Feedback Is Not A Personal Attack (Hall of Fame Guidance)

0:00Welcome to Manager Tools. Feedback is not a personal attack. This podcast answers these questions. Is giving feedback a personal attack? How do I respond to directs who consider feedback personal? How can I reduce defensiveness when giving feedback? Well, if you want answers to these questions and more, keep listening. Here we go. Hey, everyone. Allie Wazan here with the Manager Tools team. Thank you for listening to our Manager Tools podcast and for being a part of this community we built together. For every download, every share, every conversation that starts because of something you've heard here, that's what drives our mission, to help every manager be effective and every professional be productive.

0:46It matters deeply to us to keep growing this community, forming real connections and supporting your career over the long run. Please share with a colleague, family member or friend to help us carry that mission forward. And if you ever have any questions or feedback, reach out to us at customerserviceatmanager-tools.com. We'd love to hear from you. Mark, we've said it a million times. Feedback is about behavior, and it's not a personal attack. Yep. And we hear from clients. They give feedback, and this question keeps coming up. Yep. So it's about time. I don't know. How long has it been? that we've been talking about feedback and we really haven't addressed this in detail.

1:36So, let's do it. Yeah. You know, people, professionals today want more performance communications. They want to know, you know, we all want to know how we're doing, good or bad. Or maybe I should say good and bad. But it's a fact of life in the professional world that many of the same people, the professionals who claim that they want more feedback also say they feel hurt or attacked when they get negative feedback. And that's not surprising given the way that I'd say most managers today actually give negative feedback. In fact, the way they give it, it's not our feedback model folks, but the way they give it is an attack.

2:22So no wonder they feel that way. And unfortunately, if you're a new manager tools manager, you are burdened by the sins of the past. Yeah. And in fact, years ago, when I used to be told by managers, well, I gave somebody some feedback and they, you know, they complained to me to HR. So I can't do that anymore. I said, wow, HR told you to stop using feedback. And they said, yeah, can't do that. Got to sit down. Got to talk to them. Got to learn what their feelings are and stuff like that. And I would say, wow, okay. And then gradually, I just couldn't believe it. So I started saying, hey, look, help me understand what ticked them off, what set them off.

3:02And they would say things like, well, I told them, I said, this is unacceptable. You need to buck up or whatever. And I would say, did you use our feedback model? Oh, definitely. Well, okay. What did you say? Well, like I said, you need to buck up. I said, what part of the feedback model would say you need to buck up? And they said, oh, well, you know, I don't follow the model precisely. I said, well, okay. You don't have to follow the model precisely, but you're not following it at all. I don't know. Man, your surgeon's doing surgery. You want them to follow a model pretty precisely. Yeah. So, I've learned a lot of times that we have to be careful about saying feedback.

3:49And we understand that it's us and not you guys who define feedback so precisely based on our model. And so, I'll try to use the idea of performance communications here in this podcast to separate some boss not using the manager tools feedback model to give negative feedback, but rather to chew somebody's tail or whatever to make a separation. because the manager tools feedback model is a way to deliver performance communications verbally, either positive or negative. So if you're chewing somebody out, you're giving them negative performance communication, but you're definitely not using the manager tools feedback model.

4:37And as a general rule, if we say feedback, we mean our model. Right. Well, and that's part of the problem, right? Because the systemic way to reduce the danger or direct feeling that way is to build trust, hence other parts of our models. That's how we get to the point where we can talk to them about feedback, meaning about behavior and them understanding it's not a personal attack. It's all about trust. Yeah. So we'll start the cast talking about trust, and then we're going to talk about behavior. And then we're going to make two recommendations, actually two and a half. The first one is to make sure that you brief your folks that when you use the feedback model, explain the feedback model and say, it's about your behavior.

