Construction Trailblazers: Paving The Way to Excellence

Samantha: It's time to learn how to give great feedback when
someone misses the mark without being a jerk or micromanaging.

Welcome to Construction Trailblazers, Paving the Way to Excellence, the podcast where
we cut through the noise to uncover what truly drives success in the building industry.

I'm Samantha C.

Prestidge, your guide in simplifying operations and turning dynamic teams into industry leaders.

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Okay, so how to provide feedback without micromanaging.

This is a super important topic because it requires such a balance in our communication and our
conflict resolution skills, as well as our focus on the big picture and the execution of something.

So it's really tying together those two things.

our processes for excellence, as well as our human and people skills.

And it also is something that we have to do every day.

This is a muscle that you've got to stretch every day, because it could come up when
someone is not following safety protocols, when you can see that a project is gonna
get off schedule, when you see that, hey, There wasn't attention to detail on this
one thing, or they didn't speak to a customer in the way that you would want them to.

The importance of understanding how to give effective feedback, how to communicate your
expectations, is so critical to the success of your team and the success of your projects.

And just really stepping into your role as not only
a manager, but also a leader in the organization.

This is one of those skills that when you first become a manager.

You're kind of just required to do this and to figure it out.

And most of us have never really had to do this before you
become a manager because, hey, you're a frontline employee.

There's no one that's reporting to you.

And so you're just used to receiving feedback.

You might stretch your conflict resolution skills a little bit between departments, or
even when you're managing up and talking with your direct supervisor about something.

But for the most part, You're not really giving feedback on something and having to express
certain expectations with somebody else where there might be some consequences at play.

And when we don't really understand how to do this well, when we go about feedback
in an ineffective way, it could be damage the trust between you and your team.

It's going to make your team members just disengaged or even resent communicating with you.

And overall, that slows your progress on a project.

It decreases the likelihood that you're going to achieve amazing results in this project.

It decreases the likelihood that you're going to be able to be an effective
manager in other aspects of your role and not just in giving feedback.

And you're also not going to be able to step into that mentor role with your team where they
feel like they have someone that they can rely and support on because we've lost that trust.

So we've got to understand how we can provide effective feedback and
get our point across with our team without them feeling like we're just
completely ridiculing and criticizing them and without micromanaging them.

And also let me preface this by saying It is not totally on you to protect all of their feelings,
like Yeah, if we are criticizing something, this person might have their feelings hurt a little bit.

Hopefully they have a good enough self esteem where they can bounce back, but also hopefully
you are communicating in a way that is much more focused on the issue than the person.

So We're not trying to set out and bruise their self esteem, but we're understanding
that how they receive the information is not completely in our control.

We can only control how we give it and what we communicate and how we communicate.

And it's on the other person to receive that in a healthy and productive way.

So I just want to preface that, like, yeah, we do want to keep other people's feelings in mind, but.

Their feelings are their feelings.

You can't control all of that.

So, when it comes to effective feedback, the role that it plays is not only
in flipping the switch on all the negative stuff I said before, that loss of
trust and progress on a project, but also in overall improving team performance.

Because ultimately, when we give feedback, it's not only so that they can fix a current issue,
but it's also so that they can avoid that issue in the future and do better on that in the future.

When we can give clear and actionable feedback, then
we can improve the long term performance of our team.

We're gonna, you know, avoid safety issues.

They're going to increase the quality of their work.

They're more likely to stay on They're more likely to Discuss problems with you and
to have that open communication when we have that clear and actionable feedback.

When I think of how to, when I think of how to give feedback, I always think of my mom.

So for some of our listeners that don't know, I work with my mom.

My mom is the operations manager for my team, and for all the businesses that I run.

It's an amazing relationship where I have someone that I can be very vulnerable and a hot mess
with, uh, day to day, but also someone that I can be strategic with in an honest and open capacity.

However, it's still my mom reporting to me.

I still manage and oversee my mother, which is the reverse of most of our
dynamics and most of our, of our relationships with our parents, right?

And it's an interesting experience when you have to give feedback to a parent.

or parental figure, or someone that is older that you hold in a higher esteem.

