What Is Your Team Afraid to Tell You? | A Bit of Optimism: Feelings at Work | PART 3

Giving and receiving feedback is one of the hardest things we do at work and most of us just... avoid it. But avoiding feedback has a cost. Everything you need to grow is already in the room and it's just sitting in your blind spot. Your colleagues can see it. Your boss can see it. And nobody will tell you, unless you learn to ask. Feelings at Work is a special five-part series from A Bit of Optimism, where Simon Sinek and Alex Simon, founder of LifeShop, explore the human skills that shape how we work, lead, and build relationships. Together, they unpack the emotional challenges most of us face every day—from people pleasing and listening to giving feedback, taking accountability, and having difficult conversations. In this episode, Alex and Simon take on feedback: how to give it, how to take it, and how to ask for it. You’ll discover ways to give feedback people can actually hear, receive criticism without taking it personally, and build a feedback culture on any team. Alex and Simon share practical techniques like the one-word ritual Simon borrowed from the Air Force that made his whole company crave critiques, the “FBI” method for delivering hard feedback without blowing up relationships, and questions Alex asks her team to surface everything left unsaid, like "What are you afraid to tell me?" In this episode you'll learn: ➡️ Why we avoid giving feedback + what that avoidance quietly costs our teams ➡️ "Spears": the Air Force ritual that turns criticism into something people actually want ➡️ The “FBI” (Feelings, Behavior, Impact) method for giving feedback people can actually hear ➡️ The Army Rangers' peer assessment’s "foxhole question" + what it reveals about character ➡️ How to think of feedback as preventative care and build that muscle ➡️ Why everyone receives feedback differently (+ how to give people what they need) ➡️ When to give feedback (hint: never the moment you think of it) ➡️ The four-word habit that builds a thick skin: "What can I do better?" Whether you're leading a team, managing up, or just tired of side-texting about a problem no one will name out loud, feedback is one of the most valuable skills you can build. And remember: feedback is kind, even when it’s not nice. This... is A Bit of Optimism. + + + Chapters 00:00:00 The Spinach in Your Teeth Problem: Why Nobody Tells You 00:03:48 The Story of Two Failed Feedback Sessions 00:06:37 Why Feedback Obsession Changes Everything 00:08:05 The Company That Was Too Nice to Give Feedback 00:10:35 Army Rangers and the Three-Level Evaluation System 00:14:24 Why Giving Feedback Feels So Hard 00:17:16 Spears: The Air Force Technique That Changed Everything 00:20:08 All the Information You Need Is in Your Blind Spot 00:22:28 FBI: The Three-Part Formula for Feedback That Lands 00:25:37 Why Vague Praise Doesn't Help Anyone 00:27:16 Credit Is Free: Recognition Languages at Work 00:31:05 The Collaboration Meeting: Preventing Problems Before They Start 00:42:34 The Air Force Commander Who Cried Every Night for Six Months 00:45:08 When to Give Feedback: Not When You Think of It 00:47:24 The Virtuous Cycle: What Happens When You Get Feedback Right 00:49:08 How to Build the Muscle of Receiving Feedback 00:51:43 Generational Difference For Feedback 00:52:57 One Simple Question: What Can I Do Better? 00:55:49 Feedback Is Kind Even When It's Not Nice + + + Website: http://simonsinek.com/ Leaderful: https://simonsinek.com/leaderful Podcast: http://apple.co/simonsinek Instagram: https://instagram.com/simonsinek/ Linkedin: https://linkedin.com/in/simonsinek/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/simonsinek Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/simonsinek + + + About Alex Simon Alex Simon is the founder of Lifeshop, a school for adult emotional education and teaches emotional intelligence at Yale University. She teaches the emotional and communication skills we all should've learned in school—but didn't. She facilitates experiential workshops on how to have hard conversations, stop people pleasing, listen better, navigate major life transitions, and build healthier relationships. Her sessions are practical, deeply connective, and somehow shockingly fun. When she was 27, Alex created The Self & Other: In Theory and Practice, one of Yale's most sought-after courses. In 2025, she founded Lifeshop in New York to bring emotional education beyond the classroom and into everyday life. She also launched The School of Life in New York and leads workshops for organizations around the world. Before dedicating her career to emotional education, Alex worked as a management consultant at Bain and held strategy and operations roles across industries. She has also lived and trained at Plum Village and Esalen and completed dozens of programs in mindfulness, communication, and personal development.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  There are really small changes that people can make, leaders and also just everyone on teams can make that will make everyone else's lives feel better. It's like the thing that people are sidebar and texting me like, oh, my God, can you believe that he just did this and that? It's like, well, no one's telling him. So how is he supposed to fix it? I'm obsessed with the fact that all of the information about how I can grow and improve is

• 0:20Simon Sinek?

  In the room.

• 0:21Speaker 00

  It's in the room and in my blind spot.

• 0:23Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 0:23Speaker 00

  And the only way that I can figure it out is by asking for it and by receiving it well.

• 0:27Simon Sinek?

  If you have spinach in your teeth, you'd want someone to tell you, right? Sure, it's an awkward three seconds, but helpful for the rest of the day. So why is it that when someone on our team is missing deadlines or dominating meetings or doing that one thing that drives everyone crazy, nobody says anything to them? Instead, we side text our colleagues, we vent to our friends, or we carry a quiet resentment for months. But do we say anything to the person to try and fix the issue? No, because that would be too uncomfortable. Giving someone feedback is one of, if not the hardest, things to do. We don't want to upset people. We don't want to start a fight.

• 1:08Simon Sinek?

  And even if we do give the feedback, we can't even be sure that it was properly received. Here's the good news. There are simple techniques we can learn to give us more confidence to have those uncomfortable conversations. And when we do, for them to go well. Instead of taking a summer hiatus, we're presenting a special five-episode series of A Bit of Optimism to go deep on human skills, the things that help us connect, collaborate, and succeed in any human relationship. That's why I invited Alex Simon to join me. She's a founder of Life Shop, where she teaches emotional intelligence. And over these five episodes, we will tackle some of the messier interactions, like having hard conversations, people pleasing, listening, and taking accountability.

• 1:53Simon Sinek?

