 So, with that and the power of giving and receiving feedback, what really piqued your interest in researching giving effective feedback? When I was getting my PhD, I found that I was someone who cared a lot more about feedback than some of my colleagues. When I would grade papers, I would grade with a fine, green-tipped pen, and some of my colleagues and friends would grade with a big, fat red marker. And when I asked one of my friends, like, why do you grade with a fat marker? You can't give any feedback. And they said, that's the point. And it was interesting because I graded with a fine, green pen because I wanted to be friendly, plus I wanted to give lots of comments. And I think there's an analog in work. If you're one of those employees who has a manager, who has the red, fat-tipped marker approach to feedback, you know it, and you're like, please, I would really appreciate a fine, green-tipped pen at some point. So, part of it is I've always been curious about feedback. And then the other part is that for, you know, one of my biggest investments in my career has been in giving feedback for about 19 years now. Before I began working with people in business and helping people get better at feedback, my job was to work with professors to make good professors your favorite professors. I was basically a teaching coach. And I worked with lawyers. I worked with engineers. I worked with nurses. I even once worked with a Broadway choreographer. And I was helping them figure out how do you give feedback to your dancers, to your students, to new attorneys. And it made me realize that all of us, well, at least 90% of us, have to give feedback as part of our jobs. But 99% of us haven't been trained in how to give feedback. And I want to change that. I want to help people know how to give feedback. What surprised me most of all in the book was that you distilled feedback down into three specific components or forms of feedback, which was just wonderful because if you view it through that lens, feedback becomes something even something more that you would want to seek out because it helps in every way. So why don't you go ahead and set that up for us so we can have that chat? Oh, sure. Well, and I don't know about you, Johnny, but I'm used to hearing about feedback as just either positive or negative. Yes. Or if your manager's being really politically correct, they might talk about constructive feedback and avoid the word negative feedback. Right? You know, that's the way most of us talk about feedback. And there's that that's not that helpful to employees, right? Because employees know if what they're hearing is positive or negative. So what I find a much better distinction, this comes from Douglas Stone and Sheila Heen from the book, Thanks for the Feedback. This distinction between three kinds of feedback, not two, but three. So coaching, evaluation, and appreciation. So appreciation would be what most of us would call positive feedback. OK, so appreciation is what you're doing well. So that might be, Johnny, I love how you make every guest feel like I'm a friend, right? I feel like we've known each other forever, right? And that makes listeners want to pay attention because they're like, if he's if she's his friend, then I want to learn about her, right? So that's an impact that you have. So that would be appreciation. Coaching is advice, right? So coaching would be what you can do to improve that might be you might say to Emily, Emily, I noticed you're kind of quiet in our Zoom meetings. You know, what could I do to help you speak more? That would be, you know, and you're trying to solicit what is Emily need and how can I help her? And then the last, the third one there is evaluation and evaluation is where you stand. So evaluation might be you have to tell Alex, like Alex, the past few months, your output has been half of what it should be. Or at least half of the other people on the team. What's going on for you? What obstacles are you running into? And so appreciation, coaching and evaluation and people need all three kinds of advice. We all we all get better if we have all three kinds of advice or all three kinds of feedback. Well, soon as I read that in the book, I was so surprised because there's nothing there that you would want to avoid. If you look at it, all three as their component and and compartmentalizes, they are. So if we're looking at evaluation and you mentioned, well, that's where you stand. Okay, that's comparatively with some other numbers. Here's where I'm at. And here's where I have been and where I need to go. So how do I get there? Well, that's where this coaching is going to come involved because now we're not slamming you on what you're doing bad. We're going to coach you to get to where you want to go. And with that, I'm going to fill you up with good vibes because I'm going to show you how well you've already been doing and why you're going to be able to take this coaching and get there through showing you this appreciation for everything that you're good at, who doesn't want that at all times? Exactly. And like you're probably constantly looking at like, how are our ratings for our podcast, right? You're evaluating yourself all the time. But if someone can bring you new information, right? If you're a producer or someone else can bring you a new insight, like, you know, you got more listeners for this show because you did blank, like that appreciation and that coaching is so helpful, right? Now you know what to do more of. So yeah, exactly. I completely agree with you. You want all three kinds. When it comes to feedback, we've heard a lot of, I guess, you know, handed down advice, the compliment sandwich, and some tactics that we've all heard before and even makes us cringe when we think about it. But there is some science to back this up. And I would love for you to at least unpack the science behind giving effective feedback. And then we can delve even deeper into some of the concepts that we cover in the book, especially the idea of separating the person from the problem because I know that's something that I've struggled with as well. Oh, that's nice of you to say. So, A.G., let's talk a little bit about the feedback sandwich. You know, if we've got some managers who are listening in, they're probably thinking, oh, yeah, right? Feedback sandwich, that's terrible. That's the old bus. We're on the new, we're on the new and improved. That was the old way of doing things back in the 80s and the 90s. Actually, you know, and there's new data showing that the feedback sandwich isn't so bad. So what is, for those of you who are wondering, what's the feedback sandwich? And there are some, there are some, it's sometimes called the shit sandwich for, in some cultures. I know plenty of businesses that call it that. That's how bad it's denigrated. All right, so the feedback sandwich is this notion that you start with something positive or a compliment and then you move to your concern and then you end with something positive. So you sandwich in the middle, your concern's the problem, right? And for a while, you know, the way that people have done this has been kind of crummy because you say something irrelevant for the positive. You say something like, oh, it's such a nice day there in Riverside or in LA. And then you say, you know, I love your background. And then the concern is really, really focused and specific, right? And then you get back to some generic positive like, you know, you did such a good job this week and you're just like, that doesn't help me at all. But there's a researcher at Harvard Business School, Leslie John, she's a management professor. And this is, you know, I'm glad you guys asked about this. This isn't even published yet. So, you know, everybody who's listening is finding out even before the research has been published. What she's finding is that they manipulated in a research study, what came first? Do you get praise first? Do you get the concern first? What if you get the concern without any praise? What happens? And what they found is that when you praise people