5:28It's not an attack on you. It's not a personal attack. And also, then when you deliver feedback, remind directs with words that this isn't personal. and one of the things I'll mention is and if they say well I feel attacked say well you weren't and so look this is one of those casts where we lay out some rationale in the beginning and then we tell you what to do later so I'm going to give the high D's and high I's in the audience a little bit of a little bit of help here because I'm going to jump right now and give you just a minute on on our recommendations. When we say to brief your team on feedback being about behavior versus personal attacks, what we mean is, as if you listen to our guidance on rolling out the Trinity, we tell you that before you use any of the steps of the Trinity, one-on-ones feedback, coaching delegation, that you tell your directs what you're doing, how you're going to be doing it and why you're doing it.

6:40Horseman's Law, never introduce a change to how you manage people without first taking the time to introduce that change to them before you make it. So, in your briefing, when you say, okay, guys, it's time for us to start upping our game when it comes to performance communications, and I'm going to be using something called the feedback model, and I want to explain it to you. You can explain to them then. Now, look, if you're worried that I'm attacking you when I'm giving you negative feedback, it's not an attack. I'll be telling you that if I'm giving you negative feedback, whatever you did, your behavior was not effective, and I'm going to ask you for different behavior.

7:25I'm not going to berate you. I'm not going to be rude. I'm not going to be forceful. I'm not going to make a personal attack. I'm not going to say you aren't good. I'm going to say what you did wasn't helpful. So, that's one thing. You definitely want to tell people in advance. That's the prophylactic part of the guidance. Let's let them know in advance this is not a personal attack. Now, if you tell them that and then you follow the model, if someone then were to say it's a personal attack, you can say actually it's not. But there's another part of this which is they say, well, I feel personally attacked.

8:05And even if you haven't made a personal attack, people can still say that. And there are people in HR will say, oh, we can't have our people ever feeling personally attacked. So, what we want to do is remind them that feedback isn't personal when we deliver the model. And we'll give you some examples of that later. But then the last thing we're going to recommend, sort of point two and a half, is when your direct says he or she feels personally attacked, remind them, walk them through the steps of the model and say, well, let's just go through what I said and let's talk about how you feel about it, if you'd like.

8:57By the way, you don't have to do this right when you're talking to them or right when you've given the feedback. You can wait until later. But if, in fact, somebody were to complain, you could say, well, look, I briefed them in advance on the model I was going to use. I remind them periodically that it's not personal. and I want to walk you through what I say and how I say it. Now, it would be really hard for somebody in HR to come out and say, oh, this is just a terrible personal attack. Particularly if you told them, I use this wording, I'm encouraging in my tone, I use the same tone, a positive tone, whether I'm giving positive or negative feedback.

9:43It only takes 10 to 15 seconds. I am open to discussing things further and look at the performance of my team so that was way too high a level but for you high d's and high i's who want to know just tell me what to do and I want to I got to get on doing other more important things saving the world and so on I wanted to give you some of our guidance a high level of what to do before we got into the details of the cast and talk about rationale. I think it's useful. Okay. So let's talk about, let's talk about the, the need for trust. It's kind of interesting because many, I mean, they're well-known and very smart people who talk about feedback and they leave out trust.

10:33And to me, it's almost like, well, let's, you know, let's, let's have a conversation about modern economics and we'll just completely leave out the question of money supply, right? It's like um so yeah so let's talk about trust a little bit well look um part of the reason i wrote this cast was that harvard business review ran an article recently by marcus buckingham called the feedback fallacy um the article basically trashed the current ideas in the marketplace around manager to direct performance communications yeah i mean buckingham whom i respect, claimed that the basic idea of a manager telling a subordinate that they had messed something up was flawed to its very core.

11:19You couldn't, you know, feedback just doesn't work. I mean, he said managers aren't good judges of other people because no one is. He made that case. It's very, very erudite, psychological, and in my opinion, narrow point of view. Managers oughtn't be making directs do it the way the manager wants to, which is ludicrous because that's not implied in all feedback. Okay? And, of course, the author suggested that we should all sit down with our directs and have in-depth conversations with them about the past, the present, and the future. And also, get this, one of their pieces of guidance was interrupt them precisely when you see them doing something good.