  And of course, this one, giving feedback. Because in this age of AI, sure, the AI can write your performance review. It can draft the talking points. But feedback only works when a human being looks another human being in the eye and says, "I care about you enough to tell you this." That part is still very human. So here's what you can expect from this episode. First, I'll share a simple technique that I learned from the US Air Force that has completely changed the culture at our office in how we give and receive feedback. It turns criticism from something people are uncomfortable with into something they more than tolerate. They actually want it. Once you hear this technique, you'll become obsessed with it, just like I have.

• 2:38Simon Sinek?

  Next, we explore a deceptively simple way to say a hard thing without blowing up a relationship. And finally, I'll share an amazing story of a leader who I admire, who learned the hard way how feedback works, when it's appropriate to give it, and how to give it in a way that people can actually hear it. She thought her feedback would help people improve their performance. It turns out there's much more to understand about human dynamics than that. So let me start with my first bit of feedback for you. "I care about you, and I want you to be the best feedback giver and receiver you can be." And if you enjoyed this episode, please remember to subscribe. This is A Bit of Optimism.

• 3:26Simon Sinek?

  Let's talk about feedback. Feedback is one of those underappreciated things in a company. Everybody knows that you have to give it. Everybody knows at some point you have to receive it. People like getting good feedback. A lot of people don't like getting bad feedback. And a lot of people don't know how to give it, and a lot of people don't know how to receive it.

• 3:45Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 3:45Simon Sinek?

  And both are teachable. I had a colleague who I needed to give feedback to. And like most people, I tend to give feedback the way I like to receive feedback. I like it plain and simple. Just tell me what you need to tell me. I despise feedback sandwiches, you know, something generic and positive, something really specific and negative, and something generic and positive that's supposed to make somebody feel good. Just tell me what you need to tell me, and let's just be done with it, right? And so that's how I give feedback. Turns out, not everybody likes to receive feedback that way.

• 4:16Speaker 00

  Who knew?

• 4:17Simon Sinek?

  Who knew? So I worked with somebody and I needed to give her some feedback, and I gave it to her. It did not go well. In fact, it became a fight.

• 4:26Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 4:26Simon Sinek?

  Yeah. And what I was hoping was a relatively quick and easy feedback session ended up being an hour of de-escalation. It was rough. And then it happened again. You know, months later, I gave some feedback, did not go well. It became a fight and an hour of de-escalation. And I said to her, "We have to figure this out because I have to give you feedback, and I can't go through this every time, and I know you don't want to go through this every time. This is awful." And she said, "Feedback's fine, but I don't like the way you give it to me." And I was like, "Well, then how do you want me to give it to you?" And she said, "I just need to be prepared. Just say, 'Can I give you some feedback?'" "It's gonna be really hard to give you."

• 5:10Simon Sinek?

  "I need to be mentally prepared so I can take a deep breath if it's gonna be hard." I went, "Okay." She goes, "And sometimes I want to schedule it." I'm like, "And that's it?" She's like, "Yeah, that's it." I'm like, "Fine." So in the future, I was like, "Hey, I need to give you some feedback. It's gonna be uncomfortable. Can we do it now?" And she'd be like, "Yeah." Or she'd be like, "Can we do it on Thursday at 3 o'clock?" I'd be like, "Yeah, I can do Thursday 3 o'clock," you know? And me simply adjusting to how she wanted the feedback, she could actually take more intense feedback than almost anybody on the team, so long as she was prepared for it. And that's when I realized, that's when I learned, that we have to teach people how to give it. And we have to allow people to ask for it the way they want it.

• 5:55Simon Sinek?

  And if we get it right, I mean, it helps everybody. And when we get it wrong, it literally could completely undermine any kind of relationships or productivity or joy somebody has at work. What if you learned about what feedback is, how it works, how it's received, how it's given?

• 6:13Speaker 00

  Well, maybe I can start by saying how completely feedback-obsessed I am. So my first job out of college, I was a management consultant, and the firm that I worked at was obsessed with feedback. You had feedback with your supervisor, your direct supervisor, every week. You had feedback with everyone else on your team every other week. You had feedback with the partner on your case once a month, like a direct time. And it wasn't called feedback, it was called PD, professional development. And it was a huge part of the culture. And for me, it was normal because my first job out of college, I thought every job had that. And I was talking to one of my best friends from college, like we had a year or two into being like, working in our twenties. And she was describing some horrible situation she was having at work. I said, "Well, why don't you bring it up in your feedback session?"

• 6:58Speaker 00

  She was like, "What are you talking about?" And I said, "The next time you have feedback with your manager, like next week, why don't you bring it up?" She said, "I have feedback with my manager once a year for my performance review." And I said, "That's bananas. When are you supposed to bring things up? Like, how are you, how are you supposed to fix things?" And she said, "We don't." It broke my brain, like because it had been such an integral part of the culture, and it worked so well. I was, I just found it inconceivable that not everyone could have access to that all the time. And then I quickly learned, of course, that like most companies don't have strong feedback cultures. And there's so much feedback avoidance, and then you're missing the gold mine of information that is like, what's working well for you? What's not working well for you? And then you're kind of repeating the same mistakes over and over again. It broke my brain then, it breaks my brain today.

• 7:40Speaker 00

  To me, it's like the simplest and most powerful intervention that any company or person can do.

• 7:45Simon Sinek?

  One of the worst examples I ever saw of it, which is the avoidant part, there's this company, very large company, 100,000 employees, right? It's a company that you've heard of. And they were so obsessed with having a nice culture, and everyone was nice to each other. And everybody was so nice. The way they interpreted nice was they never gave anybody feedback. And any feedback they gave was pablum, you know? And so if somebody was underperforming, instead of sitting down and having the hard conversation with them and trying to like, help them out, they would just move them from team to team.

• 8:16Speaker 00

  Oh, my gosh.

• 8:16Simon Sinek?

  They would just get bumped, and then they would be underperforming, and they would get bumped to another team. And people had entire careers, like they were there for years, just going from team to team to team. And if you're the underperformer, first of all, you're not an idiot. You can see that you keep getting moved. So you're like, "Clearly, my career is going nowhere." And you're not getting the feedback, which means you continue to be an underperformer so that it ends up destroying people's self-confidence. So then they don't have the self-confidence to leave and find another job. They don't have the self-confidence to raise their hand and be like, "Can somebody please tell me what's going on here?" And it's just the whole thing ends up being this huge passive-aggressive culture. Everybody's nice, and nobody tells you anything. They gave plenty of good feedback, but they weren't willing to give difficult feedback or uncomfortable feedback.