first, when you give them the positive first, but it's gotta be specific, right? It can't just be the generic, like I love your hair or whatever, right? It's gotta be really specific. But if you give them something specific first that's positive and then you move to your concern, people pay more attention to that concern than if you give the concern first without any positive praise first. She finds that what you say last actually doesn't matter. So the last piece of bread or the last piece of praise doesn't matter. But what does matter is if you start with praise, people will pay more attention. And it makes sense, right? Because if people say something specific and meaningful about what they like about your work, you're like, oh, this person sees me, right? This person actually appreciates what I do and they appreciate my effort here. And so now it's worth paying attention to what they have to say that there is their concern. So even though the feedback sandwich gets a lot of eye-rolling, there's gonna be research coming out any day now showing it's actually at least starting with praise before you give your concern is a good way to go. So it's the open-face sandwich is what we're calling it. That's right. We're talking about an open-face roast beef sandwich here. But I love that point about being specific on both sides because that is what we don't see often from managers and giving feedback is it's so generic and the positive and it's like you're just grasping at straws and then it's very specific in the negative. And of course it's tough to deal with that because you don't feel like that person has your back, has your best interests in mind. And you talk about this separating the problem from the person and there's really three ways to look at that. And I'd love to unpack it for the audience because in the book there's a great visual but I just now realize in managing over the last 10 years where I've had my missteps in this. And oftentimes as managers we too closely ascribe the problem to the person and we don't actually give them an opportunity to grow. Yes, you just captured it beautifully AJ. So like you said, there's a visual in the book but people have active of imagination so I'll just describe this. So imagine whenever there's a problem you've kind of really got three entities. You've got you the manager or the feedback person who's giving feedback. You've got the problem and you've got the listener. So imagine the problem at the very top and then we've got the you and then you've got the other person. So the problem, you the other person and the mistakes so many of us make when we're giving feedback is that we get really close up to the problem. So imagine now you've got you, I'm gonna give you feedback and I'm right up here next to the problem. The person who's listening to the feedback is way off by themselves, right? They're kind of lonely there at the bottom. And this is problem and this will happen all too easily if you've given a lot of thought. I need to give this feedback. I don't wanna give this feedback but I need to tell the person there's a problem. It's been bothering me for weeks. You've gotten really close to the problem up there. You were like, nuzzled up next to that problem whereas the employee has no idea any of this is going on. So by the time you bring up the issue that you've got a long list of like you did it in seven different meetings, right? You know, you can identify, you can itemize and the other person's feeling completely overwhelmed. They feel like they're on their own. And this is what I call siding with the problem. You, the feedback giver or the manager are really close to the problem and the person who's listening feels really isolated and on their own. And this is gonna make them really defensive as you can imagine, right? Because you feel like you're kind of ganged up upon. So the main time I see this happening is when people are reluctant to give the feedback they've given a lot of thought to it and they've spent more time with the problem and with the person. The other time this sometimes happens is when people have super high standards. If you as a manager or someone who's really strict about here are the standards that we have in this organization. I'm not saying high standards are bad but you've kind of married yourself to the standard and you're not thinking about the employee as much. A much better way to go is to align yourself with the employee and that means now picture instead of being up next to the problem you're down close to the employee and the two of you can look at the problem together, right? You're on the same side. You're not on different sides. You're on the same side and you're both looking at the problem together. And you know that you're doing this if you can say things like, so I've noticed that X happened or I noticed that that last deadline passed and I didn't see that you got your work in. I'm concerned about that. Now you're over here with the person like what happened, help me understand what happened when that deadline passed and you didn't get your work in until later that afternoon, right? You're siding with the person, not with the problem. So that leads to a couple of implications. One, bring up problems right away. Don't sit on them for seven weeks, right? Because you are going to find yourself nuzzled up next to that problem. Another thing is say things like I've noticed that blank happened. Don't just start with like you, AJ blank. Instead like I've noticed this about you. I've noticed this happened AJ. Can you explain that to me? So asking questions, right? It suggests I'm over here with you with the problem. I'm over here with you, the person. I'm not up here with the problem. Does that make sense? I know it's hard to picture in just describing it, but do you think that that was clear, AJ? Yeah, I think so. And I think in realizing this, we're really being their ally. We're not attaching this problem to their identity. We're not saying this person is a little bit like this or a little bit like that. We're actually acknowledging that, hey, this can be improved. This can be fixed. And I'm here to help you brainstorm fixing it. I'm here to help support you in the fixing it, not blaming and not shaming. And I know I've fallen into that exact pattern where I'm very conflict diverse. So I sit with the problem. I sit with the problem. I think about it. And then immediately in my mind, I'm like, well, I want concrete examples because I'm anticipating they're gonna get defensive and they're gonna push back. So they're gonna want data and evidence. And all of a sudden, I'm sitting there so frustrated and the other person, it's a self-fulfilling prophecy. The person hearing this feedback is now definitely gonna be defensive and frustrated and not actually work to solve the problem, which as a manager is the end goal here. Our goal as managers is not to just fire people. Our goal as managers is to solve these problems and keep things moving forward and growing. We're now finding ourselves at a place where no one wants to deal with conflict or having to deliver bad news. And we've been talking about this idea of the PIP, the Personal Improvement Program. And if you find yourself in one, you're not being coached up. You're usually being coached out the door. And with having strategies to give concrete feedback that people get excited about rather than cringing over, well, then it gives them an opportunity to learn Excel. And then of course, if they're gonna Excel and feel good, they're gonna feel good about what they're doing. They're placing the company, the work that they're doing, their communication within that environment. And you're gonna see them take on the role of trying to help others in the office. But if you see an issue, you refuse to talk about it and you send them to PIP, well, this is the third PIP I've been in in two years. I know what comes next. And of course, what comes out of that is low self-esteem, beating yourself up. How are you supposed to feel good about putting yourself back out in the job market when that