Unbound with Chris DuBois

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I'm tired of people telling you, you're great when you know there's room for improvement. You just need to ask these three questions, and your team will provide far better feedback.

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Are you a leader trying to get more from your business in life? Me too. So join me as I document the conversations, stories and advice to help you achieve what matters in your life. Welcome to unbound with me, Chris DuBois.

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Hey, everyone, quick episode on how you can improve the feedback that you're getting. I view feedback as a gift, because it's a way for me to actually see some of my blind spots get better, I think everyone should view it that way. But the fact of the matter is that it's not how most people see it. Cuz for a lot of people, feedback is hard to receive. And for a lot of your team members, it becomes harder to provide because of that, right? A lot of people are conditioned to praise their boss, praise their leader. And this is awesome, because they have worked in companies that have terrible cultures. And so even if you can fix your culture, or you have a great culture to begin with, because they have these preconceptions, or they're just not going to be like readily set to provide you with the feedback that you need. So how can we get in front of that, number one, build trust, viewing certain things as if then statements, right breeds by breeding predictability, you can quickly increase the trust. So if I bring you a problem, then you will help me, if I fail at a task, then you'll teach me to do better. If I disagree with you, then we'll have a conversation. And we'll come up with the best plan, right by giving your team that predictability so that they know you're not just going to flip a switch and go crazy, because they gave you feedback, they're going to be more apt to give you their feedback in the first place. Now, when you get feedback, your team needs to know you appreciate it, and that you're going to take it into consideration. Fear and futility are the two big reasons that people won't bring things up. Fear that they're going to be, you know, punished for whatever's coming up or futility, meaning, it doesn't matter that they brought it up, nothing's gonna happen anyway. So why even bother, right? So if you can remove those two, they're going to be more apt to give you that information.

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Now, it is also important to know that your team doesn't always have the whole picture. So you can't say that you're just blindly going to follow whatever advice and feedback they have. But you can say I will listen and take it into consideration. Right? So it's really important to make that distinction. But now, the three questions that you need to ask first, you can ask these, or have your team give you this information anonymously, right this way, you can just ask it, and they're not worried about that piece. So if you are working on your culture, or your new leader just stepped into a team organization,

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that's a way that you can kind of get around this faster. Ideally, you want to get to the point where they can just give you this information whenever to your face, and nobody's worried about it, because they know you're going to handle it, you know, like a real boss. Alright, so questions. Number one, what am I doing? I should continue. Number two, what am I doing? I should stop? And number three, what am I not doing? I should start by asking these three questions. You're almost guiding them to give you an answer. And they're going to rather than just giving this open ended, right? I can give him any type of feedback period where they're probably just not going to give you an answer, because they're overwhelmed with the amount of information they have to process in order to give you something, right, you're kind of guiding them to say, hey, what am I doing right now that I should keep doing? And now it's much easier for them to say, like, Oh, I really like it. When you do this. It really helps me do this with my job. Right? What am I doing? I should stop? Yeah, a little harder for them to answer, probably because of that potential animosity that they felt with other leaders before. But it's still a very direct question. Right? What am I doing, I should stop makes it very easy, like, hey, these things impact my job. So like, if we could avoid doing those, it would help me? Then finally, the What am I not doing that I should start? This one is where you're gonna get some of the most insightful information because it forces them to think creatively about what could I be doing as a leader to help you get your job done better, right, to have less stress to just be more efficient, more effective, more innovative, all of these things. And you are going to be amazed at the actual level of detail that you're able to get with from these questions. Versus if you just ask for an open ended like hey, what can I do better or what's not working? And so I'd recommend put those three into play. At first go for it anonymously, just to get some feedback on how you're doing and you will see some tremendous gains very fast.

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If you enjoyed today's episode, I would love a rating and review on your favorite podcast player. And for more information on how to build effective and efficient teams through your leadership.

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