 No matter how high you ascend in your career and how really adept you are at leadership, you never stop refining it. You never stop learning and you never stop growing. And you inevitably will be humbled on a regular basis. I just want to say one thing about leadership before we get started in any of the other content. And that is that our view of leadership is not position dependent. It's a stance that we have taken from the very beginning. Rebecca talked about the Leadership Academy that we conducted here and the participants. By the way, that was started in 2013 and the most recent one was in 2013. 2003. 2003 and the most recent one was in 2013. So with 24 participants at a time, it was a lot of people through here. Some of those people were deputy directors already. Some of those people were administrative positions that had a lot of influence on others and needed to work, people who needed to work with others regarding budgets and deadlines. There were project managers, there were scientists, there were engineers, people from across the institution and at multiple layers. After a few years, some of the executives started saying, this is a little bit tongue-in-cheek, but I'm being... Something's happening to the people who work in my organization and have been through this program and I kind of want to know what they're learning. And they're doing things to me that I want to know about, that sort of thing. Anyway, we launched an executive version of the program and I think we did that four times. I can't remember exactly. Four different groups of 12 people at a time and those people were at the most senior positions in the organization. And we also, for example, just to say this isn't position dependent, we also conducted a leadership program for all of the employees within finance and administration. At the time, I think there were a hundred... The people who prepared your food today, the people who clean up when you leave, they went through this. The people who paint these buildings and take care of the roads, they went through the leadership program. It was a different version of it, but it was on the subject of leadership. And there were a lot of people that were in there that were saying, I don't know why I'm here, leadership isn't for me. It really is, in our opinion, I mean you can imagine, we're pretty impassioned about this, that there's an opportunity for everyone regardless of what your position is to be a leader, to contribute to whatever you're part of as a leader. And it's in that spirit that we have identified the topics to focus on for this afternoon and the activities that we'll ask you to participate in as part of that learning process. It is our belief that you learn by doing. And so we're going to present some things today, but really you're going to be doing the work on it. And shifting you away from the sciences that you've been studying to what my friend Michael Kanoker calls the day on social sciences, where you have to actually work with other people. And as Michael said, network, talk to other people, learn things. And so we're going to have you doing a lot of that today. So let's get going. Yeah, let's get going. Enough context for our session. Needless to say, in addition to the activities and the various things that we're going to be going through at any time, if you have a question, please just raise your hand and ask. I think that the mics that are out here are live. So, you know, so that everybody else can hear you if you don't happen to have a loud voice and can't project. By all means, we want to hear your questions and comments. Okay, so first of all, there is no agreed upon definition of leadership. And, you know, as many, I mean, it's a subject that is written about by a lot of people. We will have available to you a PDF of some of these slides and additional material that includes an additional reading list. And I think we put some 25 books on there, which is really a very small sample of all of the books that have been written on this subject or touch upon it in some way. We wanted to capture what we think is the essence of it. And we also want to emphasize some things that maybe wouldn't be part. It might not be the first set of things that you would focus on if you were to take a leadership class at a university. But in our perspective, because remember now, we're getting people that have had 20, 30 years of experience, so just stepping into their careers and everything in between. What are the things that either really trip people up because they're not prepared for or in a positive way make a big difference in boosting somebody in their leadership effectiveness. So if leaders, I mean, this is generally, this is true. There are other things that leaders do as well. So again, we're not trying to get the absolute definition, but clearly these are all really important and things that leaders do, articulating a vision, inspiring people to act. Inspiring people to act is by far shown to be the high leverage area, that quality that makes the biggest difference and the researchers Zanger and Folkman in their study over the course of many years and lots of 360 surveys, surveys about leaders from people that report to them and their peers and their bot. It's like getting a holistic view in terms of feedback about each person and their research shows that not only is it the most important high leverage area, it's also the one that gets the lowest scores. So inspiring others to act is very different. So as a leader that has hierarchical authority, theoretically you have the option of telling people what to do and you have some sort of repercussions if they don't do it that you can wield on them and so forth and maybe you've been the recipients of that sort of leadership. I don't know. But I will say this that when it comes to inspiring others to act, it's really then not about wielding power, it's about something else than that. So what does, how do you do that and what are some of the important considerations there? And we'll look at that today and then focusing on concrete problems and results. I mean this is what a lot of people think about first when it comes to leadership is that more like, how do I manage the process? How do I keep things moving forward in an orderly way? Whether it's a project or whether it is a group of people that work together on an ongoing basis. This is really important and it's just the beginning. It's like the cost of entry is paying attention to being able to manage concrete, solving concrete problems and achieving specific results. What this does is describe the effectiveness of a leader. A leader could theoretically do these things and not be a great leader. So one of the things we want to hear from you is what are the qualities