problem that you have run into for maybe the third time could have been handled in the first place and you would have been able to find so much worth for yourself and the value that you bring into that environment. I'm so glad you bring up the PIP because there's, it's really, when I've talked with people who are in that circumstance, two things become clear to me. First of all, often those people are surprised, right? At least with the first one. They're like, wait a second, I thought I was doing fine. Where is this coming from, right? So that's really stressful. Research shows that about 24, somewhere between 24 to 26% of the time, people are surprised by the feedback that they get. So on the good side of that, 75% of the time, roughly people aren't surprised. They know that their work was subpar, but when it's that one out of four times, when it's a surprise, and you thought you were knocking it out of the park and you find out you weren't, oh, you were crushed, right? And you're like, why did you let me go on so long, right? So that can be really stressful for people because it reduces your trust in the organization. What else aren't people telling me? I mean, there's so much that goes with that, right? The other thing that I find really fascinating, there's research again out of Harvard by Sharer and Swab, or as the research team, what they found is that managers tend to sugarcoat feedback. They don't realize they're doing it, but what they found is the worse the news, meaning that the lower the employees, the performance that they were doing, the more managers sugarcoated, right? So this is really frustrating because if anything, if you're underperforming, you want your manager to play it straight with you, right? You need clarity, of course. You really need clarity, exactly. And to find out that, and you can, if any manager who's tuning in right now is like, oh, that's easy to say, Terese, but it's really hard to do, right? Somebody's underperforming, I wanna soften the blow, but that's so unfair to the employee because you're monitoring that, you're keeping track of the fact that they're underperforming, and you're probably making little ticks in your mind, they're like, nope, again, and it happened again, and it happened again, and it's gonna just lead up to the pip that we're talking about. So it's hard, but we need to stop sugarcoating our feedback. I think a big part of this as well is recognizing the growth mindset and creating an environment that supports a growth mindset. And I would love if you could speak for a minute about that, especially when you feel that you have a team that might have a fixed mindset and might not feel that they can grow in these areas. Obviously, appreciation goes a long way and feedback gets us there, but as managers, we need to recognize that every single person in the organization can grow, and it's our job to be that fertilizer to help them grow. Yeah, I'm a big fan of the growth mindset. Have you guys talked about that on your show before Carol Twain's work? Quite a bit. Quite a bit, okay, great, you're on board. Yeah, so the growth mindset is really fascinating. If you're a manager or a feedback giver, there's fascinating research out of University of Texas. I love research, so I'll keep referring to it. We love it too. You love it too, okay, great. There's fascinating research out of University of Texas showing at Austin, showing that when managers take a growth mindset towards their employees, their employees, they might not call it a growth mindset, but the employees will feel that their managers have hope for them, right? If your manager believes that you can change and improve, you'll feel it in their feedback, right? There's nothing specific. Of course. You do, you're just like, oh, you believe that I can change and grow and improve, right? And so you have hope, like I'm willing to listen to you. And so what they find is first of all, managers communicate if they have a growth mindset, and they're more likely, and the big statistic there is that they're much more likely to give feedback if they have a growth mindset because it's worth their time, right? If you believe someone will change, you'll actually give them feedback. So first of all, managers that take a growth mindset are more likely to give feedback, and employees, when they have a manager who has a growth mindset, they're more interested in their manager's feedback. So if there's one change you're gonna make, try to adopt a growth mindset because you're gonna help yourself and you're gonna help your employees. It's a win-win for everybody. Terese, there was somebody's name that you had brought up, Carol, who? Carol Dweck, Dweck. Okay. Yeah, she's the one who has popularized this notion of a growth mindset. So yeah, she's out of Stanford, and her work is primarily in education, but a lot of people have applied her work to the workplace. Anyway, she's great. Yeah, well, one of the things that really stood out for me, and I've realized is one of my faults over in management, is not just clearly stating my intentions. So I feel that I'm a great person. I feel that I'm being a supportive manager and I really want the best in my team, but I don't often articulate that. And you talk about in the book how important it is to state those intentions as a manager of what you would like to see for your team members and being clear about it, not assuming that they already know, even if you feel like, well, I've created an environment that this should be obvious. Of course, my intention is for them to grow and feel good. So how can we clearly state those intentions to be more effective managers? I'm glad you bring up this point, AJ. This is one of the things it's so often for us to skip because as you say, it feels obvious that we want good things for our team members, right? We want good things. We put a lot of time into helping people. We put a lot of time into looking over their work. However, research shows that people, employees tend to assume bad intentions on their managers, not good intentions, people assume a lot more bad intentions than good intentions. And some of the bad intentions that they assume are things like, you just wanted to make me look bad, you wanted to make yourself look good, right? You can't stand that I know more than you do, right? I mean, there are like so many, so many of these attributions that people make. And what's really fascinating is that people don't tend to make positive attributions. They don't tend to tell a positive story, like, oh, my manager wants good things for me. People don't tend to tell themselves that story. They don't only tell them to tell themselves the negative stories. So you, the manager, need to insert those positive stories. You need to be saying things like, I want people to see you as the expert that you are. You guys have done over 800 podcasts. You know what you're doing, right? I want people to see how brilliant you are. So if you state your positive intentions, then people now can tell themselves a different story. They won't fill in the blank for your intentions and make them negative. So this is just, I've got to admit, it feels artificial. When I do it in feedback conversations, it doesn't come naturally. It feels like I'm doing a little script, right? But things that I'll say would be things like, I want good things for you. I know you're working really hard and I want other people to see how hard you're working. I want your hard work to pay off. These are just really simple things that you can say before you give the bad news and what Leslie John and others have found is it softens the bad news. People are more receptive. They like you more as a manager if you say your good intentions out loud. So again, it might feel artificial. You might have to do some searching, right? You might have to be like, what is my good intention here? But it's really worth the effort. When we talk about this, we're all storytellers. We have this need to take data and turn it into a narrative for ourselves. And it's very important as a manager that you don't just give