It's an interesting dynamic and it requires quite
a bit of balance and quite a bit of thoughtfulness.

And so when I think of how would I give someone else
feedback, I, rely on how I would give feedback to my mom.

And when I give feedback to my mom, my number one goal is to respect her so that she
understands, hey, I do not think that I'm better than you because I'm giving you this feedback.

I do not think that you are not a good person or that you're
not a good team member because you missed the mark here.

It's simply a mistake was made and we need to make sure that this mistake doesn't happen again.

So if you have a healthy relationship with your parents, maybe that
is a good mindset for you to be in when you go about giving feedback.

If not, if you don't have a healthy relationship with
your parents, then just don't use that mindset, right?

Pick something else.

Pick a different relationship or other frame of reference where
you can be in the mindset of compassion and clear expectations.

Because clarity around expectations has to come first.

We have to understand what exactly was the mistake,
and what exactly should have happened differently.

If you cannot communicate that, if you can't communicate what should
have happened differently, then you're not ready to give feedback.

That's where you're going to get into that micromanagy, or overbearing
mindset if you only come to them with what the mistake was.

This is going to go back to we had an episode a few weeks ago
about team members coming to you with solutions and not problems.

You've got to model that behavior as well with them.

If you want your team members to get into a problem solving mindset, then
you also have to show them what it looks like to come up with solutions.

And this, a great way to start with this is with your feedback.

So have clarity in your expectations.

Explain what went wrong, what the mistake was, but
also explain what your expectations are moving forward.

What does success look like in this task or in this project or speaking with this customer?

What does success look like moving forward?

If they do not understand that level of expectation,
they're not going to know how to avoid the mistake again.

This is one of those points I stress with.

in almost every project with every client in a lot of the
episodes of Construction Trailblazers is know your expectations.

You can't onboard and train, you can't give feedback, you can't correct, you cannot
develop your team if you don't know what the hell your expectations are in the first place.

So get clear on that and also get clear on accountability.

Who is actually responsible for this?

It's its own topic.

We're not going to dive too far into that, but make sure that you have a great way
of tracking who's responsible for what, because if something gets messed up and
you don't really know who was responsible for something, or someone actually didn't
know that they were responsible for it, It's going to be tough to give feedback.

They're going to be able to rebuttal your feedback with a whole bunch of excuses
because there really wasn't a way to hold them accountable in the first place.

So just make sure that you have your checks and
balances on roles, responsibilities, and accountability.

A race heat chart is a great way to do that.

Again, we're not going to dive into that on this episode, but if you have
that in place, then you can give feedback in a way where they can't just.

Format of the feedback with excuses, they have to take
accountability and own up to their mistake as well.

The second point here on giving effective feedback is to really provide the context and the purpose.

So going back to we wanna understand what went wrong, what
the mistake actually was, and what the expectations were.

We've gotta also put into context what the consequences of messing up in this way.

is.

If it's a safety issue, then we're emphasizing, hey, this person could have
gotten hurt, you could have gotten hurt, if you cause an injury for someone else,
these are the consequences, or this is the fine that the company has to pay.

If they're messing up with speaking with a customer, then we
can mention, you know, how that customer can then leave a,

You want to put into perspective what the dominoes are of them messing up in this way.

For instance, one of the pieces of feedback I had to give my mom was around customer service.

She is so skilled in so many different ways.

However, she's a New Yorican.

She's got a little bit of spice to her, and there's areas, there's moments
where she can be more direct, and for people that know her, it is not offensive.

It's just, oh, okay, the switch has been turned on, we're
focused, we're paying attention, it's get to work time.

For people that don't know her, it can feel slightly more abrupt, because not everyone is
used to very direct communication styles, and that didn't sit well with one of our clients.

And I had to go back.

and kind of explain to her, Hey, this is the expectation around communicating with clients.

Here's how this person interpreted how you communicated with them.

And here's the consequences of that.

We did have to end up compensating them in a certain capacity
to kind of backtrack on a negative review that they gave us.

