Culture
Moment 141. The Truth About “Honest” Feedback
In this Moment, Martin Moore discusses the complexities of feedback in the corporate world, emphasizing the rarity of honest and constructive feedback from leaders. He highlights how feedback should b...
Moment 141. The Truth About “Honest” Feedback
Culture •
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Interactive Transcript
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Welcome to the No Bullshit Leadership Podcast. In a world where knowledge has become a commodity,
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this podcast is designed to give you something more. Access to the experience of a successful
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CEO who has already walked the path. So join your host Martin Moore, who will unlock and bring
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to life your own leadership experiences and accelerate your journey to leadership excellence.
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Welcome to Moments with Marty. Your short, sharp shot of leadership inside
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help you to stay on track between our weekly episodes of the No Bullshit Leadership Podcast.
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Feedback is a gift. After spending more than 30 years in the corporate world,
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and now seven years working with our global clients to improve the performance of their businesses,
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I've come to realise how rare it actually is to find a leader who gives consistent, high-quality
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feedback. Most larger companies have formal processes, which are designed to rate performance and
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provide feedback to employees. For the most part though, these are time consuming,
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expensive and highly subjective. For any real value to be achieved from feedback,
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it has to be part of the culture. It has to be a natural part of daily team of directions.
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In continuous feedback cultures, the conversations are so frequent that they're usually pretty
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relaxed and is very little fear involved on either side of the conversation. They seem to happen
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spontaneously to maybe address a behaviour issue, to give positive reinforcement,
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or to confront underperformance. Feedback is just a natural part of the team dynamics.
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In cultures like this, when you're given feedback you can trust what you're told for the most
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part. The feedback tends to be honest and direct, and notwithstanding the fact that
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it still just someone's observation of your performance, at least it's delivered with the right
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intent. Frequent specific feedback isn't driven by some external event, so you can probably take
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on board what you're being told. There are many circumstances though, where leaders resort to
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crafted messaging rather than giving you genuine feedback. Take for example the situation where
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your role is being made redundant. Now in most instances when a restructure occurs, management looks
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at two things. The first is, how can we maximise cost savings? And the second is, how do we make
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sure the wrong people go and the right people stay? Mind you, this isn't always the case.
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Sometimes whole divisions are closed or dismantled, and even the top performers are unavoidable
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casualties. But one of the things about redundancies and retrenchments is that, if you're making
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decisions that are ostensibly about structure, you can't pollute those decisions by talking about
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performance. You manage it with careful planning, to make sure that your weaker performers don't
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have a chair when the music stops. If this is the case, it closes the door to performance feedback,
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because performance is supposed to be irrelevant to the restructure process. So here's the thing.
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If you find yourself in a position where your role is being made redundant, or if your overlook
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for promotion, or if you're sacked under the termination for convenience clause in your contract,
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there's absolutely no point in asking for feedback. Your boss is going to be obliged to follow
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the script. And even if he's good at giving feedback, he won't be able to disclose any of the
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details that might actually be useful to you. That could just open the company up to legal risk,
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and no smart leader is going to do that. For more depth on this insight, have a listen to episode
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327 of the No Bullshit Leadership Podcast. Your boss is probably lying to you. We'll leave a link
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in the show notes. I really hope you enjoyed this moment, and that gives you that extra little spark
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to be a No Bullshit Leader.
Topics Covered
No Bullshit Leadership Podcast
leadership excellence
feedback culture
continuous feedback
team dynamics
performance feedback
corporate leadership
CEO insights
employee performance
leadership development
honest feedback
team performance
redundancy process
workplace communication
leadership strategies