Hello and welcome to This Is Not What I Signed Up For, the podcast for new managers in the space teaching you how to swim so you don't sink. And I'm very excited today to have Pam Ross with me. And Pam believes that we spend far too much time at work for it to suck and that everyone has the power to make work awesome. Pam spent 15 years in HR and operations leadership in the corporate world and quit her job with a mission to improve work life. She brings her experience and her training in resilience, the science of happiness, systems coaching and self -managed work to her clients to build more engaged and innovative workplaces where people are free to do their best work. And think that's what we all really, really wanna do. Pam, welcome. Thank you. I'm so excited to be here. Great. I can't wait to dive into our conversation today. It's going to be a good one. Before I get into what our topic is, one of the things I do with every guest is ask for what is the worst piece of advice you've ever received or the worst mistake you've made in terms of management. Well, lucky enough, I've made many mistakes. I continue to make them. I sometimes joke that that's maybe the reason why I started my business so I can learn and improve all the time. But one that stands out related to today's discussion is I had to fire someone on my team. And I had given them sort of the nice version of feedback. over time and when I fired them they were shocked and it was a terrible termination, lots of emotion, lots of anger and upon reflecting back when I thought about the feedback I had given them, again it was that sort of nice feedback like it would be great if you did this more, how about trying it this way and I had never really had a difficult conversation with them and really dug into you know, why weren't they being successful? Why wasn't weren't these little nice tidbits of feedback catching on? And I wasn't clear about what needed to happen or the impact if it didn't. So yeah, the worst firing I've ever gone through and being an HR, I've done a lot since then. But yeah, that was the worst one. And I learned a lot about feedback. I think that's something we all learn. I've got similar as well with just not giving that right feedback, trying to be nice and all of that. But that's a great point as to what we're speaking to today. So today we're gonna be speaking about taking the fear out of feedback, which when I saw you message me, Pam, and I saw this topic, I'm like, this is wonderful. I'm... adamant about providing feedback and good feedback because of situations like what you just mentioned, where I've also had horrible layoffs and things because I didn't get it right. So let's dive into it. And I think the first thing I want to find out is how does this play out for a new manager who's just in this space? This is not the part necessarily that you first think of when you get into management. But now you're getting into management, it is one of the things that the reality is you're going to have So how does it play out when people react badly to feedback? Yes, I mean, just that Ross is so interesting because I think a lot of us don't think about what this new job, this promotion to management really means when we take it. just like that's the next natural progression. So we say yes to it and we don't make the conscious choice of what leadership means. But that's a whole other conversation. how does this play out? So what I've seen is some disregarding. of feedback because my manager doesn't know what they're talking about. They, you know, they just went into telling me all of this stuff and they have no idea what my day to day looks like. So I'm just going to disregard it. I've seen the emotional reaction and like a kind of an anger reaction when feedback's given in a, in a way that's not effective. and like just trust being broken and people who just don't hear the feedback because it's not given clearly enough. Yeah. And then managers are afraid to do it again. And a lot of times, to be honest, they're afraid before they even get to it because they're feeling the fear of it and the emotion behind the feedback before they get into the conversation. So when you're going into a conversation with emotion or anger or frustration, it's never gonna go really that well. Yeah, that's true. And I know from my feelings when I've gone in not in the right head space, it's really not gone well. So leading from that, what are some of the common mistakes that folks would make in giving the feedback that they're going in for? Yeah, and again, I'm gonna say this with zero judgment because I've made all of these mistakes. I think we all have. That's what we're here for with this. I'm very open that I've made mistakes all the way along and you're going to on our listeners as well. But you learn. That is from mistakes we learn. So it's all good. So things I've seen, because of that fear, managers are holding back the feedback. They're waiting too long to give it, or they're waiting for like a formal performance review or something to happen that sparks that they should have a feedback discussion. Some of the things that I've also seen is like the blanket, we call it. an email to the whole team about something one person is doing. Have you seen this? so many times. it's something that I have a little soapbox on and that's probably a different podcast as well. It's the most so passive aggressive to not actually solving the problem. Right, so not effective. Like the person who's doing it probably goes, I guess everyone's doing this. It wasn't that much of a big deal. The people who aren't doing it know who's doing it. The gossip starts, like so many things happen. Just really, really ineffective. Really general feedback. so I used to have a manager who would always tell me every day, great job. You're a rockstar. And all of these things. And I mean, it sounds nice when you hear it, but it didn't mean anything. I wasn't learning anything. I'm like, what part of what I did today was good? I don't know. So like general feedback, whether it's positive or negative, isn't really helpful. and then the way I got taught to give feedback was the sandwich method and