Timestamps

00:00:00: Introduction

00:01:34: Understanding feedback and what it's for

00:04:16: The barriers: formality and fear

00:06:53: The "froms and tos" of feedback

00:09:23: Ideas for action…

00:09:31: … 1: ones win

00:12:45: … 2: praise plus

00:16:06: … 3: strength spotter

00:21:13: … 4: autopilot vs auto-improve

00:26:07: … 5: quick questions

00:29:13: A further barrier: feelings

00:32:06: Final thoughts

Interview Transcription

Sarah Ellis: Hi, I'm Sarah.

Helen Tupper: And I'm Helen.

Sarah Ellis: And this is the Squiggly Careers podcast.  Every week, we share ideas for action and tools to try out that we hope will help you, and to be honest us, navigate our Squiggly Career with more confidence, clarity and control.  This week, we're talking about how to give and get fast and frequent feedback.

Helen Tupper: And feedback is a very important Squiggly skill, so it is not the first time we've talked about it, but we are taking a slightly different angle to it today.  So, just in case it's useful, and we'll put all of the links to this in the PodSheet for you, we've already covered the basics of feedback, which we rather grandly called, How to Master the Art of Feedback, back on episode 19.

Sarah Ellis: You can tell that's an early episode, can't you?  "Master the Art of Feedback"; who do we think we are?!

Helen Tupper: I don't know!  We wouldn't call it that now.  Basically, how to get good at the basics is what the long and short of that is!  Then recently, we did How to Fix Feedback, which was more about the challenges that you have, giving feedback upwards, perhaps to managers, and also getting more improvement feedback, because people can often find that quite hard.  And Sarah did a brilliant conversation with Kim Scott about the skill of Radical Candor, so quite a specific part of feedback. 

So, there are a few episodes: 19, 205 and 211, where we've talked about it. But one of the barriers that we find is that people don't get enough feedback, and so today we wanted to focus on how you can get fast and frequent feedback so that you just get much more data for your development, and you can help other people with theirs too.

Sarah Ellis: So, we just wanted to start by quickly talking about what is feedback, what it's for and what gets in the way, and then we've got loads of fast ideas to be consistent with the topic for today.  One of the things that I always find interesting is, when we work with lots of organisations all across the world, who talk about how difficult it is to make feedback work and feel useful, is we don't really have a shared understanding of what feedback is for, and even how we talk about feedback.

So, often I'll share a few definitions, things like, data for our development; a source of learning; insight to help us improve; or, how we increase our self-awareness, which is really more about the outcome of feedback.  And we do know that we need feedback to get better, because it helps us to increase our self-awareness, it helps us to understand if our intent matches our impact.  There's a great quote by Tasha Eurich, who has a brilliant TED Talk, where she says, "Self-awareness is the most important skill to be successful in the 21st century at work". So, I think to start with, if you're thinking about this for you or in the context of your team, just be clear about how are you going to find feedback.  Is it how we all learn and grow; is it how we all get better together?  Use the words that work for you, but particularly if you're in a team setting, I would maybe just try, before you dive into some of the ideas for action, just make sure everybody is clear about what feedback is. As well as talking about intent versus impact, I think the other reason that feedback is so important, is it's how we uncover blind spots. 

So, you know that phrase, "We don't know what we don't know"?  I think sometimes other people can see us more clearly than we can see ourselves; they can see our strengths, they can see our areas to improve.  So, they just increase our understanding in a way that is almost impossible, I think, to do for ourselves. Most importantly, in a Squiggly Career, where we're all work in progress, we've got this learning mindset, we're all in this infinite learning loop, I think feedback is just a really important part of navigating that Squiggly Career successfully.  It's how we keep learning, it's how we keep growing, it's how we spot new areas that we could be brilliant at, it's how we explore our potential. 

So often, I will talk to groups and say, "Why should we care about feedback?" and I think there's lots of reasons for us to be really committed to making feedback work for ourselves and for our teams and for our organisations, but I do think we need a bit of a rethink about often what that looks like, because I'm yet to come across anyone who says to me, "We are incredible at feedback".  If you are listening, and you are, get in touch because I'd love to hear from you and I'd love to know what's working well for you!