disparate dots of data and let your staff members, your employees, fill in the blank because as that science shows, not only do we hold onto negative feedback, more than positive feedback, but we also default to those negative intentions even when they're not there. It's a mirage but we have to manage that in our communication. It's, I really like your point about holding on to the negative stories. I think so many people think that praise is irrelevant because we only remember the negative things that our bosses have said to us, right? But there's some of that comes down to cortisol, which I know you guys have talked about on your show before. When you feel stressed, those cortisol stays in your system longer, you ruminate longer about the negative things. Whereas when you hear something positive, you don't get the chemicals that hold onto that memory. But it just means it makes it all the more important that you've got to be giving that praise because people don't hold onto it as long. You've got to be repeating it. You've got to be saying it out loud. And I just hope if there's one message to take away from this podcast, there's lots of great things we talked about, but saying your positive intentions, helping people change the story so they connect a different set of dots and they create a different picture for themselves. That would be a great takeaway. I don't think a lot of people respect the power that their emotions have over their view or lens of the world. And in fact, I almost see it like a Salvador dolly painting. I think like the one of perception of time where the clocks are melting and everything, where if your emotions were flat, you were fine. You would see the clocks for what they were on the wall and hanging up, but all of a sudden, you get told some bad news and now they're all melting and dripping. And I like to use that as an example of this is what you're seeing when your emotions are flared up. How do you expect to work through whatever it is that you need to feeling that way and to give it some time to pass over so you can look at a problem, whatever issue you might be having through a better lens? And I like to call that, I call it emotional theater where you're going through all of this nonsense until you can look at something clear. Have you seen any stats research showing how long that transition lasts? How long before you come back to a lens that has given you the opportunity to see things clearly rather than that distorted drooping look? Such a good question. So I first of all, I just want to say I love the image of the Salvador dolly painting, especially because like you said, there are all these drooping clocks. And for me, I especially love it because one of the things that happens when we get stressful feedback is I don't know if this happened to you, but like I remember that moment so clearly. It's like time stopped, right? You like picture where your boss was, you remember where you were sitting, you were just like everything stopped for a moment. Those memories get imprinted deeply. I don't know in terms of what the lag time is, I know for myself just thinking about personal anecdotes. There are moments where I got feedback 30 years ago and I can still relive the conversation. At least is he now, right? It's like. Yeah, same. All right, we're always in your hand on that one. We've all had those moments, right? At least we have a video that we think represents what really happened then. So I don't know about time course in terms of how long those happen, but we've all had feedback that sticks with us and resonates for a long time. In terms of how you might be able to change that moment, so first of all, telling the person a different story. Here's why I'm telling you this. One of my hardest moments was I had a mentor that I really cared about. Tell me that she didn't think that I could write. And I've now written three books. I can definitely write, but at the time this was very early in my career, that feedback really stung, that really hurt to hear that I couldn't write because I really wanted to be able, in fact, as a little girl, I wanted to be a writer. So to hear that I couldn't write was crushing, but you know what she said? You know what she said that really helped? She said, I want good things for you. I want you to be happy and right now you can't write. If you wanna be happy and write, you need to learn how to do that. So the fact that she wrapped it in this good intention for me made all the difference because now I could hear, she wasn't just saying this to hurt my feelings. She wasn't just saying this because she was ignoring my abilities. She was saying this because she cared about me and she could see that I was going down a path that I wasn't gonna be successful on unless I gained a new skill set. Yeah, I love that. I think that's incredibly important. I'm so glad that you had brought it up in the book and people take it for granted. They think they've stated it a hundred times, but much like an advertiser, you have to beat people over the head for them to completely understand something, especially if you're about to pull the rug out from under them. Especially, yeah. It's so interesting that we ascribe good intentions to ourselves, but we default to ascribing negative intentions to those who are giving us the feedback. And I think that that loop that's happening there creates an opportunity for us as managers to clearly state those intentions repeatedly. And you talk about in the book, a simple way to do this is recognizing we strengths. And I had never heard of that. And I'd love to discuss the difference between we and me strengths because I think the we strengths, especially with that lens, it's so powerful in a team environment. And especially when we tend to only really get feedback once or twice a year in a formative manner, then those are dreadful times for a lot of us who are employees who are like, I know it's coming. So what are we strengths versus me strengths and how as managers can we recognize those? Cause they're so impactful. Thanks so much for asking about those. So actually I made up those terms, we strengths and me strengths. So that's why you haven't heard about those. That's why this is the first time. And you're the first person to ask me about these. So your podcast is debuting me strengths and we strengths. I love it. You heard it here on the art of charm. Yeah. So me strengths and we strengths. So a me strength is something that I enjoy doing or something that you enjoy doing the employee enjoys doing and gives them energy. So perhaps doing interviews gives you energy. That would be something that I might expect as a podcast host. For me, writing gives me energy. So if I'm feeling low in energy, I can spend an hour writing and my energy will come back. Whereas a we strength is different. A we strength is something that makes the team stronger. So for instance, I've seen people who are really have a lot of confidence and that confidence makes everyone in the room feel more confident and that becomes a we strength. Even if for them feeling confident is just like a natural part of who they are that it doesn't make them feel necessarily better. But it gives everyone else in the room confidence because their leadership is now shining on everyone. So a we strength makes other people stronger. A me strength is something that gives you energy. And like I said, they can be different. I've worked with people who have, like I said, you might have confidence that helps the group or maybe your me strength. I know someone who loves to work on PowerPoint. He loves to like craft design and like really get into the fonts and the imagery. He spends a lot of time on that. Does it help the team? Not really, but it makes his day better. And he'll be much more productive on a day that he gets to play with PowerPoint design. So the notion here is that people need some time to spend on me strength. You get your energy from doing things that make you good. And the we strengths are things that the team needs you to be doing. The team needs you to show that