• 8:58Speaker 00

  To me, it's like food in your teeth. I am always, I pride myself on being the first person to tell someone when they have food in their teeth. "Are you checking your teeth? You don't have anything. I would have told you."

• 9:08Simon Sinek?

  Yeah, thank you, yeah.

• 9:08Speaker 00

  Yeah, and you know I would have.

• 9:09Simon Sinek?

  I do.

• 9:10Speaker 00

  To me, feedback is like the higher-stakes version of that. If I choco- all over my teeth and I was walking to like a client meeting, I would expect my team to say, "Alex, you have a ton of chocolate in your teeth." And so why would I not expect them to tell me like, "Oh, by the way, the way that you ask questions makes people feel like this?"

• 9:27Simon Sinek?

  And I know the answer, because people don't know how. And if you don't have the skill, then you just don't do it, or you do it badly.

• 9:35Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 9:35Simon Sinek?

  And people, once they reach a management position, you know, congratulations, you're now, you know, in a management position. "What training will I get in my middle management?" "Oh, we'll give you new business cards." "Oh, no, no, there's no training, but now you have to have at least annual feedback sessions. Oh, and you're gonna do 360s, and you're gonna do monthly meetings." And even if you're like a really well-intentioned young leader and be like, "You know what? I'm gonna do PD. I'm gonna do personal development every week with my team." But nobody tells you how to do it.

• 10:01Speaker 00

  Okay, so that's one reason is that we don't know how.

• 10:02Simon Sinek?

  We don't know how.

• 10:03Speaker 00

  What do you think are the other things that stop us from being?

• 10:05Simon Sinek?

  We don't want to hurt somebody's feelings.

• 10:06Speaker 00

  Yeah. We would rather kind of... Hurt their feelings in a subtle way where they're being confused all the time in the long term.

• 10:13Simon Sinek?

  Well, it's like that's passive aggression, right?

• 10:15Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 10:15Simon Sinek?

  And I think there's also power dynamics, which is, you know, we view feedback as something that is given down the chain of command, but rarely up. And, you know, I appreciate companies that do three sixties when they're done properly, when they're done well, because everybody has to know. One of the best feedback loops I learned about is actually done by the Army Rangers. There's three levels to Army Ranger School. At the end of each one, there's an evaluation before you can make it to the second one. And then then an evaluation before we make it to the third one, then the third one, and then you can graduate. At the end of each track, they have three evaluations. One is very empirical. Did you perform the tasks within the timeframe required? Right? It's data. Yes, no, you did it in this time, you failed, you passed. Right?

• 10:59Simon Sinek?

  Very, very simple. The second one is your teacher, the instructor. Does the instructor think you're good and ready to go to the next level? And that used to be it. And they discovered that they had this thing called Spotlight Rangers, which people who were like, they were fricking machines out in the field. They did everything. They were the fastest, they were the best, they were incredible. The instructors loved them. They're like, this kid's gonna be a great Ranger one day. I love this kid. But then when the spotlight was turned off, that person was an asshole. But nobody knew because there was no mechanism.

• 11:32Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 11:33Simon Sinek?

  And so they implemented the third thing, which was peer, peer review. So now you need to pass all three. You need to empirically be good at your job. The instructor needs to think you're good. And the other Ranger candidates evaluate you. And the way they did the evaluation was absolutely incredible.

• 11:51Speaker 00

  How'd they do it?

• 11:52Simon Sinek?

  I will tell you because it's absolutely incredible.

• 11:54Speaker 00

  I love seeing you sell it up.

• 11:55Simon Sinek?

  It's one page. So you have to fill out this form multiple times, depending if there's 12 people in the class. You fill it out 11 times, right? And the first thing you do is they have the values of the organization written down. And you have to evaluate each Ranger candidate if they're upholding the values based on your assessment. Then you have to rank all the Rangers in terms of best to worst. I'm not sure I like that part of it, but I get it. But then there's my favorite, favorite, favorite question that they ask on every evaluation. Would you go to war with this Ranger? Would you share a foxhole with this Ranger?

• 12:25Speaker 00

  What's a foxhole?

• 12:26Simon Sinek?

  It's a hole in the ground that you just sit and wait all day. Sharing a foxhole with somebody, the business equivalent would be like, would you pitch a new piece of business with this colleague? Would you get stuck at an airport for six hours with this colleague?

• 12:39Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 12:39Simon Sinek?

  Right? It's that equivalent. And what I love about that is, oh, my God, yes, I'd go to war with this person because they're a machine, they're brilliant, look at their skills, incredible. Would I share a foxhole? Heck, no. And it was revealing of character.

• 12:49Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 12:49Simon Sinek?

  And it was just one page. And they gave it to them when they were tired because they found out that when they were tired, they were more honest.

• 12:54Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 12:55Simon Sinek?

  Yeah. And you had to be a good person as well as being good at your job, as well as being good at managing up in order to make it to the next level. And one of the things they told me was they also evaluate how somebody receives feedback. That actually goes into the evaluation. So they sit down with each Ranger and be like, so we've got your evals here. And your colleagues think you're an asshole. And if the Ranger goes, huh, well, that's not good. All right. Okay, I'm gonna work on that. Thank you for that. Versus, I know what happened. There was this one incident on Thursday. I know why they said that.

• 13:35Speaker 00

  Who wrote that?

• 13:36Simon Sinek?

  Yeah, who wrote that? I know why they said it. It's not a big deal. I understand where that comes from. We're good. You know?

• 13:42Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 13:43Simon Sinek?

  So it wasn't just the giving of the feedback, it was the ability to receive the feedback.

• 13:47Speaker 00

  Mm hmm. It's an amazing anecdote because it really does show what what happens when you build a culture where those things matter.

• 13:53Simon Sinek?

