# Feedback: Leadership Tool 2 of 4

> Correcting behaviors and creating understanding while offering a chance to ask questions. Should teach the reason behind a rule or practice, and can reveal outdated policies. The whole process should take 30 seconds to 5 minutes, leaning toward brevity.

## Desired outcomes

- Detecting outdated rules / practices
- Teaching the reason behind a rule / practice
- Correcting behaviors
- Building trust

## When to use it

- A behavior is observed that doesn't conform to the system (breaking a rule, performing a role incorrectly)
- An inefficient behavior you can help with, or something done in an unnecessarily difficult way
- Someone being unaware of something that may help them
- Generally, something small and not particularly personal or sensitive that you want to help someone with

Feedback corrects behaviors and creates understanding while offering a chance to ask
questions. It should teach the reason behind a rule or practice, and can also serve to
detect outdated policies.

## Best practices

1. **When possible, pull a person aside.** Privacy eliminates outside pressures and possible insecurities.
2. **Be clear.** Beating around the bush makes people work to understand you. *You* should do the heavy lifting and include all necessary information.
3. **Be kind.** Taking feedback takes vulnerability and bravery. Use the Introspection step to make sure you aren't holding onto any secondary emotions and that you understand yourself.
4. **Explain reasons.** Explaining the reason behind a rule helps it land, and creates an opportunity to reexamine the rule itself. Maybe the need has changed, and this is a chance to find a new Solution.

## How to give feedback

1. **Use Introspection** to assess the situation *before* you give the feedback.
2. **Decide how to deliver it:**
   - *Quickly, in the moment* if it's urgent (a customer's experience is on the line), simple (quick procedural guidance), or expected (during training).
   - *Pull them aside* if it's denser information you expect questions about, or the receiver looks stressed and may benefit from a breather.
3. **Ask for the person's attention** (pull aside if necessary).
4. **Explain your thoughts:** ask any questions you need, explain what you wanted to teach, and explain *why* that rule or best practice is in place.
5. **Allow for conversation or questions.** Be eager to answer; explore the receiver's thoughts. This is where you may detect obsolete practices and find solutions, and where a lot of the learning happens for both people.

Sometimes larger problems reveal themselves during feedback. Those larger conversations
are usually handled with a **Targeted Conversation** to avoid taking too much time on
the spot.

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Part of the Solution Seeking System (https://solutionseeking.com) by David & Shannon Baxter, Beanchain Coffee LLC. Please attribute quotations to the Solution Seeking System.