confidence. So if it's a day when you're not feeling confident you've got to dial that up because the team needs it from you, right? So the notion here is that as managers we need to praise we strengths. We need to say to people, when you did that in that meeting, everybody lit up. Everybody paid more attention when you said blank, right? Those we strengths are things that need to be praised. Me strengths don't need to be praised so much because that already gives the person energy. If it's something that that person enjoys doing, it's kind of nice if you notice it, but you really need to recognize those strengths that help the entire team. And for me, the really important part there is giving that person clarity as to how they fit in to the team's goals and allows them to see the bigger picture outside of themselves. Because I feel like a lot of times we can feel like we're on an island and not realize just how our behaviors and our strengths are impacting the team in a positive way. And we don't often get those pads on the back in a team environment as well that allows everyone to see how we're shining. And I think it's so empowering as a manager when you could bring that to the forefront on a regular basis, on a cadence that allows everyone on the team to see how we're all rowing together and how each one of us individually is important to the team and those goals. I'm so glad that you bring that up because what you're underlining is that we need to not just say you did a good job, but you did a good job and it had this impact, right? And that's getting back to your point earlier about connecting the dots. All too often we know our little dot, but we don't know the impact that we had. So as a manager, you see the impact, you see the ripple effects. Let people know what their ripple effects are. One person that I interviewed had the impact he was working in a tutoring center and he helped a young girl get, her mom was gonna remove her from the tutoring program. He talked with the mom, he convinced the mom to get back in the program. So for him, he was like, okay, that was a successful phone call, yay, you know. Moving on, moving on to my next phone call. His boss, however, would not let it go. She kept coming back to this and meeting, saying you were the one who made the difference. You kept someone from becoming a statistic. You're the one who makes this team better and it made him love the job so much more because she kept talking about the impact. He was focused on the one person, she focused on the bigger impact and that's what we can do as managers. We can connect the dots for people. And that creates motivation, right? That's what I think is the missing ingredient in a lot of this. When we talk about feedback and when we think about giving feedback, oftentimes it demotivates. It demotivates us. We dreaded it and the person receiving it isn't receiving it well and it could demotivate them and those we strengths and highlighting them, I feel, have a huge impact on personal motivation and team motivation. We talked earlier about being conflict avoidant and I think it's one of the reasons that people don't give feedback is they're afraid they're gonna crush someone's soul. They're afraid that you're not gonna get on your Zoom camera the rest of the week if I say the thing I need to say to you, right? We're just worried about that, yeah. And if you can frame your feedback as, I wanna make sure that people come seek your opinion. I want people to see you as the star on the team. If I let you know I have these good intentions for you, first of all, and secondly, I tell you the impact that something that you did, like let's say you seemed unprepared for that meeting this morning, right? Let's say I'm saying this to Alex on the team. Alex, you seemed unprepared for that meeting this morning and it's going to make people slower to seek your advice in the future, right? Now, Alex is like, oh crap, I gotta make sure I'm prepared for all my meetings. Like I want people to seek my advice. That's important to me. So letting people know their impact, especially letting people know the impression they're making on others will really, we all care about the impressions we make on other people. So if you let people know you're creating this negative impression and I don't want that negative impression for you, you've just, you've really motivated that person to change. So that's another key element of this. Let people know what impression they're creating and they're gonna be motivated to get, to line up with you and change their behavior. You brought up a point in the book that I think a lot of our audience will really enjoy hearing about and I know that a lot of the guys are and certainly because the guys are, the ladies are as well and this is where men and women have this tendency of not hearing each other because we're not listening to each other in the same manner. And you brought up two different types of listening and I think that we should define those so that those of us who prefer one can understand that there is two and what we might be able to focus on to better help with those listening skills. This is such an important point because we don't often think about different types of listening. I mean, we might talk about, we might say active listening but really when most of us say active listening we just mean really, really good listening. Right? Right, like are you listening or not? That's it. But we do know that there's different types of listening, right? If you're listening to someone present three different marketing strategies you listen very differently than when you're listening to your best friend tell you about why she's breaking up with her partner, right? Those are different kinds of listening, right? So yeah. I would hope. You would hope, yeah. Don't want critical listening with the friend. With the friend, you would hope not, no. So you've just used one of the key terms, AJ. So one of the kinds of listening is critical listening and critical listening is like when your BS detector is on, okay? Your critical listening is when, like you would do with the marketing team when you're listening to three different pitches. So critical listening is what's, which is the best idea? Is what you're saying consistent, right? A lot of us do critical listening especially with our Xs. We do critical listening with our in-laws, right? You're constantly looking for the inconsistencies in the message, right? Well, every man has had a conversation with a significant other where she has said you are not listening, but he's like, but I can repeat everything that you just said. So what are you telling me that I'm not listening? I feel like you've had that conversation, Johnny. Couple, couple times. Well, you know, so, so there's a different thing going on there. And this is no commentary on your relationships, but there's, there's actually different kinds of memory and there's one kind of memory called sensory memory that lasts for just a couple of seconds. And basically this is like this little storage bin where you can completely not be paying attention, but you can basically hit rewind and play the last three seconds of whatever you heard, right? So sensory memory allows you to like have your mind on something else. But if someone says, Johnny, you're not listening, you can like hit rewind. Yeah, last three seconds. Last three seconds. I got it. Even though you're, you know, if, if this person were someone that you were feeling warm and fuzzy about, you would probably admit like, now I wasn't really listening. Well, if you're listening to somebody to solve their problems, you're listening critically. And when this other person just wants to be heard and have somebody to be empathetic with that person, rather than trying to solve the problems. So the minute you're like, well, here's what you need to do. You're like, you're not listening to me. I don't want answers. I don't want you to solve my problems. I just want the vent and I want you to be in this moment with me. So well said. So that kind of listening isn't