And we did have to find alternative ways of going above and beyond for this client
that took up time, that took up money, that ultimately we didn't need to spend on
this problem if there was a different level of customer service in the first place.

So there's context around This was a mistake, and
here's why avoiding this mistake in the future matters.

Another element here was that there was a big focus
on the behavior, or the mistake, and not the person.

So I'm not going about and insulting my mom about like, Oh, you're a horrible person,
or like, you suck at customer service, or you could never talk to a client again.

that's the type of feedback where you are overbearing, and your entire
objective is to make this person feel shitty about making this mistake,
and that's not going to help them avoid the mistake in the future.

That's just going to make them feel really shitty in the moment, and then be kind of nervous
moving forward, and probably nervous enough to make another mistake that they could have avoided.

So, when we're going about feedback, make sure that you're just focusing on the issue.

on what the mistake was, on the behavior that needs to be improved, on constructive criticism,
and not on making the person feel like they're really shitty for making this mistake.

Kind of just basic human decency.

A great model that we can follow here to kind of put all these pieces into place is the SBI model.

That's Situation, Behavior, Impact.

So the situation is, the context of what happened, the behavior being what the mistake
was, and then the impact being the consequences or the outcomes of that behavior.

You can go an extra step here by adding an R so we could
say it's the SBIR model and R standing for recommendation.

So what is the recommendation moving forward?

How would you achieve success and avoid this issue
and avoid this behavior the next time it comes up.

So S B I R, Situation, Behavior, Impact.

That is a really great framework for focusing on effective feedback
that is going to improve that team performance moving forward and help
you avoid being a micromanager or being overbearing with your feedback.

And the last thing I'd recommend here is to not only provide all those
things that SBIR, but also to allow for two way communication here.

The best way for someone to learn is for them to not
only do something, but then also talk through this thing.

So make sure that it is a two way conversation, that they are able to give their input.

Ask them, you know, why did this problem happen?

How did this occur?

Do you understand?

Why avoiding this mistake matters.

Do you understand how to avoid this mistake in the future?

What are your thoughts on this?

Invite them into the conversation so it's not just you giving feedback that could be a little
bit hurtful and make sure that they can provide their perspective and possibly also provide
some solutions so that avoiding the mistake really sticks in their head the next time.

Again, my whole approach to effective feedback is how would I give feedback to my mom to make
sure I can still run a successful business but also maintain an amazing relationship with my mom.

Again, if you don't have great parental relationships, pick another career.

relationship, another mindset, maybe it's a mentor that you
have in your company, a friend, your spouse, maybe your kids.

If you've got some great, uh, feedback parenting experience there,
pick a person that you can hold in a certain esteem and that can help
give you a mindset whenever you go to give feedback to somebody else.

And when you can Really master this skill, it's going to build so much trust in your team,
it's going to build so much confidence, and really create a culture of accountability that
so many companies strive for, and so many companies talk about, but where they so often
fall short, and it really comes back to how we communicate with our team and feedback.

It's going to lead to fewer errors on your project, higher likelihood for success on your projects,
higher likelihood for less fires to come up in your day to day so you're not pulled into the
weeds on everything, but that your team is really performing at this kick ass, awesome level.

And.

Also, it's going to make it more likely that you retain this amazing team
that you're investing in rather than having high turnover and constantly
having to correct certain mistakes and always be in this feedback mindset.

So I hope that you can follow This SBIR Situation, Behavior, Impact,
and Recommendation Framework for Giving Feedback Moving Forward.

And I hope that this was helpful for you today.

If you feel as though you might be toeing the line between poor feedback and
effective management, then I would recommend taking our Manager Superhero Quiz
to see where you might be missing the mark, or where you might be excelling.

I'll link that in the show notes, or you can go to AuxoSVS.

com forward slash quiz that's A U X O S V S dot com forward slash quiz and if you
have your own story about giving feedback, leading your team to excellence, or
overcoming a challenge in the construction world, I would absolutely love to hear it.

Reach out to me on LinkedIn or email me at hello at
construction trailblazers dot com and I'll see you next time.