THE LEAFLET
November 9 2023
inspiration without eloquence, don’t take feedback so seriously: parts 1 and 2
INSPIRATION WITHOUT ELOQUENCE
A question I hear more and more from leaders is, “how do I inspire my team? I want to be an inspiring leader. How do you do that? What's the secret sauce?”
Some people who ask this are actually asking, “How can I be more eloquent or passionate and get compliments for it from my team?” That is different from inspiring your team.
When we're talking about inspiring people we’re talking about
creating effort, risk-taking courage, and tolerance for ambiguity and error that people didn't have before, and
Those same people feeling good about exercising those traits rather than burdened by them
Read the rest here.
-Ben
DON’T TAKE FEEDBACK SO SERIOUSLY, PART 1
Where I have seen this go best, where a true culture of feedback has taken root and given forth the blossoms of new confidence, improving performance, and deeper trust, feedback is a) kinda ordinary and b) not taken deadly seriously in every instance. Leaders solicit it often, almost to an annoying extent, and everyone gives it - but no one assumes that every instance of it results in direct change in the specific way they asked for.
On these kind of teams, I tend to see moves like:
Leader of a meeting opening a t-table google doc in the last 3 minutes of a regular meeting (like an all hands or a team weekly) and asking for keeps and tweaks on that week’s version of the meeting. Records them live so all can see. Uses as many of them as make sense for the next go round.
Plus-infinity circles with no more than ~30 mins of prep time. Team stands in two concentric circles - inner circle faces out; outer circle faces in. You and partner exchange a plus (keep doing x) and infinity (start doing y); one minute for each person. At end of two minutes, the circles rotate and you talk to a new partner. Repeat until everyone has gotten feedback from everyone else.
1:1 meetings with managers each week include mutual feedback exchange as a set agenda item.
Leaders publicly thanking teammates for having given them challenging feedback.
Read the rest here.
-Eric
DON’T TAKE FEEDBACK SO SERIOUSLY, PART 2
Not taking feedback too seriously requires leaders to make some assumptions explicit, then model behavior based on those assumptions.
The Assumptions
We’re all professionals here (as opposed to amateurs, who don’t worry much about the quality of the product and are mostly in the game to entertain themselves)
It’s all skills. We can all get better at each dimension of our jobs, down to the details of them (how we schedule a meeting; how we open a conversation; how we punctuate stuff).
Feedback is given and taken in good faith. The subtext of it is some version of “I believe in you. I believe in your ability to get better at what we’re here to do. You matter and what we’re doing matter enough to me that I won’t prioritize my own comfort over sharing something that could help you and move us forward.”
The Behaviors
We seek feedback from each other as frequently as possible.
If we have feedback, we offer it
as close in time as we can to the occurrence of the thing it’s about and
directly to the person it’s for or about.
We minimize practicing or vetting the feedback with third parties, which devolves too easily into withholding the feedback or delivering it after a good gossip with your office friend.
We take the feedback seriously. That means we consider it, and unless there’s a good, mission-chasing reason not to, we act on it.
We thank each other for feedback every time, especially when it’s “tough” feedback (given across a power divide, given when the stakes are high or there are acute feelings on either side)
Read the rest here.
-Eric
COMPELLING QUOTES
Feedback and culture expert Kim Scott on leaders soliciting public criticism, in her wonderful Radical Candor:
Too many managers fear that public challenge will undermine their authority. It’s natural to want to repress dissent, but a good reaction to public criticism can be the very thing that establishes your credibility as a strong leader, and will help you build a culture of guidance.
Public health demigod Atul Gawande, from his Checklist Manifesto:
We’re obsessed in medicine with having great components—the best drugs, the best devices, the best specialists—but pay little attention to how to make them fit together well. Berwick notes how wrongheaded this approach is. “Anyone who understands systems will know immediately that optimizing parts is not a good route to system excellence,” he says.
Poet and farmer Wendell Berry, in Standing by Words:
It may be, then, that form serves us best when it works as an obstruction to baffle us and deflect our intended course. It may be that when we no longer know what to do we have come to our real work and that when we no longer know which way to go we have begun our real journey. The mind that is not baffled is not employed. The impeded stream is the one that sings.
Keep going, keep growing,
Ben & Eric