critical listening. That's called relational listening. So, or you might call it empathetic listening if you like, but psychologists call it relational listening. And the idea here is not listening for the purpose of judgment, but listening for the purpose of empathy, right? I want to understand where you're coming from. And this is gonna be true in relationships, your personal relationships, but it's also true in your relationships at work. You might think, oh, relational listening is just for at home or with my friends, but relational listening is crucial at work. So let's say Abby comes to you and is like, I'm gonna have trouble meeting Friday's deadline, okay? And you're counting on Abby to meet Friday's deadline. So you could get out your BS detector and do critical listening and think about like, well, why isn't, you know, why is Abby missing this deadline, right? That would be critical listening. But what Abby really needs right now and what you need to be doing is relational listening, like figuring out, okay, from Abby's perspective, why isn't she gonna meet Friday's deadline? What obstacles are you running into? You know, a question I like to ask is, if you could wave a magic wand, what three things would you change so that you can meet Friday's deadline? Because all of a sudden now you're on Abby's side, right? Now you're problem solving with her. And she can say to you, wow, and now she'll brainstorm with you. What are the three things that I would change, right? And all of a sudden you've opened up a pathway so that by the end of the meeting, Abby's like, okay, maybe I can meet this deadline. And you did that by relational listening, taking Abby's side, getting back to what we talked about earlier, you get on Abby's side, which is beautiful. But also you're asking the questions from Abby's point of view. What do you see? What do you see that I don't see, right? Let me help you. And, you know, maybe you need to have the conversation with Abby down the road around like, okay, Abby, so I'm really concerned someone at your level should be able to meet these deadlines, right? But that's not the conversation to have with Abby. No, exactly. Now, you bring up a great point here. In order to either critically listen or empathetically listen or relational listen, we need to be asking better questions. And I feel that as a manager, that really is the secret sauce is understanding that in order to get to the solution and allow the other person to feel good about the solution, it's not us dictating the solution. It's us actively brainstorming by asking better questions to get a level deeper, to allow that person again to feel like we're on their side. So how as managers, can we ask better questions to get better results? I'm glad you raised this. There's a management professor in at the University of Jerusalem, Avi Kluger. And his motto is, listen first, feedback later, right? Listen first, feedback later. And if you ask, and you might be thinking, well, what am I gonna listen to? And AJ, you've just captured it, ask questions. Ask questions that you want the answers to, and then you get a chance to listen, right? And for some managers, this takes a lot of practice. Some people are natural question askers. Others just wanna get to their point. One person, I love her strategy for this. What she does is if she's got a piece of advice that she's going to give, she wants to give in a meeting, she writes down that piece of advice on a piece of paper, and she turns over the piece of paper, and she writes down at least two or three questions. For every one piece of advice, she needs at least two or three questions that she could ask before she gives that piece of advice, right? And this slows her down so that she's, if she asks those questions, what she often finds is she's got different advice by the time those questions are answered, right? So asking questions can really, now you're gonna give better advice. So what kind of questions could you ask? You could ask, what problems are you running into? When do you see us running into this problem again? Now all of a sudden, you've made the other person the expert. When do you see us running into this problem again? Brilliant, right? Because now they get to say, well, we're gonna run into it, I can see it coming in down the road in a month. But now you're on the same side, you're solving the problem together, and they're not gonna be nearly as defensive when you say, are you willing to try, and this is another, oh, a sneaky one, a real sneaky question. I like this one, yeah. I like sneaky, right? Sneaky's good. A really nice sneaky question would be to say, what would make you consider doing blank, right? So what would make you, what would allow, what would make you consider trying to get that done tomorrow? And they would say, well, what would make me get that done tomorrow? What would help me consider? Well, I would consider getting it done tomorrow if, and then they come up with ideas. But if you pose it as, what would help you consider this possibility? And then you give your piece of advice, right? Or you give the thing, the outcome that you want to see. You've asked the person to enter this thought space with you, and all of a sudden, now you're problem solving again together. So what would make you consider, or what would allow this to happen? Then they're again, they're problem solving with you, and you've inserted your advice in a really sneaky way. And you've allowed them to air those objections, because after we air those objections, we don't hold onto them as tightly. And sometimes we even realize, as we speak them, that they're really just not really meaningful excuses. They were something in our head that we were holding onto, but really are not roadblocks. So it allows for better investigation of what's going on internally for that person who's struggling to meet the deadline, who's feeling at conflict with their coworker, who has ambiguous instructions and doesn't know how to do what you ask them to do. Which I find is especially important when dealing with younger employees. And I wanna touch on a few of these nuances that you go into the book, because I think it's really important. We haven't really touched on unconscious bias, which is obviously very present in everything that's going on right now and what we're learning about ourselves. But let's first just talk about for the younger employees or staff members who are fresh on the job, who maybe don't have as much experience in communicating themselves, what their needs and wants are, and we're trying to get them to be motivated to achieve what we need in a team setting. It's interesting because I hear from a lot of managers' frustrations around their younger employees, right? And some people will say, oh my gosh, everybody wants a blue ribbon, right? Or like, ah, you know, I've got a millennial on my team and they want praise every week, right? So two things, first of all, it could be that there's a generational difference there. And I think that's just probably a valid point that younger generations are used to getting more praise on their work than perhaps we did, you know, maybe I think you guys are younger than me, but the point being that we might be frustrated that people right out of college are asking for more positive feedback and we're getting frustrated. So maybe there is a slight preference for more validation than what we're used to. But the second point is this, and I think this is important to think about, and that is that whenever you're young, you don't know what you're good at yet, all of us, right? All of us- The meat strikes, exactly. Yeah, you're not sure if you're meat strikes. You don't know. I mean, you know you were good in school, but you don't know what you're good at on the job yet, right, and you don't know relative to your peers what you're good at compared to what they're good at. You just assume if you're good at it, everybody's good at it, for the most part we do, right? And so I think all of us probably really would have liked a lot more positive feedback when we were 22, 