Helen Tupper: So, two of the biggest barriers to getting or giving fast and frequent feedback are formality and fear.  The formality bit is, there's too much process.  Feedback happens at a certain time in a certain way, and anything other than that time and that way isn't feedback. 

And so, people get twisted in knots really about how to do it and how to do it right, and how to do it in the way that the company wants me to do it.  And every time that we over-formalise feedback, we reduce the amount that we're going to get. 

So, all the ideas for action we have got are pretty informal, in terms of how you'd ask for them, or the way that you might do; there's no 360 process here, this is quick and fast ideas for you. The second barrier is about fear, so people worrying about, "Well, if I ask Sarah for some fast feedback and she tells me something that I don't do very well, is that going to ruin my career development?"  A lot of that thought process that creates the fear has issues and roots in our confidence gremlin, so worrying that I might fail, or that other people might think I don't know enough, or I'm not good enough.

So again, lots of the ideas for action we've got are actually about you getting feedback about things that you do well, that might be a blind spot to you, to this point that Sarah said; because, whilst it is important to be aware of how you can improve, it is also really, if not more important, to know about the positive ways in which you make impact. We often make associations that feedback is all about things we're not doing very well.  But actually, you can really increase the frequency if you start getting information about the things that you do brilliantly, so you can do it even more and you can get even better at it.  So, everything is about less formality and reducing the fear, so that you can get more of that information.

Sarah Ellis: Yeah, I think we have often all got stuck in feedback equals a difficult conversation, and I just see and hear that time and time again from people.  As soon as you say feedback and you get to all these fears, it's always in the context of, "I need to have a difficult conversation with someone", or, "I'm worried about somebody having a difficult conversation with me".  Then, I think we're missing a whole load of really useful feedback that's much more everyday development based. So, I feel this has almost been an ignored part of feedback, but it's probably how we learn and grow every day. 

Then, what you get a lot of focus on, if you have a look at the articles online is, if you've got to have a difficult conversation with your manager, or how to deliver difficult conversations.  Those things are really helpful as well, but I feel like they're one small slice of the feedback pie, so to speak.

So, a couple of froms and tos as well to frame what we're talking about today.  Helen and I always find "from and to" really helpful as just a way of thinking about, "What are we trying to let go of, and what are we trying to replace it with?"  Here, I think we're talking about from moving from formal feedback, where it's all about maybe filling out a form or ticking it off your to-do list, or following a process because you feel you have to; to really regular and frequent feedback. From feedback being general, you know that dreaded email, "I just wondered if I could have some feedback", and you're just thinking, "I don't know what you want feedback on, that's going to take me ages", we're making it too hard for people.  I think we've got to make this loads easier, and that's why we've been challenging ourselves for this episode of going, "How do you make it fast?" because to make something fast, you have to make it easy in the first place. 

So, instead of this general, we want to move to it feeling really relevant, and framing our feedback asks in a way where lots of them can be really quick; and also, giving it in a way that's really quick as well.  It takes a minute, you're giving a minute, you're gaining a minute, it could be as fast as that. We also want to move away from it being occasional, so you know, part of quarterly reviews when you maybe do those deep dives or those 360s.  We know that those are never accurate, because they are not feedback on the last quarter, they are feedback on the last three weeks, because none of us are that good. 

So, unless we have an incredible process for almost collating that feedback as we go, most of the time that is just a bit of a snapshot.  So, what we want to get much better at is moving to real-time, fast feedback. Then, I think this last one is really important.  And when I talk to teams, one of the really big challenges with feedback is moving away from this idea that feedback is an add-on; it's something else that I have to find time for.  No one can do it.  Practically at the moment, I think people are like, "Please don't give me something else to add to my day".  I really understand that and I really empathise with that, because we're all trying to do so much, and we want to have boundaries and we want to have work/life fit, and all of that good stuff.  And you sort of go, "Please don't add on". So, I think it's really interesting to think about how we move to adding in, so how do we move feedback to something that we add into what we already do; to our one-to-ones, to our meetings, to our projects.  So, there's nothing to add on, it's just more about maybe doing something differently in the time that you already have, and thinking about, "How does feedback work in what I already do?"