of a person that might make them a great leader and able to effectively execute on these types of things? At your table there is a sheet which has two columns on it and what we want you to do is have a discussion at your table. We want you to discuss what, when you think about leaders that you have admired, what were the characteristics and the qualities that made them great? And for now all we want you to do is to list those on the left side. So based on what you know about leadership, what are some of the characteristics, the qualities of those individuals that make them great leaders? Before you get started I would note that not all of us have the benefit of the positive examples of leadership to draw from. So hopefully you have some. If you don't, if you really can't think of any, I've never worked with and known anybody that I thought was an effective leader. First of all it's very sad. That's almost tragic if that's the case. Hopefully it's not. But if it is, even if that's the case, you can still look at the inverse of those qualities. The worst leader that you ever had, the things they did wrong, just by even studying that and looking at it you can say, well what are the qualities that if they had just used those would have made them an effective leader, right? So you can draw either from the positive inspirational sources and hopefully you all have some of those, or the opposite in order to end up in the same place. So take a few minutes and have your discussion and list those qualities, somebody at your table, list the qualities on the sheet. Take a couple more minutes and then finish up your discussion and your list. You always think about it. Okay. Just stop your discussions temporarily. We want to hear from you about what are some of the qualities. So we're going to go around and ask each table just to shout out your favorite quality. And as we go around... But don't repeat. So once it's been identified by one group, pick a different one so that we at least get... That's ours too. 11 represented in the room. Okay. We'll just start right here. Open to different opinions. Great. Effective delegation. Good. Encouraging. Great. How about back here? Realistic and appropriate expectations. I can't tell you how many times people say to us, we don't have any idea what's expected of us. That's the very first thing. That's important. Great, thanks. Back here, table of four. Communication and understanding team strengths. Great. Good. How about here? Yes. Great. Be human. So important. You know what? You're going to be human anyway. So you may as well embrace it because... If you think you're hiding, you're wrong. So really it speaks to, I love that, and it speaks to a quality of authenticity that there's nothing more damaging than someone who presents themselves as something that doesn't seem true to who they are, right? So embracing being human is usually, for most of us, it's actually an endearing quality. Along with that is being willing to admit your mistakes. Oh my goodness. That endears such trust in other people. Great. How about here? Positive and constructive. Perfect. Great. How about here? Great. Good. Boy, we're going to do something on feedback. And honestly, we are so used to hearing constructive criticism or feedback, and very rarely do we get the positive feedback. And it has an inverse type of reaction in the person who's getting it. Because it's like, don't they ever see the good stuff I do? So we're going to work on giving feedback and also focusing on positive feedback. Great. Back here. Enthusiastic. He has. If somebody's like, yeah. Yeah, we got to do this thing again. I mean, how inspired are you going to be to follow them? Great. Good. How about here? Right. One woman I know came through one of our classes and she goes, well, one thing you know about me is I'm brutally honest. And I said, the only thing we need to work with is the brutal part of this. I want you to be honest. But the other can actually shut people down. Great. How about here? Great. Decisiveness. Not everything has to be decided by consensus. And that's something we see in scientific organizations. We have to have a consensus on this. Do you? You have this discussion? Great. Well, you know, in the limited time that we have, of course, we're picking a few topics to go into. But I just comment on that decisiveness and decision making and the comment about consensus. And that is, here's something that you could all take back with you for whatever groups that you're part of now and in the future. And that is decision making is something that needs to be thought about. How will we make decisions as a group? Articulated, agreed to, and followed, right? You know, so in the absence of any of those steps along the way could really be derailer for a team. Like, if people feel like this will be a consensus, but that decisive leader steps in and cuts that off, that could have a negative effect, right? So if there's going to be a, just we call that decide and announce. That's the technical term for being decisive. You know, it's like saying that there are many topics that we agree on by consensus. However, on this subject, I will be making a decision and asking you to follow that. It's okay to do that on occasion. It's what's most important is the clarity about what the decision making process will be so that everybody understands it, that there are processes that are agreed to, that they're followed, and that there's some consistency to it. I think that goes along with those clear expectations and agreements back there. Not any single person is going to be exceptional at all of those qualities that you identified. No matter how great a leader is, chances are they're going to be exceptional relative to the population of leaders at one, two, three areas they'll be known for. That'll be, you know, what is their calling card as a leader? And it's counterintuitive. So one of the first things to talk about here is that many organizations and many individuals think that their goal would be to be okay at all of these leadership qualities and competencies. Good enough. Good enough. Good enough. And instead of that, it's counterintuitive and yet research keeps showing this to be true, is that being exceptional in a few areas, you can make allowances now. If you're really poor at something that is central to the job that you have, well, then you need to work on that. I mean, it can't be a drawback to that extent. But it's really important then, one of the first things to do is knowing yourself, knowing what your strengths are, and really embracing a few areas to focus on to really develop those, because they're consistent with who you are, because they're important to the success of the role that you're in, and because it'll make