24, 25, but maybe we just weren't bold enough to ask for it, whereas this current generation I think is. I think they're more comfortable asking for it. So one thing that I would advise is be willing to give that positive feedback because you're helping them learn what they're good at. And if they learn that sooner, they're learning their meat strengths, they learn, or they're also learning their wheat strengths. They're learning what they contribute to the team, right? You're raising their self-awareness, which is so key. Exactly. And inexperience, I think, regardless of the generation, I know we label things and we like to claim that it's different for everyone. Inexperience has tripped every single one of us up in our career, and we've all been on the other end of that. And as a manager, it's important for you to encourage them to go beyond their inexperience and learn those lessons in a more constructive and supportive way than leaving them to fend for themselves. And it is so easy to make fun and give the millennials a hard time. I'm Gen X, so I have that privilege. But the other thing about it is, and to throw my own generation under the bus, is we have gone on without finding ways to not take responsibility for things that we don't wanna be doing as Gen X. There is this whole thing of Gen X and the slacker movement. How can I just slide by without not really having to engage much? And I didn't like that cultural shift or movement. I found it, I just didn't like it. However, I can accept that that was going on. And when you have a younger generation that maybe is looking for feedback or trying to get some praise and we haven't accepted any responsibility and how we're gonna communicate or communicate in ways that allows us to be able to give feedback such as in the manner that you have laid out in this book, well then we have two parties that are not able to do what they need to be doing in order for them to get along and or bridge the gap that we need to in order for us to thrive together. I'm Gen X as well. And it's really interesting what you're talking about in terms of slacking. I think, we probably have some Gen X people who are thinking, well, I don't slack. But what's so easy for any of us to do, like one thing that I know that you guys talk about on this podcast is to what extent are we taking responsibility for our own actions, right? And it's really a tricky issue because we tend to get defensive when it's something that we've done wrong. It's always that, for any of us of any generation, it's external factors, it's not our fault. But when we're looking at someone else's behavior, it's really easy for us to see it as intrinsic to that person, right? And psychologists call that the fundamental attribution error. We slip up, you know, if I've got my arms crossed in a meeting, it's because I'm cold. If you, Johnny, have your arms crossed in a meeting, it's because you're standoffish, right? You're like, what? Right, right? We see the reasons, it's very different depending on whether it's our behavior or someone else's behavior. And so I think it's, and there's a lot of research showing that if someone's a member of an out group, so an out group means that they're not a member of our group, right? And we define out groups very differently. Out groups might be, are you a Southern Californian or are you a Seattle light like me, right? That might be one out group. But a really easy out group for us to all notice is the generational difference, right? It's really easy to, yep, I mean, because of the clothing, the tattoos, whatever it might be, right? Or you know, how people get to work, whatever it might be, right? You know, you drive up in your Prius and they, you know, they walk to work, or whatever it might be. The generational differences are a real quick out group. And the research shows that we tend to, when we see a member of an out group, we assume that's just how they are. They're unchangeable, that's who they are, right? And so that I think is contributing to why we see that, why we look at someone 20 years younger than us and be like, and we just roll our eyes and we're like, oh no, I gotta put up with so-and-so. Ha ha ha. Now unconscious bias, it's happening all around us. Some of us are aware of it, maybe we've gone through training at work around it, but it certainly colors how we give feedback and how we perceive feedback. And many of us don't realize that we're giving different types of feedback to different genders and the way that they're responding to it. So can you unpack that a little bit for the audience and how we can start to move beyond those unconscious biases that are holding us back? I really appreciate your asking about unconscious bias and gender because this is one of the reasons that I wrote the book is that there's growing evidence, some of it coming out of Stanford, some of it coming out of Harvard, coming out of lots of different respectable institutions, showing that men get better feedback at work than women. Now I'm sure there are men going like, I get crummy feedback, how can you say that? Ha ha ha. Trust me, I've interviewed plenty of men who've received hostile feedback and they have their own scars from bad feedback they've received from bad managers, right? So I'm not saying that every piece of feedback catapults your career if you're a guy, right? But there's growing research that's showing that the same manager can give good feedback to men and then kind of short change women, even though they've got the skills to give better feedback, they're more likely to sugarcoat feedback to women, especially men are more likely to sugarcoat feedback to women, but women also seem to do it. And then there's also, even praise tends to be more specific for men. So whereas women might be told, research finds that when there's vague praise being given it's more likely to be given to women. So what does that look like? So vague praise would be like, you had a great year, keep doing what you're doing, you know? And you leave your performance review thinking, great, I'll keep doing what I'm doing. Wait, what am I doing? Which part do you wanna see again? And I know people who are bold enough to sometimes ask that and sometimes the manager will kind of scramble and look at their notes and be like, and you're like, oh, you don't even have something specific to tell me, right? And that's more likely to happen for women than it is for men. Men are more likely to get feedback saying, because of what you did with these three contracts, we got three new clients, three big new clients, right? Men are more likely to hear about their impact on business outcomes, on product outcomes, whereas women are more likely to just get the vague, keep doing what you're doing. I'm really impressed with your work. You're a great team player. Oh, that's a really frustrating one too. You're a great team player. Right, women are often encouraged to be team players. Men, you know, they might hear that, but then they get the specific impact of their team player status. I can see somebody taking, interpreting, being a, hey, you're a good team player, which is they don't want me to rock the boat. They want me to keep my mouth shut and they just want me to be quiet and not disturb anything that is going on. I can totally see how that can be misconstrued and I think as well, once again, we have a listening problem because you're inferring that you know how somebody is going to take this feedback and how they're going to interpret it. That's mind reading. You can't do that. What you should be doing is once again, relational listening to be able to decipher what sort of feedback this person is willing to accept and what they're looking for and how you might deliver it. Relational listening is so important, right? And we come back to it because if you can ask good questions and try to take the side of the person you're giving feedback to, if you can take the side of the employee, you're going to be so much more sensitive to what they need to hear. I mean, you know, it's emotional intelligence is challenging for