Helen Tupper: So, we've got our five ideas for action now that we're going to go through and we'll summarise all of these in the PodSheet for you. The first is "ones win", and this builds on that point that Sarah mentioned about framing it; framing it makes it fast, is what we want to think about here. 

Questions that you could ask here could be, "What was the one thing that you found useful about that presentation I gave?" or, "What is the one thing that you think was missing from that presentation that I gave?"  The one thing makes people really, really focus, and it's quite a quick thing to respond to.  It doesn't feel like they're going to have to replay the entire presentation you did.  There's probably something quite top of mind that they'll be able to share with you. I also like ones win, because one of my values is achievement, which I define as "lots of wins along the way".  So, I feel like collecting lots of "one things" is like collecting lots of wins along that week that could help me with my end of summer impact a little bit more.

Sarah Ellis: We often use, "What worked well?" and, "Even better if" as a way of framing feedback.  So, if you combine that with the ones win, you get to something where you can really quickly just get into that kind of mindset of continually improving.  So, "What's one thing that worked well about that project?"  "What's one 'even better if' for that project?" or, "What's one thing that worked well about that team meeting?"  "What's one 'even better if' for that team meeting?"  Even if you all did that as a group, and you brought those together, everyone can do those really snappily and really quickly.

You can include that at the end of your team meeting; you don't have to then gather it all up and put it all into a form, you can literally just go round and say, "What was the best thing about today?  What was the one thing that you thought was missing from our time together?"  Pretty quickly, you actually get a lot of that instantaneous, "What's on people's minds?  How are people thinking and feeling?  What are the common threads?" or actually, "Is everybody feeling quite differently?"  You'll be surprised, I think, about how useful just asking those two questions can be in the moment.

Helen Tupper: I think as well, in teams, transparency is brilliant, because a lot of the formal processes, it goes on a system where not everyone sees it.  But if you do it on a WhatsApp chat, or a Teams channel, or at the end of a meeting, or whatever, so everyone can see it, then you've sort of communicated it collectively at the same time.  So, it's actually a really efficient and transparent way of getting that information out.

Sarah Ellis: Yeah, and we did it recently for an event that we did, where we just really quickly did, "One thing that went well; one even better if".  And sometimes I think as well, you can be guilty of assuming your "what worked wells" and your "even better ifs" are the same as everyone else's, and I really learnt from seeing that just a couple of weeks ago.  I'd got a couple of really clear things in my mind, and they weren't the same; they were really different to what everybody else shared.

So I thought, "That is the power and usefulness of us all answering the same question, but with our different experiences", and everyone's was valid, and none of it felt personal, no one was blaming anyone for the "even better ifs", it was just like, "That's really interesting.  I'd not even thought about that", and people just shared what they'd spotted, what was top of mind for them.  So, I think it also helps to challenge your assumptions that we can all fall into that trap of being like, "My experience of that thing is exactly how everyone else experienced it", which for me, I consistently find that that is not true.

Helen Tupper: So, idea for action number two is called "praise plus", and this is about turning praise into feedback.  It's one of my favourite fast feedback techniques.  So, people like giving praise, you'll like giving praise, people will like giving it to you.  It sounds like, "Great job today, brilliant effort in that team meeting, love that presentation that you did".  It's meant with good intent, but to the definition Sarah said earlier, it's not information that helps you improve.  There's no detail in that praise that's going to help you in your development, it just makes you feel good in the moment.

So, it is not bad to get praise and it is not bad to feel good in the moment.  But what you do want to do is turn that feel-good into feedback.  And all you have to do is follow up a bit of praise with a curious question.  So, Sarah says to me, "Well done today, I thought that meeting was brilliant".  And I just acknowledge it, so I go, "Oh, thank you", then I ask for feedback and I say to Sarah, "What was it that I did today that made a difference?" or, "What was the one skill that really stood out today?"  You can ask anything, but the point is you take the praise, you acknowledge it and then you ask for feedback.  Then what you get is the benefit of that feel-good factor, plus the feedback that will help you.