This so this is where you know, you start with the positive, you put the meat in the middle, that's the stuff that needs to actually improve. And then you end on a positive. And this can turn out to be that nice feedback that I talked about earlier, where the message gets totally lost. And some people might only focus on that meat and and really, really overemphasize that. I would say that's probably the exception. Most people just hear those positive things and think everything is fine and you ended on a positive, so it must be good. And if they've had feedback conversation more than once, they know what's coming, it's insincere. So that was the way I got taught to deliver feedback. And over time, I've realized that that is not an effective way either. feel like we had a very similar upbringing in terms of that because I also got the, I received the sandwich many times and I gave the sandwich many times before abandoning the sandwich. Yes, get rid of the sandwich. Totally. So Pam, with these, and I think you alluded to a few of them and a few ways to address these, but what are some of the key things that people can do to address these mistakes of going in for this feedback? Yeah. Well, so first of all, I think one of the biggest mistakes with all of these is that the focus is on the manager giving the feedback all the time. And there is like a natural threat response that people go into when someone says like, can I give you feedback? And there's, there is like kind of a threat response we go into that causes these defensive reactions sometimes. So for my first, Tip is to make it easier for you as a manager. so feedback shouldn't be this formal thing that like, we're going to have a feedback conversation. It's a performance review. It's a formal thing. Feedback should be happening all the time, frequent and frictionless, not formal. So. making it part of the everyday and the intention around feedback is like even if we got 1% better every day, we're always going to be looking for things we can improve. We're always going to be looking at what we're doing well and doing that every day, not just at a formal time. Absolutely. I'm so glad you raised that. That's one of the things I talk about in the book and in the sort of training that I give as well is that regular feedback makes such a difference that wait for a performance review every six months or something to raise something is terrible for so many reasons. Like performance review, even in three months, you only focus on what's happened in the last six weeks really. And if something bad has happened in six weeks, You forget what happened a month and a half ago, two months ago, three months ago, four months ago. And the focus can be in the wrong place. It's just, it's such a bad approach for that. And it tends to go so badly every single time. love the frequent feedback mechanism where I am currently. We don't really have reviews because we are chatting every day feedback all the time and it works so well because everyone understands what what's coming in, it's such a relaxed rapport that you get. We have something called a blues and oranges feedback model where blue is the color of trust and freedom. So these are things that are going well, successes you've had, you're building your trust and autonomy on the team. And then oranges are the color of the roadblock. So challenges, things you want to do differently. And we have a blues and oranges discussion. after every workshop, after this podcast, I'll have a one to none because I don't my team members off this afternoon, but I'll have a one to none and give myself blues and oranges feedback and after in every one to one. So it is just something that happens all the time and it's a natural part of our everyday. So it never feels like, we have to have talk about feedback right now. So yeah, that's, I would say that's the first thing frequent frictionless, not formal. and the next thing is I mentioned how all of those for those ways of feedback is the manager telling someone what the feedback is. And in today's world, in most jobs, the manager isn't right there standing over you, seeing your everyday inside your brain, understanding why you're making decisions. Managers are not omniscient. We are not all knowing. so again, this is a way to make your feedback easy. Ask before you tell. So instead of just going right into telling someone what they need to improve, start asking them about what they think they're doing well and what they want to improve on. every single, even if you've seen a mistake be made or the outcome of something, you don't know how they got there. So rather than telling them how to fix the mistake they made, start by asking, like, tell me how you got to this point so you can figure out what you're solving for. Hmm. often, this is one of the things I think that causes that negative reaction in people. They're like, you have no idea. Like the reason why I did it this way was X and you haven't asked me anything. Every situation is different. Every person is different. So ask before you tell. Yeah. And I think that that ties into so many different things like you're, you're sparking off ideas in my head. Now we're, talking about things like looking at the outcome. And it's something I speak to new managers a lot as well is where someone doesn't necessarily do something the same way you do, but they do come to a good outcome. And that's something I think as well, where you've got to just be aware if you're giving feedback, just because someone didn't follow the same route. you follow doesn't necessarily mean that it was a bad route they took to get to it. So just a little two cents that popped into my head there. And I love that because it's an awesome opportunity. So when you see the outcome come and you've maybe seen like how they were doing it a little bit of like gotten some hints as to how they were going along and been a little worried and then they get this great outcome. I love to ask a question. So we also have a saying which we have something called FOQs which stands for focused open questions. And we always say, give at least two, two FOQs... focused open questions. It's not what it sounds