Leadership Feedback: More Ways to Skin a Cat

Anyone who knows me, knows I am first cab off the rank to give direct feedback. I am 200% committed to letting you know what could be different. No point messing around!

In my workshops and coaching, I give really specific recipes for leadership feedback. I make them specific. You follow the formula, or you do it again until you get it right. Achtung. 

On the other hand, contrary to popular opinion amongst the naysayers, I am also not as silly as I may sometimes appear. Even when it comes to direct feedback, there is a clear need to adapt. Everyone’s different, and sometimes, it just doesn’t work the way you want it to. 

Leadership feedback and pruning lessons

I was once doing a workshop for PwC, and everyone was running around frantically. I asked what was going on, and someone told me one ‘silly’ partner had decided to prune his own fruit trees and now had a shattered pelvis. So, when I recently needed to prune my fruit trees, I found Jim. 

You may not be aware that fruit tree pruners are rarer than hens’ teeth. Jim did a great job, and we spent days getting those trees back in shape. During hours of cutting and snipping, I heard continuous stories of just how poorly Jim had been treated pruning grape vines around the valley over the years and how now he only works for people he likes. He liked me. 

So when Jim left the cuttings on the ground for one month, broke the lever on the tractor, left a box of lemons out in the sun and left the ladder out to rust, I had a little reflection. 

Jim was a bit delicate, and I knew, in no uncertain terms, that feedback of the variety to which I am accustomed was not his gig, and I’d be up that tree with a harness before you knew it. 

So, I considered that Jim does good work, that I need a pruner, and that Jim is a human being. So if I wanted the trees pruned, wanted it done well and didn’t want to destroy someone’s sleep routine, I had to find a solution.The thing is, I didn’t let it go. I was determined to give feedback. That’s my thing. If you don’t let people know how you want things changed, it just breeds unhappiness and no doubt gives you cancer (author of ‘You can conquer cancer’, Ian Gawler, once told me if I got cancer he would eat his hat), or at least a headache. The key is to adapt to the person in front of you. 

So, I set aside time to work with Jim. Instead of giving feedback, I tried modelling the behaviours I wanted and also used humour. I picked up the branches and said, “I always like to put all this away before the end of the day”. I told him the mechanic would kill me if the tractor lever was broken again, and he and I would be spending an evening welding, which was not a great prospect as I can’t weld and that flame is hot. And I carefully put away the ladder and told him where it sleeps at night. 

Good news. Jim came back to finish the job; the ladder was away, no branches were left on the ground, and the tractor was still running. And no cancer. Bingo.

Let me know your thoughts.