Skills Sprint: How to Learn From Feedback (Even When It’s Uncomfortable)

0:00Hi, I'm Sarah and I'm Helen and this is day two of our Squiggly Careers Sprint. We hope you had some fun knowing your notifications and starting to collect some data for your development. And today we're going to be diving into learning in hard moments. So this links to the fascinating feature lobsters have, which is that they grow the most when they shed their shell. So I think we're so used to seeing pictures of lobsters with their very beautiful shells. And what actually happens is that that shell becomes a constraint to their growth. And so they break out of their shell. It is an energy zapping process.

0:35They leave that old shell behind and they have this period of vulnerability. They're kind of like a little jelly-like, almost like see-through. There's quite a lot of risk in this moment, but there is also a lot of reward because what happens is that shell that they shed can grow back. And when it does, it is bigger and stronger than it was before. And we think this is the same for our learning. We think there are moments in our careers, which are shell shedding, where we become vulnerable. We feel at risk. And these moments feel difficult for people in terms of their development. But they are the moments when we can learn the most.

1:11So that's what we want to encourage you to do today. So it's sort of hard and worth it is always my conclusion here. And the thing that we really recognise is when we were doing a lot of research on this and talking to lots of our community, people do know that hard moments have lots of learning, but they tend to wait until after the hard moment. So then you've got to look back. You've probably missed out on some of the learning from that moment. So what we have really challenged ourselves to think about is like learning in that hard moment. So during a hard time. So moving beyond just being in like make it through mode to actually, do you know what?

1:48This is hard. So I'm almost like I might as well learn at the same time because it will be worth it for my development. So today we're going to be talking about feedback and feedback is hard for everyone. When you say that word feedback, when I talk about it in workshops and say, how would you respond if your manager asked you for five minutes for some feedback at the end of the day? the emoticons and gifts and dread that I get back I actually asked this yesterday and you get like people hiding they're like I'm gonna get fired so there is so much fear around feedback I think asking giving and receiving all has different types of fears um so Helen what's your biggest feedback fear well out of the asking giving and receiving it's probably giving and I think my fear is what if the feedback that I give you creates friction in our relationship it's probably linked to a confidence gremlin about like wanting you know everyone to be happy and people pleasing and be liked all that kind of stuff and so I don't then give the feedback or the quality of the feedback because of that fear yeah I think we're probably receiving feedback that might confirm the worst things you already think about yourself and this is like we put this in the book like about I think receiving feedback sometimes gets forgotten as a skill you know you talk a lot about like asking for it and kind of giving but actually it it can feel really scary when people have given you feedback being like well how do I make sense of this how do I process this in a way that is useful especially as somebody like I would reflect a lot I'll think about things so any I can remember like most feedback people ever give you and so it really kind of sticks and stays with me but Brené Brown has a great quote that I keep coming back to on feedback and she says when we shield ourselves from feedback we stop growing so though it is hard you know that kind of payoff of you can uncover learning I think that you just can't get any other way yeah we know that self-awareness is both understanding yourself and understanding how other people see you too so if we really want to progress and develop I think we sort of have to have the acceptance that feedback needs to be part of that process and then kind of figure out, right, how can we make this more of a habit?

4:01How can we practice this so that it feels easier? It'll probably never be easy, but make it easier. So we're going to hopefully encourage people that are sprinting to shed their shell. And we're going to talk about a tool that is in the book called Say the Hard Thing. And this is about delivering messages that you really want to, but feel difficult to do. And if you don't share that message, it's probably going to get in the way of someone else's growth and your growth too. So we've got a framework in the book that I will talk through quickly so people know. And then we thought we would give a bit of a live example of a say the hard thing situation that Sarah and I had recently, where we've kind of reflected with our model in mind and spotted where it could have been better.

4:41It could have been better. So it's a good learning moment, I think, to use it. So the say the hard thing framework, there's four parts to it. So it's a structure for when you are potentially delivering a message that feels difficult to say, it probably feels hard for someone to hear? How can you set yourself up for a more effective learning moment? So the first thing is we always want to start with an open question. So we're not always diving into saying the thing that is difficult. We're starting with an open, curious question so we can see where someone's coming from. Then we will acknowledge their response.