like, but we like to play with the language. and so you see a great outcome. I would say like, tell me about this project that you worked on. What are some things that you found you did really well in that you're going to learn what they were thinking about, what they're proud of and get a good understanding of like how they're thinking about things. and what they see as a good job. And then you can ask, is there anything that you found challenging or what did you find most challenging? This is an orange question, so that was a blue question, what did you do well? An orange question is what would you do differently or what was most challenging about that? And again, you're gonna find opportunities to give them some feedback in the places where they need it instead of just blanketing them with something that they don't need. So always give at least two FOQs one focused open question that's a blue or a positive and one focused open question that's an orange or something that they can learn from so that you can help them develop. Amazing. I think getting those two kind of spaces gives you such fuel for ongoing reviews as well, because you can track back to it. Where were you? How's it gone? Has it improved? So think that's great. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And you'll notice over time, so this is something we do in every one to one as an example. you know, and on my team, we don't even have to use the FOQs anymore because we just know blues and oranges. and that frequent and frictionless piece goes both ways. So I'm sharing what I think I did well this week and and finding out what my team members think they did well this week. I'm asking them what they thought I did well. I'm giving them some positive blue feedback as well. And we do the same with oranges. Here's what I think I can improve on. Here's what they think they can improve on and back and forth. And what I have found is sometimes our blues and oranges are little tiny things like they're, you I should have made this call earlier. because by the time I called the client had already looked into it or whatever, right? And that's like a tiny little hiccup. But what we'll find is because we're documenting them and just in a shared doc, over time, I'm like, there's been like three or four times where something has like a client has thought of something before we did. Now that's becoming a pattern and a theme. What can we do to improve that? That seems like it's a challenge for us. So even when they're really tiny blues or oranges, the theme over time becomes something that you can really build on as a strength or develop as an opportunity. Well, that's great. That's Pam, thank you so much for this. think just in these tidbits, it's such good advice for folks that are going into this. Perhaps you're about to have your first review meeting. And I think this is a great basis to look at going into that. And I think, you know, even if I know a couple of companies actually prescribe how their managers should do feedback sessions and it gets difficult. What would you say perhaps as a closing thought, if you have a closing thought on that, like how can you address it if your company prescribes your way of reviewing someone? Right. So do you mean review in a formal way, like a performance review? like a performance review where they really mandate this is the approach you must take. I've seen it at a number of companies that this is the structure you must follow and it's sent down from HR. Yeah, and so I have seen that. So one thing I would say is that is the formal piece. You can still be doing the frequent and frictionless piece. this, mean, this doesn't even have to have a meeting room. This is like we're walking away from a meeting we were just in and in the hallway, we're saying, hey, what do we think we did well in that meeting? What do you think we should do better if we were to do that over again? Or like we end a Zoom call with a client and we stay on the call for a couple of minutes and say, okay, blues and oranges, what did we do well? What can we improve on? That's when I say like frequent and frictionless, it's like not at those formal reviews. Now, as you have those though, if there is a formal review process, sure, like you might've noticed some themes that you can discuss there. And when you say a certain way, like I've heard things like the SBI method. Have you heard of the SBI method of feedback? Yeah. haven't heard of it in a while, but it's come up before a couple of times. Yeah, so that's like when you give feedback, you must use situation behavior impact. So maybe that's what your company teaches, right? So situation behavior impact. So I can do that as part of my conversation with you, but I'm going to ask you about it first. Before I give you my feedback in the way the company wants me to give my feedback, I can still ask you what you think you're doing well or what you think you want to improve. So I think you can bring in the conversational element. And then also layer on anything that your company needs if that makes sense Yeah think that's great. Pam, thank you so much. As we're closing off, the listeners a little bit about what you're working on. Well, we did just actually launch a free micro course on this Blues and Oranges, which anyone can get into. But really my focus is just cultivating more open feedback cultures and making work awesome, doing a lot of leadership workshops and culture design and development with companies. So yeah, that's what I love. Fantastic. And folks, if you want to find out more about what Pam is working on, her details are going to be in the show notes. So you can hop over there, check out her links, and follow up with her. Pam, thank you so much for joining us today. This has been great. To the listeners, please subscribe. Please give us a listen. If you like this, share it. Share it with managers that you may know who need this. And maybe you've got someone who doesn't give particularly good feedback. Perhaps give it over to them as well for a listen. To our listeners, thank you very much for listening to Pam. Thank you so much for joining us today. Till next time, folks, keep swimming.