a difference to the organization that you are supporting. So anything that fits all three of those might be a good candidate for you to focus on saying, well, how can I be explicitly and specifically better in this area? But don't try to be just okay in every area and certainly don't try to be great in every area. That'll burn you out, because nobody's going to be able to do that. So there is something that underlies all of this and a leader's ability to actually pull this off and be effective at that. And none of you mentioned it, but we think it's the number one thing that a leader must have is trust. And how is trust given? How did they earn that trust? There is a book called Trustology, which breaks this down to what is trust. And I found this so helpful because when I would think, I don't trust that person. I wasn't always sure what it was I didn't trust about them. But we've got the three-legged stool of trust up here. The first one is integrity. And that is, somebody said this, doing what you say you're going to do. Following through. You commit to something, you do it. Keeping your word with individuals. That's integrity, not lying. The next one is competence. I'm going to assume you all have that. And many of the leaders that you come in contact with probably will have this. But you're going to know if they're faking it. And they might be saying they know when actually they don't. So somehow, some time, we're always taught to say, well, yes, I know. Because there's a weakness in I don't know. So learning to say I don't know, but I'm going to find out, is important in leadership. And then the next thing is compassion. What the heck is that? That's caring about other people. That is having their best interest in mind. And whatever you're doing, you're doing it so they can grow. They can succeed. They can be happy in their job. That's compassion. So what happens sometimes is our leaders have a two-legged stool. Or a one-legged stool. So what we want you to do, a lot of these qualities that you've talked about line up with one of these legs of the stool. I want you to go back to your list. And next to the competency that you had, the quality that you had, list which leg of the stool of trust that aligns with. So if you had caring, for example, on your list, what would that be? Compassion. If you had knowledgeable, where would that be? Competence. So as you go through and do that, then you're also looking, if your list has lots in one of those areas, or two, but not in another one, then go back and start generating additional qualities that would provide some balance. So if it were a stool, it would be relatively balanced. So that the qualities aren't all oriented in one direction, but they're balanced across all three of these, right? So first thing is to identify which one of these three elements of trust that each of the characteristics best aligns to. And the second is to look if there is misalignment within your list is generate some additional qualities that balance that out. Should we wrap them up? Just in the interest of time to make sure we can get through all of our content, we're going to ask you to cut your discussions off there, and it seems like there was plenty more you could talk about on this subject, which is great. Who had a perfectly balanced stool? You guys did? Pretty balanced. Pretty balanced. A little wobbly. How many of you had an imbalance towards... Integrity. Integrity. Whoa. About an imbalance towards competence. So that means that if only one group had balance that the imbalance that you had was towards compassion. Is that correct? Is that true? Yes. Wow. Or two. Okay, yes, right, right. What were they? Competence and compassion went out. Or integrity and compassion. What made... Okay, let these other folks know what made up for the integrity. When that was missing, what were some of the competencies that you had for integrity? Did you say you had... Yeah. What were some of the integrity... What were the characteristics that you attributed to integrity? Good. Those are important things for you to think about. When you hear all these characteristics, which ones describe you? How's your stool doing? There is actually, in your handouts, we're not going to do this right now for the sake of time, but there is a personal trust assessment that you can take on your own time to see how you are doing in balancing your own trust stool. And where you might need to build up some qualities to be much more balanced in that trust. And this, even just introducing this assessment, brings to mind another really critical characteristics of leadership effectiveness. And that is the willingness to continuously shine the light back on yourself. It's easy. When you're looking at qualities of trust and you think about the people who either strike you as trustworthy or the opposite and look in what those qualities are, it's much harder to have a clear view of yourself because you know what your intentions are. I think very few people set out to be untrustworthy. And yet, you know, the trustworthiness is variable. It's not the same for everyone. And it's not the same over time either. So it is possible, despite your best of intentions, to fall short. So how do you deal with that, right? It's being able to and willing to self-reflect. So self-awareness, self-knowledge, courage at being willing to face it and say, I've not been my best self lately. I'm frustrated with blank and I'm taking it out on, you know, whatever that happens to be, that in and of itself is a leadership quality that will serve you well over time because no one stays on track and is their best selves all of the time. Everybody has some good times and some bad times, right? And so it's how do you recover? How do you notice that and how do you recover? And then what do you do about it in order to, is there remediation necessary? You know, it's like you probably don't want to pretend like it didn't happen, but you know, you've got to maybe address it in some way, right? So that speaks to maybe the integrity component, the willingness to address it. So as you complete the trust assessment, we are not by any means saying that you're not trustworthy and your score should be low. That's not what we're saying. We're saying as you look at it with honesty towards yourself, it serves you well, not just today or tonight or whenever you complete that, but in the future as well. Continuing to shine that light back on yourself, how am I doing? How am I really doing? And it is a self-assessment, so just to check yourself, you might want to share it with a friend or a teammate or a colleague about, here's how I think I'm doing. What do you see? Boy, is it hard to ask for that kind of feedback, and it's so valuable in your own growth to get