5:10So however someone feels or whatever they're thinking, we will take the time to appreciate and acknowledge that. Then you have to say it. There is no getting away from you need to say the hard thing. But what you might do is change how you say it or what you say based on what you've heard. And then the last part is that you need to involve the person. So I'm not just saying it and that's the end of the conversation. It's really the start of the conversation. Together we're going to work through this difficult thing that we wanted to say and speak about together. And I think if you can get better at this both individually but also as a team, so I think say the hard thing can also be a team skill as well as an individual one the difference can be that things that go and said suddenly actually are acknowledged or talked about and margaret hefflin did some great research on organizational silence and she found that 85 of people have concerns at work that they don't talk about so you know if you then saw that as i imagine all of the learning you could unlock if you could get people to speak up and to say that hard thing to make it safer to say the hard thing and definitely what we are not saying here is this is a structure you've got to remember for a conversation I never think that's realistic and also I think it's worth remembering almost the harder it is the more likely this is to be a number of conversations you know I think sometimes people put a lot of pressure on themselves I have to fix all this in like one conversation and as I've been using this over the last year sometimes I think I've just used the open question and acknowledge and that's been conversation one because then I've understood where someone is and then maybe you start the next conversation by saying the hard thing and having some go-to phrases for what the hard thing sounds like has really helped me.

6:52Should we give our example? So the situation was Sarah and I were away. We were actually at the National Lobster Hatchery. We were going to see some lobsters. So appropriate. Trying out our own models with a lobster just down the road. Very true. And it was the end of the day and I gave Sarah some feedback about how I believed Sarah was showing up at work, which went somewhere along the line. Well, I don't know. You tell me what you heard. You are getting too involved in too many things and doing lots of other people's work and that's hindering rather than helping us. So yeah, I effectively said that to Sarah.

7:30I don't think Sarah was expecting it. And your first response was, I think you were sort of taken aback, a little bit defensive. And I could see that I hadn't delivered that feedback in an effective way. And as a result of that, there was a moment where learning didn't happen. Actually, it could almost create a bit of conflict between us. Almost shut down. Yeah, almost shut down. But then actually we started to move towards questions. So it happened quite naturally for us, which is I'd kind of said the hard thing before I'd asked that open question at the start. And then when we started asking questions like, well, why is this happening?

8:04What's changed? What's making you feel like this? Then together we started to be able to solve it. And so it really showed to me that a better thing would have been to start with the question rather than start with saying the hard thing. I didn't have the context. Yeah. And I think when we reflected on that, you know, if you think about it, my response was very much, oh, I'm working really, really hard to do things that need to get done. And then at the same time, you've now given me kind of a hard to hear message. So it's like hard on hard. And so you have to take a really deep breath. And I think, well, crikey, that's in the context of you and I getting on brilliantly, very high trust, known each other for a really long time.

8:46And it's still really hard. You miss the learning rather than look for the learning. But I think the questions saved us. Yeah. And then we got there and then actually we both felt quite positive. And then we're both quite interested in it. We were like, because then it becomes like, I don't know, something that together you want to make better and you're challenging and building. and it's just a lot less about going, well, you have got this wrong versus this doesn't feel right. So how do we improve? So the quote that we picked out today comes from Sophie Williams, previous podcast guest. Yes. And she said to us, her advice for learning was, don't be afraid to ask questions about or challenge things that are unchallengeable or unquestionable.

9:27I feel like Sophie is a very good say the hard thing role model. Yeah, I agree. She's really good at empathetically also saying things that could be really difficult. Okay, so what's our tool for people for their 24-hour actions? So our tool is a say the hard thing kind of GPT. So we have built something so that you can go away and put in your say the hard thing scenario because I bet we all have one. It might be a big one, but it could be something smaller, just like there's a process in my team that's not working well. or everybody said they were going to do this thing, but it's not happened.

10:03Or I'm finding this thing a bit tricky with my manager, but I've not said anything. So it can be a really small say the hard thing scenario. It can be a really big one. And what it's going to do, this say the hard thing sort of scenario planner is going to help you with how you might approach that situation, what you might say. It will ask you some good questions and it's just a really safe way to get started. Love it. So we hope you found today useful and you've got lots of ideas to try out, come back for day three of the Squiggly Skills Sprint. Tomorrow we're going to continue with learning in hard moments and we've got some new ideas for action for you to try out.