In today’s minisode, we continue with our series on How to Give Feedback and we're going to talk about how to deliver like a true chief with some specific feedback methods and scripts that might help you bring this process to life. Chief, if you haven't listened to Part 1 in the series, please go back and listen to it as it will give you some vital context to today’s episode.

We’ve also got a FREE STEP-BY-STEP GUIDE with all the templates and conversations you need to have with your team.

The straight-up method

This is the most common form of feedback. It's regular. It's all the time. There's no emotion to it. It’s really simple. Remember, if you bring emotion to feedback, that person will feel it. But if you're just off the cuff, you could just say something like, “Hi, Joe, I was just thinking, next time we're in that meeting with the COO, you could just do XYZ. Just a 1% idea. You reckon that would help?”

There's nothing to it, no judgement, you're just collaborating, trying to do something better next time. Just zero stress, straight-up feedback, working together, collaboratively. It’s really, really powerful.

The self-rate method

This is everyday kind of feedback designed to create this flow of conversation around how to get better.

Recently, I was presenting to a rugby union club and somebody said to me, “If you are not really that confident as an athlete, when you get feedback from your coach, what might you do?”

My answer was about getting specific and allowing someone to either give you feedback or to request feedback in a really easy manner on a targeted area. It’s not about saying your whole performance is terrible or doesn't need improving, it's getting very specific on a couple of things. For example, “What rating out of five would you give you and me, us, in that meeting with that client? And what is one thing we could do better as a team to improve that rating by one?”

Or if you’re talking about a specific aspect to someone’s role, you could ask the same question but in two different ways. For example, “We're going to talk about your performance in sales right now and your ability to create prospects, what do you think is one thing you could do better?” Or, “What do you think your performance rating is for getting prospects out of five as opposed to closing prospects out of five?”

Once again, don't bring too much heavy emotion to this. This is about curiosity and always having their best interest at heart. If somebody knows that these questions are only coming because you really want them to achieve their dreams, to achieve their goals, then they will accept it every time.

Once you’ve got the rating, then you can work together to see how they can improve that number by just one. For example, “You rated yourself a 3 out of 5 on policy development. What do you think it would take to get us to 4?” Simple as that.

The heads-up method

Sometimes, this can be a bit of a shot across the bow, but it's more about just bringing the attention to the fact that people are noticing. So it's when someone does something maybe a bit out of character, maybe they drop the ball and it's about showing them you care and you've noticed.

“I noticed you haven't been yourself lately, maybe a little on edge, and you were a bit short in that meeting with Bob. Is everything okay? So it's genuine, it’s showing that you’re aware, and that you care. In essence, you’ve wrapped feedback around compassion.

Or it could even be curiosity around a performance uplift. “I’ve noticed that you're just really doing an incredible job, above what I've seen before. What's going on? This is amazing. What have you changed?” Heads-up is great feedback, because the feedback can be given on the good things as well.

Values and standards method

This is normally stored up for when behaviour is outside of agreed standards or they're doing something that's unacceptable. One little thing that helps me sometimes is when I'm under pressure, I see if I can use values or our corporate values or our team values to guide me to a good approach to responding. “Using our values, how do you think we could have responded better in that meeting, in that situation?

So what it means is that something's going on, the behaviour or the action is not as good as it could be, it's certainly not aligned to values, but we want to lean into our values to resolve it quickly.

Or it could be that you want to validate that someone's done something brilliant that is really demonstrating the values.

“Hey Jane, this month I saw you under pressure with a client and what I noticed was that your response was so aligned with our value of putting the customer at the heart. You just stopped, you listened and you really understood. Let them vent a bit. And as a result, we've gained probably a client for life, and I just think you did such a brilliant job.”

The insight method

If you go back to Part 1 in the series, I spoke about “An insight made by the coach is owned by the coach. An insight made by the client, the person you're giving feedback to, is owned by the client.”

So this method is used if someone is in stuck mode. They can't see that their actions are impacting others. They don't want to move. Our aim and everything we do in this moment is to help them have an insight.

One of the methods I use is called “Perceptual Positions”. It's from the world of Neurolinguistics. I might recreate a meeting by going back into the meeting room after the meeting is finished, and I get my client to replay the meeting from the perception of a fly on the wall, and then sitting in different seats around the room.

As an example, I’ll get the client (let’s say his name is Peter) to imagine they’re in someone else’s chair. “When Peter speaks to me, what's that like?” Then I might go into Julie's seat or Shane's seat. All these different positions allow someone to upload and consider what's it actually like to be in someone else's shoes. They are having the insight and therefore they own it.

The other way to do it is purely linguistically using a script like this. “Hey, in that meeting, if you were in Ryan's seat, how would you have felt if Peter said this, or that, or I don't think that's good enough, or just shook their head all silent?”

Another example you can use is with clients in really tricky scenarios. For example, if you’re talking to the COO. “Hey, if you were the CEO of this organisation, and the COO did something like that, what would you do? You're trying to get them to understand what it would be like being the CEO dealing with their performance.

Let’s try another example. The GM of Sales has missed yet another target. The COO comes to the GM of Sales and says, “Hey, if you were the COO and the GM of Sales missed target for the third quarter in a row, what would you do?” So what it's doing is making that GM of Sales feel what it's like being someone else. The insight is made by the client.

The metaphor method

This is about elegance, it’s about doing something that's really easy. You tell a story, an analogy, or use a quote to deliver a message in a really non-confrontational, sometimes inspirational way. Here's a couple of examples of quotes or analogies to help you get there.

“Steve, I think as we try and influence our colleagues and team members, we might need to follow the Delta Force motto: Slow is smooth, smooth is fast.”

“As Sun Tzu said, treat your men as you would your most beloved sons, and they will follow you into the deepest valley.”

Another way is to share a story about your own experience of failure, of trying to wrestle and get better and grow. This is a wonderful way of giving some feedback. It validates and normalises that all of us are imperfect and trying our best to get somewhere.

And that is the truth! None of us are the finished product. All of us have been working throughout our careers to get to a certain place. Using that metaphor, that opportunity that you tell your own story, to use a quote, to do something, it's a really elegant way of sending a message, of sharing a bit of a process with someone.

So Chief, that's the six methods to deliver like a true chief. There are another bunch within the FREE STEP-BY-STEP GUIDE on Giving Feedback.

You can also watch the episode on our YouTube channel:

Stay epic,

Greg