Action from IAF Mumbai Hub Session - The Art of Focused Development Discussion

Feedback as an activity, is not looked at with pleasure.  Try telling someone that you have "feedback" for them, and watch their expression and body language.  If you happen to be their manager, then you may get grudging acceptance.  

Few team managers and leaders are comfortable giving feedback.  This is mainly because they haven't been trained on how to do it.  I recall in my career, during the months of February or March, we in HR were running training sessions on the appraisal process. These appraisal sessions were for both managers and employees.  They consisted of a slide deck, and comments by the HR presenter - that was all. 

Employees were told how to accept feedback from their bosses. Bosses were given information on the Appraisal process, and feedback was considered a side effect. Appraisal Feedback anyway tends to focus on past performance, and little is discussed about future.  The employee is focused on getting the best possible rating for themselves and so any form of Development Feedback takes last place.  Bottom line - the development discussion is not given much importance for the future.

With this knowledge, Varsha Chitnis and myself decided to put together a session to enable a Focused Development Discussion.  Our experiences told us that individual biases and trust have a huge impact on how a development discussion can be conducted. So we incorporated these aspects into our session design and called it The Art of Focused Development Discussion.

Here are some images of the action on that day.

Desired Outcome for the session

Our Session Flow

Harvest from our First Activity

Clustering of behaviours

Clustering of biases and behaviours

Connections made between biases and behaviours

The Blueprint for the FDD

Learnings and Feedback that we received.

The enthusiastic learners

We thoroughly enjoyed designing and running the session. Our sincere thanks to the International Association of Facilitators - Mumbai Hub for the opportunity to do this session.  We are grateful to all the participants who took the time to attend and contribute their experiences into the session.

The Five R's of Feedback: A Blueprint for Personal and Team Growth

 

From this excellently detailed article : "Feedback is not the reality but rather an opinion."

(This line has been in my head for the past 2 days - I would add the words "... opinion as per personal / societal norms")

Strangely, most organizations (people) are interested in giving feedback, instead of receiving feedback. Yet, as a trainer I find that this is not a topic of high priority for organization learning, even they are quite aware of the benefits.

Read the rest of the article here

Participant Feedback - Emotional Intelligence Workshop

Here are the pictures of my recent one-day workshop on Emotional Intelligence for participants from a financial organization.  The interesting point here is that the participants (not all were managing teams) have nominated themselves for this workshop.  Their interest was evident right from the start, with their questions and participants.

I was able to facilitate a couple of areas and not the entire workshop since there the participants needed content to increase their understanding the topic.  Hence the workshop was a mix of facilitation and training. 

Learning Expectations

 

Participants try to portray and identify each other's emotions

The participants thoughts about what makes a leader (hint - behaviours)

Participants identify ways to manage self, motivation and others

Learnings that participants wish to apply at the end of the workshop

The client feedback received was positive (they enjoyed it, were keen on applying their learnings), and participants wanted it to be of a longer duration.

Do let me know if you would like to conduct such workshops for your teams / organization. Write to me on ryanbbarretto@hotmail.com or call me on +919820155778 for a discussion.

How to give Feedback That Lasts.

For a lot of managers and leaders, giving feedback is a challenge because they don't really know how to, haven't been through positive feedback experiences themselves, or just don't like to be the bearer of "bad" news.

Here are #practicaltips on how to deliver #feedback that lasts. FYI - the Sandwich method isn't one of them.

#practicaltips on how to deliver #feedback that lasts. FYI - the Sandwich method isn't one of them.

Read the article here.

Feedback - Understanding Microaggression at the Workplace

Happy to share the feedback from a recent online session on Microaggression for 60+ employees of a tech company that I designed and delivered as part of the Facweek (Facilitation Week 2022) celebrations.

The expected outcomes were to enable participants to understand what microaggression is, it's impact on the organization and employees and how to go about creating a safe place to work. I'm happy to say that the feedback was quite positive and participants have taken rich learning and action points from the session.

Here's how they plan to deal with Microaggression and create a safe place to work.

Thanks to IAF (International Association of Facilitators) for giving me the opportunity to do this session.

Here are the things they will put into action immediately.

 

Your Employees want Your Feedback

 

Pic by Pexel - Ann H

Have you ever hesitated to give someone #feedback ? It may surprise you to know that "People underestimate how willing others are to receive feedback."

Read on... here

Why Great Bosses rarely give Negative Feedback.

An intriguing article about giving negative #feedback to your team (the sandwich doesn't work).

I think one has to be clearly aware of the team members' readiness and ability to work on the task, before assigning it to them. This means that it would be good to have a discussion with the employee when assigning the task so that expectations are clear.

Otherwise, the feedback when given, may not be applied in future, for the reasons mentioned in the article. Read it here

Feedback from Session on Resilient Leadership

 Here's the feedback from a one hour online session on Resilient Leadership for a Technology Organization earlier this month.

Here is what they found most interesting in the session.

I used a Jamboard to capture their notions of the characteristics of a resilient leader. Check it all out.

Session Feedback - Leadership and Teamwork

This is feedback from a session I was doing the Rotaract Group at SIES College, Mumbai last month.

I was given 2 hours to briefly cover the topics of leadership and teamwork.  I used a few facilitation techniques for this session and had them create a jamboard of the characteristics of a leader. 

Here's what they have got from the sessions - please click on the images to view the comments in detail:

Creating a Feedback Culture

 In this week, what will you do to help promote a #feedbackculture ?

It's no easy task.  It requires patience, to listen, in depth, to accept without acrimony, to respond, not reply.  But it also needs strength to speak up, clarity of thought in order to articulate your message.

How to make Positive Feedback / Praise Effective

As the first #IndiavsEngland cricket test match started in Chennai today, I recalled the recently concluded test series with Australia last month. There were certain things that struck me, some which were covered by others in their own articles. This in particular, was the speech by head coach, Ravi Shastri in the dressing room after the win.  Have a look here:-

Ravi' Shastri's Speech

I think this speech clearly shows a critical element that is missing from organization life viz. praising your team effectively. From naming individuals in particular, to mentioning specific actions to considering the contributions of every person in the contingent, it was masterful. He made the point of telling the team to celebrate.  At no point, did he hurry through the speech.

Have a look, and share your thoughts on
1) What might be incorporated into the corporate world, and
2) How this speech may impact the current test match / series with England.
3) Those with a #strengths perspective, can share what positive areas the Indian team can improve upon.

#strengthsdecoder #strengthscoaching #coaching #teamcoach #powerofpraise #verbalappreciation #appreciationpost