it. So if you ask for it, also be willing to hear what somebody has to say and be willing to work on those things. We won't... Yes, yes. I can see the problem on both sides of that, right? So those people who have blind spots and aren't really looking hard at themselves and not willing to see what other people are seeing and therefore develop blind spots, that can be a derailer. And clearly, just being hard on yourself. I mentioned 360s earlier. In most of the leadership programs, those six-month leadership programs, one of the components was a 360. And so, has anyone ever had a 360 completed? What is a 360? So a 360 is a survey about you completed by a range of people, a 360 view on you. So they would be people that, if you're a manager, people that you manage perhaps, if not, they'd be your teammates, your colleagues, your peers, perhaps... Your supervisor or someone else who knows you really well and has worked with you quite a while. It could also be outside relationships that you have that you work with on a regular basis. Everybody has a good sense of how you work and how you show up. Most of them are organized not necessarily for as a performance evaluation. So it's not how effectively you accomplish the tasks that you were assigned or whatever. It's not that sort of thing. They usually are designed to measure leadership competencies or behaviors that are associated with leadership. So similar to the kinds of things that we have been talking about. And it's a fairly common tool that's used in many organizations and it's not uncommon at all for it to be part of a leadership program because if self-awareness is an important component, getting feedback from people about yourself can provide you with lots of self-awareness opportunity. It's anonymous as well. So all of the information except for your boss is aggregated so that you don't know who said what. You just know which groups of people said what. So now having said that, it can be a problem when people have a blind spot that they've rated themselves high and other people are saying, not really, but it's also the other way around. When a person scores, self-scores are right down towards the bottom and everybody else sees they're doing great. Gosh, yeah. I think that they are undervaluing themselves and perhaps sabotaging their own effectiveness. The discussion that you're going to have later, some of you who attend the breakout on... Communicating effectively to be heard. To be heard, right. So your ability to be heard might be connected or your inability to be heard might be connected to a very low self-opinion and inaccurately low self-opinion. I don't really have anything of importance to say and I'm going to mumble this thought and I'm going to say it in a way that you probably don't... Without asserting myself. So it is... Yes, it's very important in both directions to ideally have a similar sense of yourself that's consistent with the perspectives that other people have about you as well. Okay. We want to move into... As Andy said, this inspiring others to act is probably the hardest thing and some of the things that you've said as qualities is that when you hear somebody else and you understand what's important to them and you can align how you're working with them and what it is they're doing with what they value, they are going to be happier, they are going to be more productive, they're going to be more effective if they are working in accordance to things that are important to them. And we miss this. It's human beings. We can listen, but oftentimes we're listening to the words that were said, not to what are those words really saying. And so we want to give you an opportunity to listen for somebody's values, to listen for what's important to them and this isn't hard. It just means adjusting your attention when you're listening to something other than the topic that's on the table or the things that are going on in your head, your opinions or your advice or what you did in that similar situation. It's listening for what are they really saying, what's important. So we're going to show you what this looks like and then we're going to have you do an exercise where not only do you get to listen for values but you get to brag on yourself a little bit. You guys work hard and sometimes I don't think you get the recognition that you deserve about how good you are and what you're doing well and so we're going to have you give yourself a chance to talk about those things. So we're going to do it like this. I'm going to talk about something. This is actually a high point in my life, something I smiled about and talked about for weeks after it happened. I just want you to listen. So in December, I had a birthday and it wasn't going to be any special birthday except that I had a friend call me and say, hey, how would you guys like to sponsor a dinner at your house and then bring all these people over to this public place where we have a band set up and they're going to be playing music and you get to come and dance and party. And I'm thinking, now that's just going to make my birthday much more special if I do something like that. So I agreed and we invited, I don't know, 18 people over to the house and a couple years ago we moved into this house and we gutted it and we made it into the house we want which is most of the main floor is kitchen because what happens when you have a party? Where is everybody? It doesn't matter if your kitchen's this big or this big, everybody's in there, right? So I said, well if they're going to be in there let's just make it big enough for everybody to be in there so we have this huge kitchen and I cooked it was my birthday but I like to cook so I made the meal and I got to make exactly what I wanted it wasn't like a potluck where people bring things that I really didn't want to go with this meal so I made everything and then the idea was you take dessert, you take it to the dance and then everybody would have dessert at the dance so we had 18 people in the house worked great we had seating for everybody to sit down and eat the meal the food was so good I don't know how it turned out so good but it did and then after a couple of hours we said, okay, those of you who are going dancing let's go I really didn't have an idea of what this dance was going to be like it turned out that it was in a hall of a church and they had a wooden dance floor and they had the band was a number of high school music teachers who got together and they played like a 1950s band it was like so I go I left my party go into this room and it was like going back in time I felt like I stepped in a time machine and suddenly I was at a holiday party with my parents it was really spooky and nobody was dancing and that was the whole point so my