12:09And this is a direct quote from the article. If you see somebody doing something that really works, stop her and dissect it. And this is ludicrous because A, most managers don't see their people doing something in real time enough to be able to stop and dissect it. And two, not that many people want to be stopped and dissected when they're doing something. I can't imagine you're in the middle of a presentation and you do that. It just seems weird. Okay. Look, the article shared with many other articles a common misconception about human behavior, organizational performance, managerial direct communications, and so on, which is it ignored the importance of the relationship between the manager and the direct in the effectiveness of performance communications.

13:10It never even talked about it. And so, when it says, you know, the state of feedback, the state of performance communications and the world today is terrible, I thought, yeah, you're right, it is. And the fundamental reason is lack of trust, not because feedback is a fallacy. We can all think of managers we've worked for over our careers whom we would hire today as a consultant to observe us and make suggestions about our performance, which we would be eager to hear, even though they may not know a great deal about what we do or how we do it. And I can think of other managers that I've worked for that I wouldn't hire to sweep the floors around here, okay?

14:02In this case, I think the HBR article basically attacked everything about feedback because it took it out of context. And I don't think you can create great managerial systems without consideration of context. um look when we've tested various feedback models without having asked managers to roll out one-on-ones first measurements of feedback effectiveness were reduced by roughly half actually slightly more than that this isn't just about how one-on-ones are great when we've assessed the effectiveness of feedback, comparing it to trust scores of managers from their directs, more trusted managers had greater effectiveness with both positive and negative feedback, as well as other forms of performance communication.

14:56This isn't limited to our feedback model, okay? So, look, the soft version sounds like this. If we don't create trusting relationships with our direct reports, our performance communications, whether it's the feedback model or not, will be much more inefficient and ineffective, again, no matter the technique we use. Hopefully, we can all agree that trust or lack of it will have impact on performance communications, and the lack of trust will even have more impact on negative performance communications. Most people are interested enough in being praised from their boss that even if they don't trust them, not if they hate them, but if they don't trust them as much as somebody else, they'll still be pleased to get positive performance communications.

15:47Heck, we'll take positive performance communications from a random person on the street, so then we're okay. Yeah. So, we're basically arguing here, at least in part, with Mr. Buckingham, that the problem isn't with feedback. The problem is with trust and what he basically did is rearranging Dick Churz on the Titanic and attacking different models of feedback without addressing trust. trust. So, our guidance here is if you're using the feedback model and you haven't established trust and a lot of managers want to skip through the feedback, skip through one-on-ones in order to get the feedback, you're going to be accused more frequently and potentially be in front of HR more frequently if you start giving negative feedback and you haven't established trust.

16:42That's why one-on-ones come first. I think it took us six or seven years to figure that out. And so we recommend one-on-ones. That's part of our recommendation. If you have solid trust scores from your directs, you can talk to them using the feedback model. And the vast majority of times, they won't complain. Okay, second thing. uh the manager tools feedback model is only about behavior and the other problem with it happens to be this is not an attack on on this article um but the article made me think about one-on-ones versus feedback trust versus performance communications um and the whole idea of i think one of the beauties of our model is that it only talks about behavior doesn't talk about attitude.

17:36It doesn't talk about intention. It doesn't talk about the person. But another problem with the article was that it lumped many feedback delivery techniques together and then basically used 10 examples to cast aspersions on all feedback. And as luck would have it, I was reading the article and stunned to discover that can I give you some feedback was one of the ways they said you should not give feedback. And it was their very first example of a flawed model. No, no wonder you didn't like the article. Well, yeah. But what made me think was, oh, Mr. Buckingham, you're listening to our podcast. And you see us as a competitor.

18:25Well, just so you know, we don't see you as a competitor. Um, but look, many of the other ideas that came under fire in this article had all kinds of wacky ideas in them. Um, talk about intent, you know, that you should talk about intent when you talk to your directs about their performance, have a dialogue with them. You don't want to have a dialogue. It takes too long. It does them as give them a chance to defend themselves. Um, allow reciprocal of feedback. When you give your direct feedback, expect them to give you feedback. None of those work. Not only are they flawed theoretically, we've tested them.