  Yeah. There's a conceit here, which is there's no one way to do feedback. There's no one way to do three sixties. There's no such thing as a perfect feedback mechanism. And you want well-rounded feedback. You want to have multiple feedback systems because it fills in the gaps. And the feedback system that the that you choose should fit the culture as well. You know, the forced rankings definitely is important for Army Rangers. It's probably not important for most companies. In fact, I would actually recommend against it. But feedback fundamentally is difficult.

• 14:23Speaker 00

  Yeah. Why do you think it's so difficult?

• 14:24Simon Sinek?

  It's hard to give, it's hard to hear, especially if you care about your work. It's never good to hear that you didn't do something well.

• 14:32Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 14:32Simon Sinek?

  Or it's very hard to tell somebody that there's a behavioral issue.

• 14:38Speaker 00

  It's hard when it feels so personal.

• 14:40Simon Sinek?

  It's hard, and I think it's hard when it feels personal. A lot of feedback is personal.

• 14:44Speaker 00

  Yeah. And I think to your point, you've you've brought up a couple of times a beautiful distinction between taking, this is about you as a person, this is a character judgment or a character assassination versus this is a behavior. And I think it's so much easier when we frame things as behaviors, those things we can work on. But I think the problem is when we don't get feedback, it's really easy for us to believe that something is about someone's character. That's something that can't change.

• 15:06Simon Sinek?

  And you receive it as such.

• 15:07Speaker 00

  Yeah. I think it's something like the brain remembers something negative four times more than it remembers something positive. Like when I think of feedback, I often think of people telling me things that were really hard to hear that I needed to work on. And that probably is because like when someone says, oh, I don't like this presentation that you did, the way that I'm interpreting it is like, oh, my God, I'm not leadership material. Or like, oh, I can't do this. Or, oh, I'm unworthy. Or what if they don't want me to be on their team? Where I'm not like, oh, interesting. Okay, let me make these, let me make these changes to the presentation. You mentioned power dynamics earlier. I think that those are also really intense, especially in this realm. We can be quite fearful about telling someone something when we're in a position of authority. And it's super hard to tell someone to give feedback up, especially when the person's not asking. There are inherent power dynamics to this.

• 15:52Speaker 00

  And the impact asymmetry of feedback is so intense. Like something that a supervisor can say in an offhanded way can be the thing that keeps someone else wide awake at night for three weeks. That's a lot of pressure.

• 16:05Simon Sinek?

  The concept of a whisper becomes a shout. And I always remind people who start to climb the corporate ladder, you have to remember that whispers become shouts.

• 16:12Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 16:12Simon Sinek?

  You're the same person. It's by virtue of the social, the social hierarchies, and in this case, formal hierarchies. So as you said, an offhanded comment could make someone's day or destroy their week. A joke that would be fine to make when you're just one of the, one of the colleagues, you can no longer make that joke because you're in a position of authority now and the rules are different.

• 16:30Speaker 00

  And combine that with the feeling of, oh, my God, this is a verdict on my character.

• 16:34Simon Sinek?

  Right.

• 16:35Speaker 00

  That that's that compounds.

• 16:36Simon Sinek?

  Right.

• 16:37Speaker 00

  That's why it can feel so intense. And so, yeah, we're worried about hurting people's feelings because we often can hurt people's feelings. And so then we avoid saying things that are true that could ironically help the person feel better every single day.

• 16:46Simon Sinek?

  Let's talk about how to give feedback and how to receive feedback. We've talked about this in one of the other episodes, but I think it's worth repeating because it's, it's, it's, A, it's brilliant and B, it's been, we've implemented, it's been hugely powerful in our companies, this concept of spears. Again, something I learned from the Air Force. Here's a scenario, you know, pretty fairly common. Somebody will work two weeks on their PowerPoint in the corporate world and they'll come in and they'll give the big presentation. And at the end, they're like, pretty good, right? Pretty good, right? And I was in a meeting in the Air Force and somebody came in, they'd worked really hard on their presentation for two weeks, you know, and they came in and they gave their presentation. And at the end of the presentation, they went, spears?

• 17:26Simon Sinek?

  And what they meant was, here's my work, throw spears at it, make it better. And it was just part of their culture, this idea of make my work better, please. And I found it so remarkable because it was A, depersonalized, right? Because usually when we give, so many of us in private sector, when people criticize our work or compliment our work, we take it personally. Like, they said my work is good, that's because I'm awesome. They said my work is bad, oh, my God, they hate me. Right? Which of course is not true, at least not most of the time. Sometimes it's true. And so I brought this story back to our company and we started doing it. So somebody would give a presentation or somebody would lay out their work or their plan. And at the end, they would say, spears?

• 18:11Simon Sinek?

  And people would say, this doesn't work, that doesn't add up. Have you considered this? And the person would be like, yep, this is good, this is good. Then the the simple mechanism made it so, it was brilliant. And and it even became a way to give criticism when it wasn't a formal scenario. So somebody's like, here's my idea. And somebody goes, can I give you a spear? And you'd be like, yeah, yeah, go ahead. And so we now have this culture where all work, you people ask for spears, like always. And the amazing thing, it has been completely depersonalized, that everybody knows that we're in this together, that the spears are being thrown to make the work better or help me see things I can't see. And it helps people not take it personally. It's been one of the best things we've ever implemented in the company. And it happens all the time.

• 18:54Simon Sinek?

  So this is one of those mechanisms where feedback isn't necessarily a session. This is, this is literally every time an idea or a piece of work is proposed, that spears are available.

• 19:03Speaker 00

  Mm hmm. It sounds like feedback is seen as the source of information that helps you improve things.

• 19:07Simon Sinek?

  Yes. And the best thing about it is people who maybe formally struggled with receiving feedback because they took it personally, they didn't know how to take it, even people who weren't that good at giving it. Like, we now have a culture where people crave the spears. They're like, what do you think of my work? It's great. No, no, no, no. Spears, please. Like, give me spears because I want your help to make my work better. They're all turning into little Alex Simons.

• 19:33Speaker 00

  I feel like I. So I teach emotional intelligence at Yale and my favorite thing that any one of my students has written in any evaluation I've ever gotten was about feedback. So every single week, after every class, I email all of my students and I say, please do a review of this feedback form. What did you like in today's class and what could be improved? And I ask a couple of questions. At the end of the semester in my course evaluations, one of my students wrote, if there was anything you didn't like about this class, then that's on you because Alex asked for feedback every single week to get implemented all the changes that we asked for. It's not true. I didn't implement all the changes, but I certainly tried my best.