friends are like well then we'll dance we did line dances, we did bunny hops, we did all these things and even though it was strange the evening was such a surprise it was such a surprise to me and that the fact that it unrolled and it was like somebody threw me a surprise birthday party because I had no idea that's what it was going to be like and I was surrounded by the people I love both at my home and at this party and it was one of the most special birthdays I think I've ever had alright, thank you Carly okay so now you don't know Carly other than the story that she just shared with you but chances are you have a sense of some of the things that are important to her some of her values so not there's many things you could pay attention to in that story there's like you know the number of people that you had at your house how many other people were doing this what were the instruments that the band was playing there's so many things you could pay attention to but just the aspect of it that was out of that story what does it suggest to you are some of the things that are really important to Carly just call some of those out here we'll get them said music possibly oh community I'm sorry sense of adventure community sense of adventure cooking providing for others was that similar to what you had yeah good okay good and by the way with that a lot of times we hear it's not necessarily the words that matter but the idea and then of course the words that the other person would ascribe to that thing that quality in them that is important to them is really what matters it's not the words that you use that doesn't really matter how you capture it in your mind because it's the idea any others fun loving yes being taken care of yeah being taken care of yes when a band comes through fruition in the spirit of that sense of adventure there was like there was some uncertainty about it or you know not a smooth plan okay others friends and family yeah so community friends and family you know some of these are going to be connected to one another right so from that story that Carly shared which was her version of bragging rights right so this was something that happened to her fairly recently so it's within the last several months that she feels particularly good about and she shared the story she got the opportunity to share the story and by listening to it we heard the story and we also got a sense for some of the things that are important to her those are her values those are her values and this whole idea of alignment that when we pay attention to and understand and appreciate those core things that are important to the people that we are otherwise you know working with and you know focusing on other things besides you know their birthday parties and so on that when we tune into those things we have a connection to who they are what's important to them there's a way that's a way to understand appreciate have compassion it's a way to lead to inspiring others because we're inspired by the things that are important to us right so it's just a simple little skill that everybody already possesses that you can utilize as a way to getting to know what's really important to other people regardless of what it is they're talking about I just want to say one thing I actually choked up up here because I felt seen I was saying just talking about my birthday party but you all saw something else and everything that you said is truly important to me and I live my life that way so thank you for that okay so now you'll all get the opportunity to to practice this and here's the the process it might get a little noisy in there when half of you are speaking at the same time telling your stories we'll manage time and we'll let you know when to stop your stories so you may not get an unlimited length of time or you may not get as much time as you would like but when it's your turn your bragging rights anything that over the fairly recent time so the more recent the more vivid it is for you in Carly's case it was a few months ago that's fine so something that you're pleased with and proud of it can be personal it can be professional it doesn't really matter it really doesn't matter because chances are that as you're talking about it those things that are core and are important to you they're important to you whether you're at work or whether you're at home you know you take those things with you so you get a chance to tell a story the person who's listening and paying attention to those values like you were doing here and you reject in the conversation you can do that I mean you don't just have to sit there quietly and listen right so you you can have questions but make note to yourself or actually write them down some values and actually we put a list of values in your handout in case you're wondering I don't know what the word for that would be here's some things to kind of to put your brain it might help you as a reference and then when the person is done with their story just like we did here you'll say here's some of the values I think I heard and they'll let you know how you did they'll either say gosh that was great you really get me or I wouldn't say it that way I think I'd say it this way whatever their response is is fine it's okay the whole idea of this is not to be right it's to tune your listening for something other than the topic okay so everybody understand what you're going to be doing so you'll both have a we'll call time halfway through you'll both have a time to be the speaker and the listener and we want you to pair up with somebody so if you're in a table with an uneven number you might have to look at somebody at another table and pair up with them and then Rebecca will either join or not join I guess or whoever the okay so we'll make sure we have an even number if somebody has to drop out about the staff they will or if they need to join in right well I was going to look at see where we're at that is a really good question one that we don't have any idea at this point 205 good right okay so you have five minutes each total okay will you please pause in your conversations thank you just asked you to pause in your conversations that's all I've said so far and so that is about as much time as we have for one story but if you were the listener there it's now time for you to share the values the values list that you had either from reading off those or words that occurred to you and so take another minute to do that and then you'll switch to give the other person the chance to do the opposite of whatever they were doing before okay so time to share the values okay please wrap up your conversations please wrap up your conversations oh it's so hard to stop talking about yourself what was it for you to feel heard in