:35Simon Sinek:difficult conversation how to have a how to how to give feedback in a in a way that is more likely to be received so it's feelings behavior impact yep yeah any order but you have to have all three we had timing yep both checking in with somebody when they want to receive it do you want to do it and if it's an event, unless it's mission critical, save it for the end, for the debrief. Yeah, and we also had asking people how they want to receive feedback and giving them options. And then for receiving feedback, ask for it. Ask for it. Proactively ask for it, ask like you mean it. And when you get it, get curious about it, be open to it, be grateful, be excited that you're getting it.

55:11Model how you want feedback to be received.

55:13Simon Sinek:Because remember, we always talk so much about the giver creating the environment. But if the receiver keeps getting defensive and going off the handle, then the giver would just be like you know what i can't deal with this stuff just so how you receive it also will set the conditions for getting more feedback because if you're resistant defensive angry you know all those things they're going to withhold they're just not going to bother because who wants to nobody wants to be attacked and i think also remembering with all of these things as we've said many times and i think this is core to what both of us believe is that we can build the muscle and even if we're not in a culture of feedback we can develop little one-on-one cultures where we are getting the information that we need and sharing it honestly so we can all improve together the way I would summarize this conversation is that feedback is kind even if it's not nice if you're trying to be nice and like avoid the feedback or only give positive you're not being kind to the person because you're not allowing the opportunity to grow feedback when given appropriately with some of the techniques we're talking about is always kind even a gift it's a feedback is a gift and it even if it doesn't feel nice yeah it is always kind yeah and i think remembering that feedback is a gift that we can give people and one that we also have to learn to receive yeah so the first thing you and i are going to do after we after we call cut is we're going to give each other feedback and i think what people aren't seeing because it's not on camera is that as we've been developing this podcast we have been giving each other feedback we've been giving each other notes i love that term from hollywood by the way Do you have any notes?

56:44Simon Sinek:Because like, do you have any negative feedback for me? It's like notes is just a nicer word. But now I can ask you for spirits. I have notes, you know, I've got notes. You and I have been giving each other feedback to help each other do well and do better. And some of it is personal, like you have to do this better. And some of it is like how, what kind of system do we want to make to make this better for both of us? How do we play to our strengths? And it's been really fun for us to develop this podcast with lots and lots of feedback. And from our team, there's a crew behind the cameras here that are giving us feedback too, which has been really, really helpful.

57:16Simon Sinek:And it's really a team effort. It's fun to model it while we're actually talking about it. Yeah, yeah, good times. Thank you. Until the next one. Until the next one. Thank you. A Bit of Optimism is a production of The Optimism Company, lovingly produced by our team, Lindsay Garbenius, Phoebe Bradford, and Devin Johnson. Subscribe wherever you enjoy listening to podcasts. And if you want even more cool stuff, visit simonsynic.com. Thanks for listening. Take care of yourself. Take care of each other.