• 20:05Simon Sinek?

  It's not about implementing, it's about being heard.

• 20:08Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's about taking other people into consideration and figuring out what's in your blind spots. I often think that there are really small changes that people can make, leaders and also just everyone on teams can make that will make everyone else's lives feel better. It's like the thing that people are sidebaring texting me like, oh my God, can you believe that he just did this and that? It's like, well, no one's telling him. So how is he supposed to fix it? I'm obsessed with the fact that all of the things, all of the information about how I can grow and improve is

• 20:36Simon Sinek?

  In the room.

• 20:36Speaker 00

  is in the room and in my blind spot.

• 20:38Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 20:39Speaker 00

  And the only way that I can figure it out is by asking for it and by receiving it well. To me, feedback is preventative care. It's not waiting for things to already be too far gone by the time you're bringing them up.

• 20:50Simon Sinek?

  It's eating healthy before you're a diabetic.

• 20:51Speaker 00

  Exactly. And it feels so good. It's a muscle.

• 20:54Simon Sinek?

  Like, like, you know, I think, you know, like going to the gym for the first time, it does hurt.

• 20:59Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 20:59Simon Sinek?

  And then the pain goes away and you start to really enjoy sort of pushing your body a little harder. And I think this is why I love Spears, because it's a very light lift. It's a very easy thing to implement in any organization. And what it does is it starts to flex the muscle, starts to build the muscle for people. And to the point where people get impatient hearing the good stuff, they're like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Give me, give me the Spears. Because that's, that's the good stuff.

• 21:21Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 21:22Simon Sinek?

  That's my blind spot. That's the thing that I'm not seeing. Like, that's the thing that makes me better. Like, nobody learns anything, you know, from the good times. We learn things when we screw up. There's a great line that I read in a relationship book that is so applicable at work and when it comes to feedback, which is, it said, we all live with the fantasy that our partners can read our minds. You know, it's like, it's like, why didn't you do that? Well, I didn't know. Well, you should know. Well, I didn't. Why didn't you tell me? Well, I shouldn't have to tell you. I was like, what?

• 21:50Speaker 00

  I'm sorry.

• 21:51Simon Sinek?

  And it's the same at work, which is, you suck at this. Well, you tell me. Well, you should know. Like, we all live with the fantasy that our boss can read our mind. We all live with the fantasy that our employees can read our minds. We all live in the fantasy that our colleagues and coworkers can read our minds. And the answer is, they can't. So Spears is a, is a fantastic mechanism to give it, but it's also a fantastic mechanism for people to learn how to receive it. Let's talk about giving feedback for a second. So FBI, it's just a, it's just a mnemonic. I actually learned about it in a, in a listening class, believe it or not. And I think feedback heavily overlaps with the skill of listening. And it's just a technique to give feedback in a way that other people can hear it and

• 22:32Simon Sinek?

  take accountability. Right? That can be about anything. It stands for feelings, behavior, and impact. How do I feel? What is the behavior that you perform that made me feel this way? And if the behavior doesn't change, what will be the impact? You can do it in any order. And we've gamed it out with just like permutations of all the twos and it doesn't work. You have to do all three. Again, the order doesn't matter, but you have to do all three. And the consideration for FBI is the feedback you give has to be based on something specific. So general feedback doesn't work. Like, you're always late to meetings. Because they'll tell you the one time that they weren't late to the meeting and you're like, yes, that time you weren't. And they're like, well, then what's the problem? Right? Well,

• 23:12Simon Sinek?

  every other time, but I wasn't that time. And it derails it. And even if it is repetitive behavior, you choose the most egregious or the most recent for the, for the behavior you want to demonstrate. And you should always prepare your FBI statement before you do it. It should never be done on the fly. So it could sound something like, I'm concerned. Okay. When you came to the meeting late on Thursday, it made the rest of us feel like we were less important to you than anything else you're doing. And my fear is that if you continue to come to meetings late, it, it will have serious implications for morale.

• 23:52Simon Sinek?

  And then you shut up and you go into listening mode. If they get defensive or deny it, the reason you've written it down and you know it before you go in is you can't get flustered or take the bait. And if they start getting into so like, well, I need to talk to you about the time that you, you're like, let's talk about that later.

• 24:07Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 24:08Simon Sinek?

  Want to hear your feedback. Right now, what I want to talk about is, I'm concerned because on Thursday, when you showed up to the meeting and you simply repeat the statement. And what it's designed to do is make somebody take accountability. It's designed to make somebody listen. Right? It works really, really well. On the, some occasions that things get out of hand, you end the feedback session. You say, this isn't, clearly this is the wrong time. This is, this is no longer constructive. Why don't we try and revisit this again another time? But the minute they start talking, oh, I hate being late to meetings. You immediately become the listener, even though you're the one giving the feedback. You then become the therapist. They say, oh, I hate being late to meetings. Tell me more. It's something

• 24:49Simon Sinek?

  that, it's chronic. I, I didn't know that it was affecting the team so badly, but I, you have to understand, I struggle. Go on, what else? And you just let them go through it and you let them solve their own problem. They'll be like, you know, I should probably just like, put it in my schedule. That would probably be better and I can set the alarm in the schedule. Go on, what else? Well, I think that would really help. Okay, I'm really glad you gave me this feedback. Thank you. You know? And that's what it's designed to do. The best thing about FBI is it works fantastic for positive feedback as well.

• 25:16Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 25:16Simon Sinek?

  It makes positive feedback even more powerful than just saying, hey, good job.

• 25:20Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 25:20Simon Sinek?

  Like, I am so beyond inspired. On Thursday, that presentation that you gave was so good and the effort that you put in was so clear. I know that if you continue to do work like that, that this company and your career skyrocket, like rocket ship.

• 25:39Speaker 00

  Yeah, I feel amazing even though that's fake.

• 25:43Simon Sinek?

  But doing all three really makes someone feel good.

• 25:47Speaker 00

  And it also helps positively reinforce the behaviors that you want to see more of. Like vague praise, like, great job last week. I don't know what I did well. You know, like, if, if great job on this, this and that. It's like, oh, great. Now I know I can do more of that.