that way by somebody else in many cases probably a complete stranger what was different about that great good it's validating isn't it just like you said it ties to what is aspirational for you it's not you know you hope it would be something that you would hope would be true about you and then she's saying it it is anybody else yes yes we're talking about I rate myself really low because you forget the great strength that you have the powerful characteristics that you bring to a situation and so here's a chance for somebody to tell you you have this you got this we're going to transition to our last topic just so we make sure we get through everything that we set out to for the afternoon this is the kind of subject though that you could really steep in you know it's hard to move on from this because it feels pretty good and so some things to remember from that when you are the person who is providing that ear and noticing these kinds of things you're providing that with the other person so you are building relationship trust you are setting a foundation in which you could influence and inspire that other person so it's not inspiring others isn't just the ability to give impassioned talks in front of large groups of people I mean that's a wonderful quality as well it's just that it exists on lots of different levels and here's the thing even though you're scientists even though you're going to be in academic institutions or in places like NCAR and the nature of your work is going to be very technical and the rule is that here being human so you don't have any choice anyway so you are you are a human being everybody else that you're interacting with is also a human being and so these these aspects of relationships and leadership shouldn't be overlooked just because the nature of your work is highly technical or mostly you know around the research and the the science that you are doing also important the relationships that you have with each other as a foundation for working effectively together just think about being on a team and you're working on a scientific project and rather than debating and arguing about the topic at hand if you shifted your listening and said what is important about this to you how that might shift the conversation and move that along rather than each of you having to get your points made but it's an important thing to remember if you're at a stalemate shift your listening what are you paying attention to okay our last topic is feedback and we chose this because it's so important to be able to and willing to give feedback to others and also in light of the previous topics it could be a trust destroyer or a trust builder it could be something that inspires others or just the opposite of that so it has a high impact on things whether you offer feedback and then how you do it to others what is it about behavior is it about performance is it about you know what's the nature of it that you're giving feedback to that other person how about positive feedback it's also how many of you get enough positive feedback you do some of you do okay great good so many people don't and for those of us who who don't it's a good reminder that there's a high value to it yes you get too much positive feedback it's great some people are like stop telling me what I'm doing right what am I doing wrong in our previous work that we were doing one's values often times are a great guide for how what works with us for us with regard to feedback like for one person it is that encouragement it is that positive feedback that drives and fuels us and for the next person it is something akin to not wanting things to be sugar coated I don't believe it if I just hear positive feedback it's like there's something that seems not true about it for some people that's the case right so now or if it's hollow for example great job keep up the good work yeah that is a great question so the question is in case some of you didn't hear how do you learn what kind of feedback or how somebody likes to receive feedback so by far the first thing to do is to ask and to have a conversation with them about that how do you like to receive feedback it'll probably come up in the breakout session about mentoring and supervision it usually does right but it's like how do I find that out well sometimes you observe and you notice things yes and it's great to be observing but there's no substitution for having a conversation and I'm sure you would tell me in no short order about your aversion to receiving too much positive feedback too sugar coated to whatever that is I'm sure you would let me know it's my job to ask it's my job to note it and to adjust accordingly right so that I don't assume that everybody is the same Val yes it's an important thing to know about somebody is privacy a high value then you don't hold a big meeting and say hey we want to acknowledge let's bring so and so up here in front of everybody you're thinking that this is the greatest honor you could offer and they are hating every second of it so it's really not working as you would have hoped it would so observing and noticing those things about a person really valuable and no substitute for having conversations which you discover those kinds of things about them and you know maybe you share some of those equivalent things about yourself so they know those things about you and they're not having to guess about you as well so we want to talk about there are good ways to give feedback and there are bad ways to give feedback I'm sure some of you have been exposed to some of the bad ways of receiving feedback ever received feedback that you would consider have been traumatic so a fair a fair number of you have you don't forget it do you yeah so what were some of the things that contributed to that being a traumatic experience for you what made it traumatic oh blamed you for the failure of a project great yes you yes so the delivery of it was not what was that yes how the delivered the content but how it was delivered it makes a big difference in people's ability to hear public here's somebody who doesn't want it was in public yeah there's never public shaming isn't the list of books on leadership that you have I don't think anywhere you'll find best practices public shaming regularly you know yeah so clearly how motivating was it not at all yeah yes disrespectful right yeah so yeah these are the kinds of things that that tilt feedback to a very negative experience or maybe even on the feedback deliver side of things in the future avoiding giving feedback because even though it's a difficult message maybe they weren't really trying to do those things they just it was so uncomfortable for them and they blurted it out I don't know if this is true but you know and now they