many of us, right? Or at least we can see places for us to improve. And one way to get there is by asking more questions, you know, asking that question, how do you see it, right? All too often we assume we know how the other person sees it and we've got to get a little bit further away from our omniscience. We got to get a little further away of assuming, yeah, don't assume you're a genius. Like, assume for just this meeting, just this meeting, I'm not a genius. I have no idea how this person sees it. If you can go in and just leave that at the door, you're going to have such a better meeting with that person. I have to ask the elephant in the Zoom room question. Are there nuances to this new work from home and Zoom feedback? You know, obviously we're used to being in an office together and having more moments of praise and appreciation and just more time together. And now we're isolated on Zoom and work from home settings that's new to many of us as managers and as team members. What are the differences or are there differences in giving effective feedback when it is digitally versus in person? So we're recording this during COVID for those of you who are listening in 2025. We're on the other side. On the other side, someday we will be on the other side of this. I don't know when. We hope. But we're doing this during COVID. So Zoom meetings, Teams meetings, WebEx, whatever, your chances are you've got some web platform that you're using. So this is, I've got an article that's about to come out in Harvard Business Review on the negativity bias. So one of the things that we're struggling with right now is a negative, we always have a negativity bias. We tend to focus on the negatives more than the positives. We think more about the negative critical praise or the negative critical comments we've heard than on our praise, right? So that's natural. That's normal part of being a human as we have a negativity bias. But there's data coming out showing that we have a stronger negativity bias when we're under a lot of stress. And this has been a period of incredible stress for people, right? Because they're schooling their kids at home. They're not sure, you know, they see their company doing layoffs. Are they gonna be one of those candidates for layoffs? They're having to wear a mask in public every time they go out. They're not sure when they're gonna see their sister again. Whatever it might be, you've got incredible stress, right? And negativity bias goes up when we're stressed. So what does that mean as a manager? It means that chances are your employees are feeling are gonna be even more focused on your critical comments than ever because they're feeling stressed and we've already got a negativity bias. So they're gonna blom on to your negative comments even more than they normally would. So what it means is you've got to work extra hard to find the good things to say about people's work because they're, you know, so one thing it means is make sure that you're praising people because they need to hear it under the stress that they are. Secondly, you need to do more compare and contrast. So let's say that I'm giving you the feedback, you know, Alicia, your presentation yesterday, just wasn't as good as your other presentations that you've given. I know you can do better, okay? So let's say I need to give that feedback to Alicia. When you say that, you need to then clarify. I'm saying that yesterday's presentation wasn't up to your standard. I am not saying that you're bad at presentations. I'm not saying that we don't appreciate your work. What I am saying is that something seemed off yesterday. Can you help me understand that, right? So doing that compare and contrast, helping the person say, I'm saying this specific instance wasn't what I'm used to from you. I'm not saying that your work is crap, right? Providing that kind of clarity because it will help, it will prevent people from going, taking that negative spin because all too often what researchers are predicting is people are going into that negative nosedive when they hear critical comments. For us, you know, internally and anecdotally, when we moved to more remote work years and years ago, there were team managers, especially managers who had an increase in negativity by us simply because we weren't around each other. And we saw time and time again negative assumptions about people's productivity or what they were doing because they weren't in the room and visible. So I wonder how much of that is also weighing on what feedback is being given and also how it's being perceived as we're socially distanced from one another and not actually there to see each other working and engaged when we were in the office together. Yeah, it's interesting. I've been interviewing managers about what they've noticed working remotely and one of the common things they've raised is exactly what you're saying or at least an implication of what you're saying. And that is when you see one another all the time, you're likely to say things like, hey, nice job, I really like how you handled blank. And you just make that throwaway comment, but it's praise, right? Chances are those throwaway comments are the things that you liked, right? Or like, I'm so glad you made that comment in that meeting today. I was gonna say it too, right? You like affirm, I am glad you were there, right? Whereas with Zoom, the shortest meeting you can schedule on Zoom is 30 minutes, right? So we're not likely to like set up a meeting to say to someone, hey, I'm really glad you made that comment in that meeting. Instead, that comment gets, you never make that comment. You just skip it all together, right? And so it's one of the tricky aspects of working remotely is that we don't, those little drips of praise don't get said and we're used to hearing them and we don't even realize how much we value them, but they remind us we belong. I belong here, I belong on this team. And if you don't get those drips of praise, you start to wonder, like should I be looking for a different job, you know? Right. It's painful. Well, just think of all the time, the moments that we've taken for granted. The trips to the water cooler or walking through the hallway or going to grab lunch with somebody or having beers after work. None of that is happening now. And those, you may have not been talking about anything remotely important, but there was a connection that was being made that was being strengthened every time that you had one of those micro interactions with your coworkers. An investment outside of just work and one another in the team. Our last question we love asking every guest is what do you believe your X factor is? What has made you successful from a mindset or a skill set and how did you develop that? Such a fun question. What has made me successful? I come from a family. I'm Slovenian by heritage. I grew up in the US, but my, you know, and Slovenia is now on the map. Okay, so Seattle's not in Slovenia is what you're saying. We're not in Slovenia, no, no, no. Evidently a motto of Slovenian people is that we work hard, right? And this is something that I grew up with is that the biggest criticism you could have for anyone is they're good for nothing, right? That is the harshest criticism any one of my family can ever lay on anyone. What you want to hear is you're a hard worker and that's like the biggest praise. So I think for me, my X factor is that I believe in hard work and I can probably solve just about any problem if I'm willing to work hard on it. There are certain problems I have no interest in solving. I'm not interested in physics at all. But I've really been raised with this belief that if you work hard, I could learn it. Well, thank you for helping us solve this problem of effective feedback and making it our superpower. We thoroughly enjoyed the book and we're excited to get it in more manager's hands because it will be so impactful for all of our lives both during and after this pandemic. Thank you so much, you guys. I've really had a good time here today and I hope this is helpful to people. Absolutely.