• 25:57Simon Sinek?

  Yeah. And the other thing is it, it, it labels behavior.

• 26:00Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 26:01Simon Sinek?

  It's not you, you're always late.

• 26:04Speaker 00

  Mm hmm.

• 26:04Simon Sinek?

  When you showed up late. You know, I think you and I both know this. You criticize the behavior, not the person. You're a liar. No, no, that's criticizing someone's character.

• 26:12Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 26:12Simon Sinek?

  You told a lie. That's a behavior.

• 26:15Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 26:16Simon Sinek?

  Like, you told a lie on Thursday.

• 26:17Speaker 00

  What I also love about the specificity of on Thursday, like the, the specific

• 26:21Simon Sinek?

  Because all mistakes happen on Thursdays.

• 26:21Speaker 00

  time.

• 26:24Speaker 00

  Exactly. The other thing that I love about it is that it strays away from what I call never, never land, which is like, when you're like, you're always like this. So you're never like this. It's so hard.

• 26:33Simon Sinek?

  You discount them.

• 26:34Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 26:35Simon Sinek?

  Because you can think of the one or two that that's not true and you just discount the rest.

• 26:37Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 26:38Simon Sinek?

  Never, never land. I love that. You're always this. You're never that. So good.

• 26:41Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 26:42Simon Sinek?

  So I think when we think about feedback, when people hear that word, I think people immediately associate the concept of feedback with criticism.

• 26:50Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 26:51Simon Sinek?

  And feedback is just that. It's getting information to me. And feedback can be positive.

• 26:59Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 26:59Simon Sinek?

  Feedback can be negative. Feedback can come in the way of recognition. That is a form of feedback.

• 27:06Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 27:06Simon Sinek?

  Right? It gives you information about how you're doing and how people think about you, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And that is also desperately lacking in companies, which is systems of recognition.

• 27:16Speaker 00

  Yeah, I'm, think systems of recognition are one of the lowest lifts and most powerful ways to help people grow, like to positively reinforce behaviors as opposed to only negatively reinforce behaviors. There, I heard this thing probably 10 years ago that I still think about all the time, which is this idea that credit is free. You can always give people credit. You can give them recognition. You don't, you know, it doesn't need to be anything financial. You can always, out of the abundance of your heart, just say like, hey, great job on this thing. Or like, I just want to celebrate so and so because they did an incredible job on this. I think it goes against what a lot of us think, which is that credit is a scarce resource. Like, oh, you get credit or I get credit. As opposed to kind of like celebrating your piece of it, also uplifting my piece of it and recognizing everyone. I think a lot of people know about love languages, like acts of service, gifts, all the quality

• 27:59Speaker 00

  time, all of those. I think there should also be recognition languages. Like, there are different ways.

• 28:04Simon Sinek?

  Amen.

• 28:04Speaker 00

  Yeah, that you like to be recognized and praised versus how I like to be recognized.

• 28:07Simon Sinek?

  Amen. Hundred percent. And the irony is, is people generally know.

• 28:11Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 28:12Simon Sinek?

  People know how they like to receive criticism and people know how they like to be complimented or celebrated.

• 28:18Speaker 00

  I think another one is kind of public praise.

• 28:20Simon Sinek?

  Public praise.

• 28:21Speaker 00

  Of like a channel on Slack where it's like, so and so did this thing. You know, celebration emoji.

• 28:27Simon Sinek?

  Right.

• 28:28Speaker 00

  Yeah. And everyone's like, yay.

• 28:30Simon Sinek?

  I think acts of service for some, like,

• 28:32Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 28:33Simon Sinek?

  hey, you did a great job. Take a day off. Or awards for some, like, here's a trophy.

• 28:39Speaker 00

  I think private recognition also.

• 28:41Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 28:41Speaker 00

  That can go in both ways, right? Like, either your supervisor complimenting you or also someone you supervise. You know, like, I was talking to a friend of mine the other day and he said, yeah, you know, I, I got a raise at work. And also I got this letter that my supervisor wrote me about how I make him feel on the team. And this thing made me cry.

• 28:58Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 28:59Speaker 00

  You know, and so it really depends what actually will move you. Might be different from what you expect. How do you like to be celebrated?

• 29:05Simon Sinek?

  Like, I don't need, I don't need awards. Of course, I'm always grateful for whatever kind of recognition somebody gives me. But the stuff that like feeds me, you know, that's what we're talking about. The stuff that inspires me. That's what we're talking about.

• 29:16Speaker 00

  So what feeds you?

• 29:17Simon Sinek?

  So I want to be valuable. And the way I feel valuable is to feel included. And so for me, the best reward is to be invited in to contribute. Simon, can you attend the meeting? Yes. I just want to have a seat at the table. And that is the single greatest recognition you can give me.

• 29:40Speaker 00

  At your own team. That's what makes you feel the most.

• 29:42Simon Sinek?

  So amongst my own team, I just want to know that I'm inspiring people. Like, I want to know privately. I don't need it publicly.

• 29:51Simon Sinek?

  Um, but I wanna know that someone, that someone is grateful or inspired by the work we're trying to do to help them be the better versions of themselves, the best versions of themselves. And if they feel like the work they're doing is like that they're a part of something. Cause that's what I care about, you know, that we're all sort of fighting the good fight together. And we have different, different jobs and different roles. And I really like knowing that people are like by my side and as a member of the army with me.

• 30:22Speaker 00

  I asked my chief of staff the other day, like I was asking her about what makes her feel good. And she said, oh, you, I mean, you brought me banana bread last week and it was really sweet. And so I said, great, that's such an easy thing for me to do. So every once in a while, whenever I can remember, I get her a little sweet treat and I bring it. And it makes her day and it makes her, it makes her know that I was thinking about her. And I think we have this kind of idea that it's unromantic to ask somehow. Like asking someone, how someone wants to be recognized or supported or uplifted or listened to is like somehow bad, cause we should have already known.

• 30:51Simon Sinek?

  I think it's incumbent on all of us to find out, how do you wanna be? How do you wanna receive negative feedback? How do you wanna receive criticism? And how do you wanna receive recognition?

• 31:00Speaker 00

  It's interesting that you think that everyone knows. My instinct is that a lot of people don't know.