19:09They don't work. Abysmal results. I will tell you the results are so bad. I was reminded about one of the people were saying, you know you need to do it this way and they didn't have any data but we had data which showed that it was it was terrible you just can't recommend these things to people you better do some research because it won't work and i was reminded there's a famous uh sudden infant death syndrome study where they were studying babies who were put to sleep in their crib on their stomach or on their back. And basically, it showed that babies who were put on their stomach had a much higher likelihood of dying in the crib from sudden infant death syndrome than the ones put on their backs.

20:06Rather than waiting for conclusive, scientific, peer-reviewable results, the doctor stopped the study and said, look, we don't need to finish this study, we have enough data to be able to tell you, put your babies to sleep on its back because it's safer. And I feel the same way about some of what they were recommending here. They haven't tested it or they ended up testing in the laboratory environment rather than the real world. So, I'll tell you something. I'm willing to talk openly about guidance that we disagree with, but if someone tells you that in their study of managers, they determined that directs preferred a chance for dialogue when they were getting negative feedback, you've got to approach that with some caution.

21:04Why is that? Because the purpose of feedback is not to satisfy directs, preferences, but to improve organizational performance. So, if in fact, every time we give performance communications, a direct is unsatisfied, but we have high scores of trust and performance of the organization improves, that is a good thing. Only if you care about the purpose of organizations, but… Well, yeah, and only if you care to spend time building trust. Only if you care enough about the person to say, I'm willing to work really hard at building trust with you. And there are going to be times when we have to disagree.

21:45And I hope we can agree to disagree agreeably. And look, we wouldn't want to create a system of providing performance communications that was hated by directs. But the way to create one is to find the one most effective at producing great results, even if it's detested, and then work backwards from there to something that produces good results while increasing receptiveness. What the modern thought on management is, let's find something that's completely acceptable and palatable to directs, and then gradually make it tougher until they can tolerate it, but we have something that might get through.

22:31It's the wrong way to approach things. Secondly, our data show that any attempt to create dialogue massively reduces the frequency of negative feedback, regardless of how often a poor performing direct fails to perform to standards. If we know as managers that every bit of negative feedback is going to require a 10 to 15 minute sit down and we've tested this, we know it. However well-intentioned the feedback is, however well-intentioned the dialogue is, in every study that we tried this, managers reduced the amount of negative feedback they give so precipitously, it was as if they'd stopped doing it.

23:17The only exception was forced regular sessions. In other words, where a manager said, okay, I got to give you some feedback. And they sat down and they had a regular session that was set up to provide feedback. And even then, the managers basically didn't comply with that and skipped them and delayed them and so on. So look, for the record, guys, dialogue isn't bad. But the only times we've been able to see it lead to better results is when it's decoupled from the delivery of the performance communications. our experience suggests that directs definition of dialogue and by the way folks don't be afraid to compare this to your own experience i think i i tweeted recently that when we talk to managers about one-on-ones they say well i'd really like one from my boss but i don't think we need one my me and my directs need one and i said i think that was one of the funniest things i've ever heard regarding one-on-ones because what you're basically saying is you don't think your directs need it.

24:28Guess what? That's why you don't have one with your boss because your boss doesn't think you need it when in fact, as the direct, you're saying you do. So, don't deny to your directs what your boss has denied to you for the same reason and be surprised by it. You're just doing what makes sense at virtually every level of the organization when not willing to spend some time to develop trust with the recs. So, the same thing happens here, okay? Do you want your boss every time he or she gives you feedback to sit down with you for 10 or 15 minutes? I would say the vast majority of people listening say no.

25:16Okay? If you don't want that, do you really think your directs want that? And I will tell you, we have an entire podcast about that. What your directs want from – what you want from your boss, your directs probably want from you. And they're not that much different than you. And we should be careful about assuming that our directs are very much different in their beliefs about what they want from their boss than we are about what we want from our boss. Look, directs definition of dialogue, according to our interviews, is they want to be able to defend their intent. But like we've said before, intent is not what drives success in organizations.