Sarah Ellis: And if you're giving that feel-good factor and you're turning it into feedback, I quite like to have some shortcuts in my mind to remind me to do this.  So, I always think, "Brilliant, because", I think because I say brilliant quite a lot.  I'll be like, "Oh, that was brilliant", it just makes me add the why; so, "That was brilliant, because…" or, "Amazing, I really appreciated how you…" so amazing and appreciated, just because I think that creates that shortcut in my brain to make it really easy to deliver that praise plus. We also in our team do Squiggly shoutouts, which is probably not a surprise for anyone that we do Squiggly shoutouts!  So, in our Teams channel, a bit like we do win of the week, when someone has done something just brilliant, we just want to give a shoutout to someone.  And really, I think the purpose of those Squiggly shoutouts is partly to say thank you, because someone has done a great job on something. 

But I think what I'm always trying to do every time I do a Squiggly shoutout is go beyond saying thank you, and actually also shouting out what was it that I saw in action that made that person so brilliant. So, Helen and I were recording our first ever video book last Monday.  And honestly, watching Helen in action record videos, in small vignettes, like short, snappy, specific statements, I just don't think anyone can do it in the way that Helen can do it.  It's incredible to watch!  And I really wanted to make the point of saying to Helen, "Don't take this for granted, you are brilliant at this and you're great under pressure and you literally are on the spot and you have spotlights and lots of lights and cameras on you".  And very spontaneously, Helen has a brilliant ability to summarise a thought or a concept or an idea in a way that is useful. You know that, because also I kept hearing the producer say back to Helen almost, "Oh, yeah, that's really useful".  I felt like she was getting some career advice from LA along the way!  So, that was me doing a bit of a Squiggly shoutout for Helen.  I could have just said to Helen, "You were amazing today, I thought you were so good", and you sort of go, "Okay, thanks", but it just doesn't quite get to grips with what it was that was amazing. 

So, just think about what's your equivalent of a Squiggly shoutout. So, our third idea for action is being a strength spotter.  This is something where I've been on the receiving end of working for somebody who was a strength spotter, and I honestly think it transformed my career, which sounds really dramatic, but I think this person helped me to find my flow in a job and in a role for the first time in a way that I'd not experienced before.  So, I think this is something that we can all do for each other so that everyone can succeed in their Squiggly Careers. In particular, what I tend to notice is that people often take their natural talents for granted. 

So, those areas that you're just good at, they come naturally to you, you find them quite easy, you're probably not even putting that much effort in.  And I think sometimes, because you're not putting loads of effort in, you sort of dismiss it, because you think, "Oh, it's just me".  You often hear people say that phrase, particularly if it's maybe something like thoughtful, "Oh, well I'm just thoughtful".  Then you might go, "Oh, well that's just me and everyone's thoughtful".  Then suddenly we go, "I'm no different [or] I'm not special compared to everyone else".  We're sort of being our own worst critic. So, I think if we can all be strength spotters for each other, it just helps you to appreciate your natural talents, perhaps in way that is again hard to do for ourselves.  That might sound like, "I see you at your best when…" or, "I can see your super-skill of… in action when you…" or, "You really add value when you…" or, "One of the ways that you're particularly useful for our team is…".  So, you are just letting people know those things where their strengths really show up and stand out.

Helen Tupper: I often see, when I ask this question, without any predetermination of what people will say, I often get energy coming back to me, and it comes back in slightly different words.  People will say, "It was the energy you really brought to the session today that made a big difference", and that might come from a workshop; or it might be, I might have a one-to-one with someone on the team, and actually I've literally just had a coaching session with somebody before this, and they came away from it going, "I feel so much more energised now, having spoken to you". The more that you ask, the more consistency you'll see.  And then, again, it's up to you to then decide, is that what you want to be known for?  But it's very powerful to see what other people see when you ask that question, I think, and gather all that information.

Sarah Ellis: Yeah, so again, with all our ideas here, there are two ways that you can do this.  You could ask, almost ask people to be a strength spotter on your behalf like, "When do you see me at my best, Helen?" or, "When do you think I add the most value?"  Or, you can just proactively do this, I don't think you have to wait for permission to be a strength spotter.  As I said, that person I worked for, I wasn't smart enough to ask her for strength-based feedback and as her to be my strength spotter.  But she really made a point of doing that, and she didn't wait for permission. I remember both for her, and actually then some subsequent leaders I worked for, they talked to me a lot about the curiosity that I brought to a role and how useful that was in my day job, and how that brought difference to the team and helped the team to spot new opportunities. 

