LOVE MONDAYS
Welcome to Love Mondays, a weekly newsletter designed as a 3-minute hit to fire up the other 10,077 minutes of your week.
Do you give and receive feedback with an open and curious mind, or with an extra-strong coffee and a bit of a cringe? Creating a positive feedback culture is key to dealing with the uncertainty we face today. Learning from mistakes is critical.
Write down the productive feedback loops you have in your life or leadership.
Consider: whether you proactively seek feedback at designated points on your journey
Practice: leaning into feedback by getting on the front foot and requesting some this week
Decide to: reframe feedback as feedforward, deliberately asking for constructive, actionable, and specific ideas for improvements
Feed Forward. Flipping our focus on feedback.
In his book What Got You Here Won’t Get You There, executive coach Marshall Goldsmith challenges the premise of feedback with what he calls the ‘feed forward’ loop. In essence, Goldsmith focuses conversations not on reviewing the past but nominating things we could change to become more effective in the future. It’s a framework built on the idea that while we can change the future, we cannot change the past – and the real gem is that we take ’feed-forward’ far less personally than feedback because it replaces judgement of past behaviour with suggestions for a more effective tomorrow. Put simply: it’s less ego-bruising and more muscle-building!
The most successful feed-forward conversations I’ve been a part of have been regular, strategic, specific and factual. They’ll often focus on the question, ‘For this role to be maximally effective, what should we be doing more of and less of?’ Vague concepts such as ‘inspiring,’ ‘fantastic,’ or ‘not that great’ are unhelpful. Instead, anchoring requests and responses in facts, actions, patterns of behaviour and impact allow an open and honest conversation.
We Love Mondays every Monday – not just on Valentine’s day! And we are hoping you Love Mondays enough to become a paid subscriber in March as we take our weekly tips beyond The Leading Edge inspired content and on to the next level. Stay tuned! We appreciate your readership. If you’d like to help us spread the word, why not share Love Mondays with a friend?
Love your Mondays