25:57Behavior is. Widespread good intent followed by ineffective behaviors leading to bad outcomes is a recipe for organizational barrier. I mean, the old saying, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. What we're saying here regarding dialogue or discussion or something other than, hey, you did it this way, it didn't work, could you do it differently, is very similar to what we say in our podcast, the part after feedback. If, after you've delivered some performance communication using our feedback model, a direct wants to extend the conversation, this will shock you if you haven't listened to that podcast, our guidance is, that's okay.

26:47It's fine if they want to talk to you a little bit more. But it's important to keep in mind that the negative feedback is over. okay if you want to have a discussion about it fine but the negative feedback part is over they did something you didn't think it was effective or efficient you said to them hey can i give you some feedback when you do what you did it turns out not as great as we'd like it to can you do it different that's all they say well but i have a concern i said well okay can can you do a different yeah i can but i want to talk about this okay all right um Look, we are expected and essentially by organizational structure and history and so on, empowered, even though I hate that word, to provide guidance to directs about their performance in the service of effective organizational outcomes.

27:44So, if a direct of ours wants to dialogue, it's okay. Hopefully, you're giving them feedback so you've built up trust with them. allow it to occur if it's convenient right then. Oh, sure, you know, I've got a minute, no problem. On the other hand, if the conversation turns to justification, well, I just want to let you know what I was thinking. Dude, I don't need to know what you're thinking. It's fine. You're a smart guy. You were probably thinking good thoughts. And in my sense, it turned out bad. Let's just do it different next time. That's all, okay? So, if they want to start justifying, walk away politely.

28:23On the other hand, if they want a dialogue and you think you're in for a 10-minute conversation and you look at your watch and you have to be in a meeting in seven minutes, say, sure, we can talk further, but not right now, okay? Come by and see me later today or put 15 minutes on my calendar. Look at my calendar. Find 15 minutes, we're both free, and I'll give you 15 minutes, okay? But if the direct says, well, you know, hey, I want to talk about this, you say, Ashley, no, I got to get to a meeting, but we can talk about it later. And he says, well, I need to be able to explain to you why I was thinking what I was thinking.

28:59This is a classic example of defensiveness. And it's okay. People have feelings. They're hurt. They're worried. You have role power over them. Maybe you didn't deliver the feedback, the negative feedback politely enough or encouraging in enough of an encouraging tone of voice. And if you haven't listened to our feedback model, that's something you would know. And if that surprises you, you need to go back and listen to that guidance. But if they want to defend themselves, say, dude, we don't need to do that. And I'm not really worried about what your intent was. I know you have good intent. I wouldn't have hired you.

29:35It would have been a lot worse by now if I had sensed you had bad intent. If your team's performance varies widely from person to person. The problem isn't your people, it's your system. High-performing teams aren't made of all high-performing individuals. They're built by managers who apply consistent tools consistently. The Effective Manager Conference gives you the behavioral system that makes performance consistent and retention predictable. Individual seats and organizational delivery available. For more information, visit manager-tools.com forward slash EMC. Now, all of the guidance we can give based on one-on-ones developing trust and the actual model and the wording of the model is predicated on an important principle.

30:28What we are asking our directs to change in the event of negative feedback is their behavior, not their person. Okay? To be effective, performance communications always have to be about your team members' behavioral performance. It cannot be about their intent because intent is mindset and mindset is person. It can't be about their emotions because emotions are the person. Most psychologists will tell you if you attack or if a person feels attacked in their thoughts, in their mind, in their intent, in their feelings, they're going to feel attacked if you talk to them about those things. We don't chastise people.

31:29We encourage effective behavior. And in fact, something else about the feedback model, we don't talk about it enough. All feedback is about the future. It's not about the past. If someone were to say, well, I want to explain to you what I'm thinking. Dude, I'm not worried about what you did. I'm not worried about what you were thinking or why you did it. I'm really not. I'm asking you to do better in the future. I'm over the past. Let's not go back and rehash it. All I'm asking is better next time. If we start trying to correct intent in people, attitude of people, the emotions of our directs, we're essentially criticizing the person and good luck doing it because you're not going to have any luck.