And I think both Helen's and my curiosity are definitely something where you could skim past them, because you'll be like, "Well, Helen's energetic, and Sarah's just curious, yeah, that's fine". But I think when people start to give you feedback about those things, in terms of their impact, like how are they helpful, how are they helping you to make a really active contribution to the work that you're doing, then you can see people start to really go, "Oh, that is good", and then hopefully you'll start to make that strength stronger, you'll start to think about, "How could I use that strength more?  Who else might benefit from that strength?  Who else can I share that strength with?  Can I teach that strength in some ways to other people?" and it just creates this really nice sharing mindset around, we're all great at loads of different things, so let's just spot those strengths for each other. People continually are surprised when you do this with people.  It still takes me by surprise.  When I say to someone, "That super-skill you've got of telling stories, it just makes such a difference to the way you present.  I can just see that people are smiling and engaging, because your storytelling just really stands out".  And honestly, people are so often like, "Oh, really?" and you just hear that element of surprise.

Helen Tupper: It's the quickest thing to do, isn't it?  You just do it in a meeting, you'll be like, "That's one of your super-skills, you know".

Sarah Ellis: You do that all the time, you're really good at that.

Helen Tupper: I literally feel like the more aware you are of the role that you can play in being a strength spotter, you just start to look out for those moments in the day.  You said a point earlier about making sure that this is an add-in, rather than an add-on; you're already in that meeting.  All you've got to do is be observing someone and when you think, "Wow, amazing question" or, "Brilliant bit of banter there that really helped everybody get engaged", whatever it is, you just say, "That's one of your super-skills", and you see the pride, I feel.  You're like, "Oh, I didn't know that.  Thanks".  It just gives the meet a slightly different dynamic, I think.

Sarah Ellis: So, our idea for action number four is about autopilot versus auto-improve.  And here what we're particularly interest in is anything you do that is repeatable.  So, maybe you do lots of events or lots of projects, or maybe you recruit lots of people; but you're looking for tasks or things that you keep coming back to. The challenge with those things is that it's really easy to get stuck in doing those things in the same way, and you stop improving, you perhaps get a bit comfortable and you do go into autopilot mode, because you're like, "I've done this before and I know what this looks like now, so I just need to do the same again". 

Actually, those are often brilliant opportunities for auto-improvement, but you've got to figure out a way to capture auto-improvements as you go in a sort of always-on type way. I was reflecting on this, certainly for me and for our team.  I am really good at auto-improvement, I think because I'm a natural critical thinker.  Sometimes, I actually have to stop myself from auto-improving actually in the moment, and Helen has to stop me and tell me to focus and be present on what we need to do in that moment.

Helen Tupper: I'm laughing because that's so true.

Sarah Ellis: I'm sort of already improving, before I've even finished a sentence, which tells you a lot about how my brain works, I think.  What I don't do well is capture the continuous improvement.  So, I'm great at spotting and identifying the improvement, my mind just works in that way; and then what I've realised is that learning gets lost, and particularly for when you're doing things -- I think actually generally, it's always important, but when you have got these repeatable things, you've got to think about, how could you create some central source of those auto-improvements, those "even better ifs" that anyone can add to, that you can do it as you go, and where it takes ten seconds or one minute, rather than thinking, "I'm going to wait until the end of this whole process, and then I'm going to do this massive review of everything that went well, and do a really big evaluation"? At that moment I think firstly, I would never look forward to that meeting. 

You know when you just feel like you're having to go over everything, I don't think my memory is that good; whereas, if I had got something, like we're recruiting at the moment, for example, and there have been some brilliant things, and there've been some very specific "even better ifs", if you all know, "We'll just quickly go into this Wiki in Teams", because we happen to use Teams, or you go into this thing in Slack, and you just contribute one sentence and you are done super-quickly, then it just becomes a source of continual improvement that I think is just a really smart way to work, and it means that your learning lasts, rather than gets lost.