• 31:04Simon Sinek?

  I think more people know than you realize.

• 31:05Speaker 00

  For me, I think most of us are not in systems where we have enough reps. And so it might be that the concept of introducing feedback for the first time, it's like, whoa.

• 31:13Simon Sinek?

  It's something for the listeners to go try, right?

• 31:14Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 31:15Simon Sinek?

  Which is go to your team, colleagues, whatever. And say, you know, if I have to give you hard feedback, how do you want me to give it to you? Do you want it in private? Do you want me to schedule it? Like, do you want it flat out? And somebody, I think people be like, I think I like this. Or you know what? I'm not sure. Can we try it all the ways? And that way, even if, even just the, the process of trying to find out allows for the experimentation that if it blows up, everybody's like, all right.

• 31:40Speaker 00

  We tried that.

• 31:40Simon Sinek?

  We tried that, didn't work.

• 31:41Speaker 00

  Let's speak.

• 31:42Simon Sinek?

  Okay. But I think, but the problem is, and I know this is a huge thing for you, which is bring it up. Like just by bringing it up and starting the conversation, it allows at least a, a process to get to something that will be helpful and productive.

• 31:56Speaker 00

  Yeah, I actually love the way you did it as you asked the broad question, but then you also gave options.

• 31:59Simon Sinek?

  Gave some options.

• 32:00Speaker 00

  That, that to me feels really helpful. Like the big question of how do you like to receive feedback? I wouldn't necessarily know how to answer, but if you're like this or that, this or that, this or that, then I can be like, oh, this, that and this.

• 32:08Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 32:09Speaker 00

  It's like debriefing the feedback, like how did that feel? What felt, you know, what, what makes you feel motivated? What makes you shut down? I feel like we should think about what are tactical ways that we can give feedback? And then let's talk about ways that we can learn to receive it.

• 32:20Simon Sinek?

  Let's talk about timing also.

• 32:21Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 32:22Simon Sinek?

  For a lot of companies, and your friend was an example of this, they give feedback once a year. And of course it's grossly unfair, cause you're not getting feedback on what you did for the year. You're getting feedback where you did the past month or two, if you're really lucky.

• 32:33Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 32:33Simon Sinek?

  And the reason they do it once a year is usually because that's when it's tied to sort of promotion and raises and those kinds of cycles as they build in the feedback and tie it directly to. And those are formal evaluations, especially in larger companies that usually goes into a file somewhere. And then there are the, the regular feedback, there's feedback is spontaneous sometimes, you know, like Spears, it just happens all the time. Nobody, there's no set date for Spears. And so that's a mechanism. But I know you have experience with sort of the weekly and monthly model as well.

• 33:01Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 33:01Simon Sinek?

  And it's a different form of feedback in those, sometimes with a different person. But at the end of the day, the cadence of weekly feedback is very different than an annual review session.

• 33:11Speaker 00

  Totally.

• 33:11Simon Sinek?

  And what we're suggesting is sure, sure, go do your annual review session, despite all its flaws. What we're talking about here is like, how do we bring feedback in more regularly? So that people feel like they're growing. Like how horrible that you only find out how you're doing once a year. Or if you do something wrong, that's another thing, which you know, catch people doing things right.

• 33:32Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 33:33Simon Sinek?

  As opposed to catching people doing things wrong and you'll get more of the stuff you want. And I know why we catch people doing things wrong. It's because, you know, when somebody's doing their job, they're like, yeah, they're doing their job. I didn't notice, cause they're doing their job and what the heck was that? You know? And so I get that, you know, and I'm guilty of it. We're all guilty of it. They get a note from me when the social media post is off, but like, I forget to be like, great social media post, this, this whole month where nothing happened, that everything was great, you know? Uh, I, I'm aware of it. But the whole idea of catching people doing something right gives an unbalanced positive impact to just catching people when they do things wrong.

• 34:10Speaker 00

  Yeah, that reminds me of like the number one thing that I feel strongly about, about feedback, which is to have feedback, to do it regularly, to take it seriously, to make it a habit. For me, I can't imagine working with someone directly and not having feedback at least every other week. That's me personally, but I'm also an extreme. I really, really, really care about learning and growing as a person. And I really care about making sure that everyone on my team knows that I deeply am invested in their learning and growing.

• 34:34Simon Sinek?

  So how do you do it? If you do it weekly or bi-weekly, what is the format?

• 34:38Speaker 00

  It's a meeting. I do it typically on Fridays every other week. Every Friday I wanna push it because it's not like directly, it's not directly tied to any output. So all, always there's gonna be something that I want, I feel that I wanna prioritize over it. But I always prioritize it. Even though it's not urgent, it's important.

• 34:55Simon Sinek?

  Got it. So you, because you have to do work, you was like, oh, I could always cancel the feedback session.

• 34:58Speaker 00

  Totally. That is a thing that enables, that greases the wheels of doing all the work.

• 35:02Simon Sinek?

  I'm gonna use your terminology, it's preventative medicine.

• 35:04Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 35:04Simon Sinek?

  It's really easy to, you know, start eating healthy tomorrow and cancel the workout today, cause I have work to do. But if you keep canceling the workout because of work, you die of a heart attack.

• 35:12Speaker 00

  Yeah, exactly.

• 35:13Simon Sinek?

  Okay, so this is.

• 35:14Speaker 00

  So first of all, I do it. Like that's the most important thing. I prioritize it and I do it regularly.

• 35:18Simon Sinek?

  Okay, that's, that's a big one.

• 35:19Speaker 00

  Yeah. The next thing is that I think about it in advance. So I have a series of questions that I answer. So let's take with my chief of staff. She has a series of questions and I have a series of questions. I can give you an example.

• 35:30Simon Sinek?

  For you and you for her.

• 35:31Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's often the same ones. It'll probably take me 20 to 30 minutes to prepare, which is a lot of time.

• 35:35Simon Sinek?

  That's a lot of time, yeah.

• 35:36Speaker 00

  And I'll, we, we will answer something like, what is your summary of the last two weeks? What did I think I did well? What did I think I can improve on? What did I think she did well? What I think she can improve on? And then we go through, first we start with one of us and then we go through the other one. And it's incredible. We've come up with systems and what are ways that we can improve all the things that we said we wanna improve on? And then at the end, I always ask, what are you afraid to tell me?