hurt your feelings or you got defensive or something happened like that and so they're going to avoid that in the future there are all kinds of things that we carry forward with us and especially feedback where there's kind of an emotional component to it or it's uncomfortable or difficult messages to deliver that we carry with us so what we want to do is introduce some just fundamental things to pay attention to about giving feedback and a communication process that you can use to prepare yourself and deliver feedback it gives you the best chance that it can be received and taken in and that it can be a basis for a discussion with another person to better maybe come up with an agreement or a path forward or maybe it's a positive feedback and it's a reinforcement for something that went really well I just want to say one thing too just because your leaders or your managers don't do it this way doesn't mean you should it we hear so many times when my boss doesn't do that well so what? they're terrible you're not going to be terrible you're going to be great and so practice the good practices not what somebody else taught you was the wrong way think about how you felt and then give that courtesy to the person that you're working with okay so there are some positive reasons to invest in in being thoughtful about offering feedback and being effective with it as well reducing uncertainty for the other person solving some problems when something's not going right feedback can be a pathway into a conversation where something gets corrected going forward it can build trust I think even in those situations where it's very uncomfortable maybe the other person has a blind spot and you're giving them feedback and it's very uncomfortable if it's done well it has the potential to build trust it can strengthen relationships improve team effectiveness and it can facilitate learning on behalf of that other person so those are some of the positives and these slides are going to be available so as I move on from here you don't need to worry about remembering all of those things because you'll have that in the slides that are... they're going to be on the website so what do we want to do when we're delivering feedback being specific so one of the failures that can happen is when we generalize overly generalized feedback you can't take it in you can't do anything with it being descriptive so I don't know that you're lazy but why should I give you feedback that says you're lazy just as an example not anybody here is going to be lazy but feedback that comes to a conclusion or starts with a conclusion about the other person and what their intent was has a very much higher likelihood of falling on the negative side here but you can say you can be descriptive about that you haven't attended three team meetings in a row for example is descriptive it's not something that you've made an accusation about it's just an observation so this neutral observation should be something that comes easily to you and I shouldn't say it comes easily it's something that you can you can derive you can be thoughtful about and you can derive at the thing you observed from having to know what that means and how to evaluate or judge it in giving positive feedback if you give positive feedback building on that individual strength not just the result but what is it that they did to achieve that that's going to have much more meaning it's also going to have them repeating what it is they're doing to make them successful they're noticing that they're good at something how could you use that strength over here in this thing that you need to do so you're using positive feedback by focusing on people's strengths and not having it be accusatory that's what the next one is all about and then the always or never is the generalized kind of feedback if you say you always do this you are going to be met with defensiveness and that's partly why we don't give feedback is because we think the person's going to be defensive well if you do this they probably are so you want to be very specific about where this happened the behaviors you observed and we're going to go into that in a feedback model that we call care so this also goes towards that compassion leg of the stool care means see the context in which this was observed where were you what was going on where did you notice this A is the action that you observed what were the behaviors that you noticed yesterday in the meeting you came in 15 minutes late facts just the facts ma'am are the results this is so important often left out so what so what if I came in 15 minutes late the results of that action were that I had to stop the meeting and repeat what we'd already covered in the first 15 minutes for your benefit because it related to you and then we got behind in the agenda fine okay empathetically explore is then talking to that person about what was their intention what was going on so you don't jump to conclusions about this person doesn't care about team or he's late or on his project exactly what if the conclusion that you have reached about this is inaccurate what if you don't have all of the information so you're offering feedback to this other person but you're not all knowing so this e part of it is bringing it back more to a dialogue and where you may hear some things from the other person that help explain it or maybe there's a a different perspective than anything you had considered previously you don't know until you engage in the conversation with them but this is also a good news with this is that it's something you can be thoughtful about you can prepare for so you know the this last one is a dialogue and so it really is going to unfold however it does based upon the things the other person has to say as well as your thoughts on this but the first three parts of this is really a monologue not a very long one I mean it doesn't have to be very long but it is excuse me one way communication more or less and it is sticking to facts and it is descriptive and it's not accusatory regardless of whether it's positive or constructive feedback you can reliably use that process and you can prepare for it so a lot of the resistance and aversion that people have to delivering feedback especially those things that are uncomfortable can be relieved by preparing for it you know if you go into giving feedback and what's really going on is you're annoyed because of something that is what is going to come through regardless of the words that you say so by preparing you can help yourself get rid of or get past that and get to what it is you really want to say about this this is something that is really simple but really powerful we want you to take a few minutes now as an application of this on page 5 of these handouts