Helen Tupper: I think it's that learn-as-you-grow log, isn't it?  But what makes it really useful, because we've talked about learn-as-you-grow logs before in the context of everyday development; but what I like about that with this fast feedback is that you're very specific.  So, maybe you have a learn-as-you-grow log for a recruitment process that you're running at this point in time, or a project that needs to be delivered over a month.  And it means that, I think knowing that it's quite a finite thing for you to get feedback on means that there's a more specific reason to log that learning. Whereas, if it's just general, it just becomes this big, "These are 101 different things that I could do".  But if it's like, "I'm running this project for a month, I'm going to have a learn-as-you-grow log, and I'm going to get lots of fast feedback that's going to accumulate into data for my development", then I feel like I've got a focus there that really motivates me to do it.

Sarah Ellis: Do you know what, I can't help but think, I don't think we're particularly great at this generally, and we've written two books now, both of those books I am very proud of.  But there are some challenges along the way sometimes with the process of writing those books.  And every time, we always say, "Okay, at some point, we're going to write all this down so we remember it for next time", and we never do, and I swear it's because you just think, "I can't face it"!

Helen Tupper: That's so true!

Sarah Ellis: We've never done it, so I just think it's stupid, because you either make the same mistakes, or you're like, "Oh, brilliant, I've just learnt the same 'even better if'".  It is useful to think, like I'm sitting here now wishing we had that.

Helen Tupper: That we'd captured it, yeah.

Sarah Ellis: And I can think of about five other things where I wish that was true.  So, I feel like this will feel like a priority for us.  And once you've cracked almost the system, and you've just got to make it really easy and really quick for people, it's just not hard to do, and I think everyone will just get used to it as part of your ways of working.  So, yeah, I'm trying not to think too much about the fact that we've not done that!

Helen Tupper: Yeah, thank you for taking my brain to that for book three!  For book three, "Why did we not have our learn-as-we-grow log for book one and two?"

Sarah Ellis: Never mind!

Helen Tupper: Oh, well, we'll do it; that can be our big "even better if" for book three, we'll have one of those!

Sarah Ellis: Okay.

Helen Tupper: So the fifth and final idea for action, so that you can get some fast and frequent feedback, is some quick questions.  So, these are easy to ask, easy to answer questions, that you can just fit into conversations that you're already having.  We've made them short and we've made them specific. So, number one, "What could I do between now and [insert a date] that would be most useful for you?"  Why that's a good question is because you've made it really specific with the date, so that gets people really clear in their mind; and you've framed it in a really nice way, "What's most useful for you?" and so that makes it easier for someone to answer. 

That's question number one, "What could I do between now and [date] that would be most useful for you?" Quick question number two is, "What's the unique thing that I bring to our team?" so that helps you to see what is distinctive and different about you and your effort, and again it's more strengths-based in terms of feedback, so very often easier for other people to give to you, "What's the unique thing that I bring to our team?" Quick question number three is, "If I did [X] again --" so presented, I don't know, wrote that email, whatever it would be, "It I did [X] again, what small thing could I do differently?"  So, what we're trying to get here is some insight into how you could improve, but we're framing it in a way that feels quite small for somebody, so it's just, "What small thing could I do differently?" and it's not asking for a big improvement there; so again, just making it a little bit easier, "If I did [X] again, what small thing could I do differently?"

Sarah Ellis: So, I would imagine, if you're listening to this podcast, if we all said to all of you listening, "If we did this podcast again, what small thing could we do differently?" I bet everybody could answer.  They might be like, maybe for some people it feels a bit long, maybe you've got an idea that we didn't include, or you've got something in your mind.  Again, I think the way to get to quick, fast, frequent feedback questions is experiment with them. Helen and I were reflecting, as we were preparing for this podcast, that there are definitely feedback questions that are useful, but they take time and they're not fast and frequent questions. 