32:16It won't work. Yeah. Because we all like that when people criticize our attitude or tell us how we're feeling. Well, clearly you're feeling this way. Yes, exactly. I know how you're feeling. Actually, I'm not. I'm not. Yeah. Even if you believe that talking about intent or attitude or emotions or whatever might be reasonable and we would argue that you're wrong, it's ineffective because it takes a hammer to trust. And without the trust, you're not going to be effective delivering any type of performance communications. Agreed. Okay. I'm done with my theory, Mike. Sorry. Awesome. Okay. So I think this is one of those areas where as a manager, you got to get pretty clear with your folks about this.

33:06Like it's not, you know, we talk all the time about briefing change before actually doing the change, right? And this is one of those things that unless people have a net to capture this stuff, you're going to be fighting an uphill battle. So we recommend that you brief folks on behavior versus personal attacks. Get that out in front of the whole thing before implementing feedback. Yeah. Look, guys, the state of modern performance communications in organizations today has become entangled in discussions of intent and attitude and dialogue and defensive motivations. Because of that, we managers have to be explicit about the underpinnings of our approach that we're going to take talking to them about their performance, and we must do so in advance and brief them on what we're doing.

33:57Otherwise, many of our directs are going to approach even exceptionally well-delivered feedback with skepticism, maybe even in the presence of a trusting relationship. So, just in case you missed our guidance. Remember, never introduce a change to how you manage people without first taking the time to introduce that change to them. When it comes to giving feedback, you'll get better results by telling them first what you're doing and why you're doing it that way. And again, there is a cast for this. Here's part of what we would recommend you say. Hey guys, look, as I start using this model, I'm only giving you feedback on your behaviors.

34:45That is, what I mean is, I'm only ever going to address what you do, what you did, and what I want you to do. For the record, there are five categories of behavior. The words you say, how you say those words, your facial expressions, your body language, and your work product. And for the record, work product is quantity of work, quality of work, documentation of work, accuracy of your work, and timeliness of your work. And look, in some cases, you could also include a sixth area, safety, but usually that's covered by some other part of work product or body language. What this means is when I stick to behavior and I only talk about things you did and how you did them, I'm not attacking you.

35:41Performance communications in the Manager Tools Feedback Model are not personal attacks. It's not a personal attack to tell you that you missed a deadline. That's addressing your work product in the form of timeliness, which is part of my purview and your responsibility to the organization. Even if you have a very good reason why you missed the deadline, me addressing that missed deadline is not an attack on you. If you feel your miss or your error or your low numbers or whatever behavior, those are all work product behaviors, even if you feel they're not your fault, that doesn't make me addressing your miss or your error a personal attack.

36:35Think of it this way. I'm obligated to inform you about behavioral errors the same way the marketplace informs our company when our products aren't of high enough quality, or we don't have enough of them or we charge too much. Marketplace responses to our products and services, by the way, our products and services are the organization's behaviors. Marketplace responses are a form of feedback. It's performance communication. It's the marketplace. The marketplace gives it to the firm. The CEO gives it to her directs. They give to their directs and so on and so on and so on. It's not a personal attack on our company when our products don't sell.

37:24It's marketplace behavior. It's the firm being given negative performance communications. That's all. Now, look, it's not to say if I give you negative feedback, and I'm including in here the chance that I will do it in a positive way, in an encouraging way about the future, not trying to rehash or relive the past. It's not to say you may not feel hurt, or embarrassed, or ashamed, or even poorly treated. But those feelings themselves do not mean that you have been attacked personally. And hopefully, I have earned and will continue to earn enough of your trust that you know I won't attack you personally.

38:12It's not effective. It's not nice. It's not professional. It's not humane. It's not me. But even if I do earn that trust, I'm willing and even required, required to run the risk that there is some tension between us when I give you negative feedback. but again that tension you might feel does not make my attack personal provided i do it the right way and i don't attack you personally it's professional it's about your behaviors not you full stop that's why as i start using this feedback model hopefully you'll notice that i will give you positive feedback in the same tone I give you negative feedback in, a positive tone.