there's a chart that has the C-A-R-E on it so preferably if you have somebody as we're talking about this now that you're thinking gee here's someone that I need to give feedback to my friend my colleague there's someone that you have in mind as we're talking about this go ahead and play it out by writing down some notes about that thing that you need to give feedback on and use this as a vehicle for preparation really thinking through what it is you have to say and the words that you want to choose if you don't have a specific one right now like that that comes to mind then refer back to a very recent time when you gave feedback to somebody and replay it using this but just take 5 minutes now to fill this in so that you apply the thinking of how to give good feedback to a specific situation and if you are someone who is negligent on giving positive feedback to people you might use this as a way to give positive feedback as well if you've been meaning to tell someone how much you appreciate what they did use this form to prepare for that feedback just take a few minutes now fill that in across and I think it's really interesting to see what it is and notice that it's really interesting how to get into it how to get into it okay just closing thoughts here how was that structure for you in clarifying your thoughts about giving feedback to somebody else how was it okay first of all we totally believe in giving feedback up and there are some things for you to consider one is what is your relationship with that person will they hear you do they want you to give them feedback so let's say let's just say that they do that you feel comfortable you also have to say what's going on with them today is this the appropriate timing is this the appropriate time for me to be giving them feedback how can I frame this feedback in a way that is you know be trying to be helpful towards our group outcomes or something that is more than just my frustration towards this one in other individual and there's a great article in Harvard Business Review probably five maybe more years ago about courage and I don't remember the exact name of it but I'd recommend reading that because it points out just there are some risks sometimes associated with it and sometimes the best choice is to not say something and then there are other times when you make the choice to do that so what's your relationship with that person how are they today framing it in a way that is more than just a gripe but it's a contribution towards I know it's important that we reach this goal and I'm concerned about something that might be in the way of that for example right so it's your concern about something that you want to collectively work on so that you as a group can have more success something puts it into broader terms like that I think Val was talking too about having a lead in to giving feedback it's like don't scare the person if you're giving them feedback but I've been noticing something I think it would be valuable for you to hear or can we discuss something sometimes if I'm giving feedback in a really difficult situation I'll say this is really hard for me to talk to you about and yet I find it's really important and so I'd like to talk with you about whatever that is right so it's just a naming of it one more thing is ask permission can I give you some feedback if they say no don't charge in there giving but I have my care feedback for them all filled out this is going to be great no take a cue once you have decided to do that if you choose to the actual delivery of the feedback this fits this is just about communication and clarity it's just clarifying your thinking and communicating in a way that can most likely be received on the other person there's no guarantee on how the other person receives your feedback there's no guarantee of that just putting yourself in the best possible position for that so the process or those four steps still applies regardless of the power relationship you have with the other person if you present it as a request and then follow up with the feedback and here's why I mean just making the request may or may not get you what you want but if you can give concrete facts be clear and concise and based in reality and facts about what's going on is the best way we've had a whirlwind tour through the topic of leadership and we need to wrap up there are some breakout sessions after our break and Rebecca will explain those and Carly and I will be participating with some of those so maybe we will have the opportunity to continue this discussion thank you though for your time and your attention again we'll put a PDF with some more material on the website and you'll have that as soon as it gets posted probably tomorrow well first of all I hope this was useful and I hope we got to talk about things that usually in our day to day research world we don't really have the luxury to think or talk about so in this theme we want to continue explore a little bit more in-depth leadership skills and so if you look on your agenda please I want to just explain you real quick the breakouts for this afternoon so if you see we have four different topics lined up for you we will be in auditorium south and then three breakout rooms the first one is fundamentals of mentoring and supervising the next one is communicating effectively to be heard how to be in meetings, how to communicate maybe with your advisor the next one is creating a supportive network you need more than one mentor in life so how do you set up yourself for success by reaching out to enough people to create your network and the last one time management and work life balance a topic that some of you requested on the survey and you see that we are repeating the session so we know that you can't cover all four it was simply no space on the agenda if not we would be sitting in this room and just do death by power point and we don't want to do that so you have to basically pick two topics for this afternoon we don't have any organized way there are no labels on your batch which room you're going to because I really wanted you to have a chance to pick and I just trust that we don't all run to the same room I just hope that we somehow make this work so if you see a room completely packed maybe just go to the next one all four sessions are great so basically pick one for the first round at three o'clock and then we will announce and you switch and you go to the next room and if you're here with a close colleague maybe split up and that way we'll tell each other later about the two sessions and as we said earlier all of the materials will be available later for you so I think there should be drinks or snacks or something out there take a break and then we will see you at three o'clock