[Alicia Davis] If you are a nonprofit leader in the middle of doing performance evaluations or any kind of evaluations with staff… we feel you. We have been hearing a lot from our leaders, especially this last couple of weeks, about how hard it is to give feedback that we know people may not want to hear. Right, Stacie?
[Stacie Watson] Yes, you know, I think next to public speaking, one of the real challenges that we as human beings face from a communication perspective, is the need to give constructive feedback. And of course, often we get promoted into leadership roles without a whole lot of training or support on how to do that. And it can be intimidating. It really can be a very difficult sort of skill set to develop. And you know, we have a training session on this, which I know we’ll talk about in a moment. You know, some of the things that we really try to highlight is the importance, first of all, of really understanding your own level of comfort or discomfort going into the conversation – before you ever even sit down with the person or get onto the Zoom screen or Teams screen to really say, what do I need to do to help myself feel a little bit more centered, a little bit more calm, a little bit more present, so I’m ready to have this conversation without my own anxiety sort of getting in the way.
[Alicia Davis] That’s right. And it’s, it’s also, it’s that preparation. There’s also a fair amount of emotional intelligence involved, right? I think it’s, you know, it’s, it’s being clear, right? It’s being able to use as objective statements as possible. And, you know, I think it, it is often very much related to being clear about what you expect from that person on your team, so that it is translated to the clearest behavior or outcome possible. Because I think that can be so easily misinterpreted or misunderstood.
[Stacie Watson] For sure.
[Alicia Davis] You know. And once you do that, then you also want to have some kind of an ongoing check in, feedback loop, because it’s a process to be able to help someone grow and develop their own skills, both as a person and part of a team, right? Yeah,
[Stacie Watson] 100% right. And you know, these small things that we as leaders can be mindful of as we enter into these evaluation times, these feedback opportunities, makes a huge difference, both in building trust between yourself and the person on the team, as well as just overall sense of alignment on the team. We all know what we’re doing here, and we all know sort of what it’s all about, so it can have some really positive ripple effects as we’re able to sort of maybe get a little more comfortable with the practice of feedback.
[Alicia Davis] Mm hmm, mm hmm. And if you or someone you know, could benefit from exploring some of those skills, we’ve got a session coming up in the end of the month, Communicate to Drive Action on April 30th in our Learning Academy. So you can check that out. You can go to TLS transforms.com, and right on the top of the screen there, you can click on Academy, and I’m Alicia Davis…
[Stacie Watson] I’m Stacie Watson…
[Alicia Davis] … and we really appreciate you listening and being in touch with us. We’d love to hear from you. Thanks so much.
[Stacie Watson]
Thank you.