39:06I won't denigrate you. I won't attack you. Frankly, I won't denigrate what you did in the past, your behavior, and I won't attack your behavior. I will politely and positively ask you to do better next time. Because in this model, great feedback is about encouraging future performance, not chastising or attacking past performance. You'll also notice that I will give you positive feedback using the exact same model, focusing only on your behavior. Though it may sound sad to hear, I won't be praising you when you do something well, I'll be providing you encouragement to continue that behavior. All good feedback, useful feedback is about future behavior.

40:08One more thing. Each of us, separate from work, is worthy of love and respect and compassion. We're all human beings. We all have both future greatness and small failings within us. I respect and appreciate each of you, even when you stumble. Partly I feel that way because that's what I would want from a boss, but also because I want you to treat me that way and because it's the right thing to do. hopefully you'll remember that and that will make it easier for you to deal with those brief moments of tension when i have to give you some negative feedback so again guys that's the speech pick and choose from what we just said that you would give before you start giving feedback before you start rolling out feedback.

41:09It would be much easier to remember if you were a licensee and had show notes that you could download and then copy and paste and put together a speech. And I wouldn't think it would be bad that you would prepare for this meeting with your directs and get it right. That's great speech, right? And all that. But I think it's pretty useful that to remind people that feedback isn't personal as you move forward with the feedback model because they'll forget that speech yeah it takes both because the first 20 or 30 times you give a direct negative feedback you're going to feel that tension you mean the one speech is not going to magically solve it yeah some of that tension you're going to feel is yours and some of it is is theirs yeah and by the way folks, just so you know, why feedback doesn't happen enough in organizations is because of this, because of the tension you feel, not because the tension your direct feels.

42:11You're the one that's going to not give feedback enough because you're going to feel the tension. Yep. One-on-ones are for the directs, but the feedback model is for the manager because the problem with feedback is not that directs can't handle it. The problem with feedback is we managers aren't doing it well enough. We don't give it enough. Many of us never get over the McGuire hump of the Horstman curve. So look, we will greatly reduce our chances of hurt feelings and claims of personal attacks if we follow the guidelines of the Manager Tools feedback model. Deliver in a positive tone, the same tone you use for positive feedback.

42:54And look, we can help the directs further if we periodically remind them by telling them that this is not a personal attack. So, for instance, hey, can I give some feedback? Sure. When you're late for staff meeting, it slows us down. Nothing personal, but can you do that better for the team? Hey, can you give some feedback? When you miss your weekly quota, others have to step up. I'm not upset, just asking for better results. Can you do that? Right? It's hard for a direct to say they feel attacked when the manager specifically says, I'm not upset and is not delivering in a tone that comes across upset.

43:37It's hard for the direct to say it was a personal attack when the manager says nothing personal here. Okay? Or, hey, can you give some feedback? Sure. When you raise your voice, it shuts down debate. This isn't attack, just a statement of what I observe. Can you try to do that better next time for me, for you, for the team? Now, we're not saying you do this all the time. You probably won't have to continue doing it once you and the team get over again the Maguire hump of the horseman curve. once they learn the beauty and simplicity of the model they were not i promise you you're going to get to a point where directs come to you and say i'd like more feedback please and the reason they're going to do that is because they know it only takes 10 seconds it's not personal you've built up trust and they will learn from it and it helps them get better but these kinds of early reminders early on in the process delivering negative feedback will tamp down some of the tension, drama, and conflict that goes with talking to your folks about performance.

44:47And that's it. Pretty simple. Simple. Just do it, folks. Yes, just do it. In summary, guys, feedback isn't personal, but plenty of professionals who work for you today have been told it is. It's worth it for us managers to be clear that we're not making personal attacks, and that actually our feedback model protects them from that. And that's part of the reason why we use it. Awesome. Thank you, my friend. I enjoyed that immensely. Anytime, partner. Folks, in keeping with our recent tradition, Mike and I want to give a shout out to a long-term licensee, Gary Slinger. Gary lives in Tampa. He's been a great correspondent of ours over the years, and he was one of our very first in the top 50, I think, maybe even less than that, licensees all the way back in August of 2007.

45:49Gary has been with us nonstop ever since. Gary, thanks for being part of our community, and we look forward to many more years of serving you and your organization. So long, folks. We'll be right back.