So, I think you spot this quite quickly by just asking them.  Don't worry if they don't work; it's much better to ask and just see.  But I think when you have in mind how easily and quickly and useful were the responses that I got back, you start to know which are the ones that work really well, which help you to quickly improve. Helen, for example, recently has used that top one, "What could I do between now and Christmas", Helen said to our team, "that would be most useful for you?" and she just quickly asked that to everyone in our team, and I think everyone came back to her the same day.  So you get a sense there, okay, no one's had to overthink that, I think I probably took the longest, but there you go!  But you could quickly come back and people were really specific, and Helen was giving me some examples of what people had shared with her.  And again, it's really useful and it's given her -- I think, because you framed that question in a way that people can just go, "Okay, that would be helpful", and you give that feedback and you've done the ask and the receive very, very quickly.

Helen Tupper: Can I just do one more build, because I was just thinking about the fact that it took you longer to come back than other people, which other than everyone's busy, you were busy, but also I think it's because you care a lot.  So I think, you know we talked earlier about one thing that can get in the way of fast feedback is formality and fear?  I also think feelings can get in the way a little bit there. You care, you really care, so you don't really like to be put on the spot.  So, what I could probably have done better in that situation is said to you, "I'm trying to get quite a lot of fast feedback", you know, framed it a little bit, "I'm trying to get quite a lot of fast feedback.  Could you come back to me relatively quickly on your response to the below?" almost signalling to you that there are some times when I'm going to ask big questions that I do want you to think about, but this is different, this is fast feedback. So, I think if you are trying to get some data for your development from somebody that I would say, like Sarah, is a thinker, she's reflective, she's empathetic, she wouldn't want to be really quick, because she wouldn't want you to think that she hadn't thought it through for you; it's coming from a really good place.  So, I think I might want to prime Sarah, or someone like Sarah, with what I'm doing, which is, "I'm trying to collect a bit of fast feedback over the next week, I'd really appreciate your answer to this question", might have made it a little bit easier.

Sarah Ellis: Yeah.  And this is where I think if you can have these conversations as a team as well, you could have these discussions about, "What is helping us to speed up the frequency and how fast the feedback is?  But also, what slows us down and what does that mean?"  I was thinking there as you were describing that, I think if you'd have said to me, "What's the first thing that springs to mind in terms of what I could do differently between now and Christmas that would be useful?" I think the first thing that springs to mind would have taken away the expectation on me, which I place on myself, to think really deeply about, "What am I really thinking about?" Then you get a voicemail from me three days later, as I'd really thought about it for three days. 

Whereas actually, interestingly, everyone else in our team did it really quickly!  But that's also really interesting how you can just do that.  So, small tweaks can make quite a big difference, I think, to frequency and fast, and again involving each other in, "That question didn't work, I wonder why not", rather than being hard on ourselves if it doesn't quite work.  I think just notice that and think, was it because you didn't frame it; was the question too hard; is it because you've got a Sarah in your team, who goes away and thinks for three days?

Helen Tupper: You're lucky if you've got a Sarah, everyone, you're lucky!

Sarah Ellis: She's just saying that!  But I really hope that has been helpful.  We'll just summarise those five ideas for action for you, so you've just got them all at once.  So, idea for action number one: ones win; idea for action number two: praise plus; idea for action number three: strength spotter; idea for action number four: autopilot versus auto-improve; and, idea for action number five: quick questions.

Helen Tupper: And all of that will be summarised in the PodSheet, which you can get from the show notes if you listen on Apple, or you can get it from our website, amazingif.com.  We will also put on the show notes our brand-new big and brilliant resource, which is our PodBook.  We have compiled 100 PodSheets into one ginormous PodBook, so pretty much every Squiggly Career situation has got a document that you can read through with coach-yourself questions, ideas for actions and quotes to inspire.  Whatever you need, it is probably in that document. So, do download them, they are free, and please share them for your development and if you are helping anyone else with their Squiggly Career too.

Sarah Ellis: And if you've got any ideas for fast and frequent feedback that have worked really well in your organisation, we would love to hear them and borrow some brilliance from you.  We are helenandsarah@squigglycareers.com.  And let us know if you try out any of today's ideas for action; we always love to know what works, and also any "even better ifs".  But that's everything for this week.  Thank you so much for listening and we'll be back with you again soon.  Bye for now.

Helen Tupper: Bye everyone.