• 35:58Simon Sinek?

  What was the last thing she was afraid to tell you? Did something in your teeth?

• 36:03Speaker 00

  I think she said, she's afraid to tell me, uh, how much she's working because she's afraid to let me down. And then I could show, like communicate to her how much she's not letting me down and how I'm grateful for her every single day, which is true.

• 36:17Simon Sinek?

  You know what I like about your system there? We used to do three sixties. And the format we used, we sort of came up with it ourselves. Your team was not the people who were like, this is the marketing team. You, the group that came into the room were the people you work with regularly. So, you know, sales may work with somebody and marketing, you may work with somebody and whatever, tech. So whoever you have regular contact with, that's, that's the group that came into the room. And everybody had to fill out a form in advance that said, what are the five specific examples of weaknesses or areas of improvement? Five specific examples of strengths or areas that I have improved? And, um, everybody filled out their own form. The forms were distributed and collated.

• 37:00Simon Sinek?

  And then when you came in, we'd go around the room and we would take turns and you would read your form to everybody. So first you would read where my weaknesses or areas of improvement are required. And then anybody else is allowed to add to your list. And the only thing you were allowed to say was thank you. And I used to give this little speech. We would say, we are here to help each other improve, to help each other grow. The people who are going to give you some of this feedback would rather not give it to you.

• 37:27Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 37:27Simon Sinek?

  It is difficult, it is uncomfortable, and it is much easier for them not to. But they're going to because they care about your growth and they want you to see your blind spots. So when they give it to you, that's why you say thank you. If you disagree with it or think they're wrong, then just disagree with it and think they're wrong in your head. Don't worry about it, right? And the way you did thank yous had to be genuine. It couldn't be like, thank you. You're like, ah, da, da, da, da, da, you know?

• 37:54Speaker 00

  Say it for real.

• 37:55Simon Sinek?

  So, so it was amazing, cause anybody could add to the list and all you were allowed to do is say thank you.

• 37:59Speaker 00

  I really love that. It sounds intense.

• 38:01Simon Sinek?

  It was super intense. So the, the negative ones were intense, but then we always ended on the positive ones because sure, you found out your blind spots in the first five, but the second ones, you found out you were having a positive impact in people's lives that you didn't even realize. And there were very often tears. Okay, safe space. And the first one was awful for everyone. And when I mean awful, meaning it was hard. But then the second time we did it, it was like, I liked it. And the third time we're like, all right, bring it on. And again, like the muscle, we got good at them. It could only be done in person. That's the caveat, like you can't do this over Zoom. You got it, because it's, it's, it's intense and it's done with love. But the, the, the point is, is your, your bi-weeklies, it's basically the same thing. Instead of five, it's one.

• 38:41Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 38:42Simon Sinek?

  Which I love, I love, but it's the same format. We also did it publicly, which is.

• 38:46Speaker 00

  We do many things too, just not public.

• 38:47Simon Sinek?

  Yeah, this is, it's, it's true, it is public.

• 38:49Speaker 00

  I love.

• 38:50Simon Sinek?

  Yeah, I mean, it's, it's intense. But part of what we were doing is creating a very, very safe space.

• 38:55Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 38:55Simon Sinek?

  Like I said, there were very often tears of joy or, or anger or sadness or any of those things. You had to learn to filter out stuff that you knew was just, somebody's gotta be in their bonnet, whatever, let them say their thing. You know, you could, you can choose to take in or ignore whatever you want. I would not recommend any company doing this unless you have at least a good foundation of psychological safety.

• 39:14Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 39:14Simon Sinek?

  If, if you're just introducing it and you haven't worked on the psychological safety, it, it is, it will, it will be a disaster.

• 39:21Speaker 00

  What I love about that is that it's, it's collective, it's building the culture of feedback, which I think is.

• 39:25Simon Sinek?

  Enforcing the culture, not building the culture.

• 39:27Speaker 00

  Yeah, you're right. And so I think if you are in a company where you can do that, amazing. And what I personally love about taking my one-on-one feedback really seriously is that I can do that anywhere I work.

• 39:36Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 39:36Speaker 00

  Every job I've had since my first job in management consulting, I have said when someone offers me the job or when I start, when I hire someone else, is I want you to know that feedback is an inherent part of working with me.

• 39:47Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 39:48Speaker 00

  That I'll be doing feedback with everyone I work with directly.

• 39:50Simon Sinek?

  I really like the adaption of the bi-weekly. What else?

• 39:52Speaker 00

  The one that I really love, this is also when I first start working with someone, is I have a collaboration meeting with them. This is something that someone did to me, someone who I was working on a project with maybe five years ago. She said, do you wanna sit down? I have all these questions before we start working together, I just wanna like, it's kind of like a stylistic check. It's an alignment check and figuring out what are our strengths? And so she sent me all these questions. The questions were things like, what are three things that support you in a working relationship? What are activities that drain you? What, what is your style of giving and receiving feedback? What does like a typical day look like in your working life? It was both really high level and also got quite granular. And I answered all these questions. We had this meeting.

• 40:28Simon Sinek?

  Was this your onboarding?

• 40:29Speaker 00

  This was part of our decision to work together. It's like we, okay, we, we wanted to work on a project together. I mean, now I do it as onboarding when I hire people.

• 40:36Simon Sinek?

  That's amazing.

• 40:37Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's like part of the interview process.

• 40:38Simon Sinek?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 40:39Speaker 00

  Yeah, so I will interview someone and if I want them to do the job, then I'll have a collaboration meeting. And so be like, okay, what do you love to do? What do I love to do? Are our skillsets complementary? Are our values aligned? And it's truly incredible because it gives an opportunity to surface things that will one day become problems.

• 40:54Simon Sinek?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 40:55Speaker 00

  So for example, when I first started my company, I met someone and we decided we wanted to be business partners. But he was in his forties, he'd already sold two companies. He'd like loved what I was doing and he wanted to do it together, but he was not gonna put in the work. And so we had this meeting, I said, what are you afraid to tell me? And he said, I'm afraid to tell you that I really don't wanna work that hard.

• 41:18Speaker 00

  And I thought about it and I was like, that is totally fair. Yeah, you're not gonna work that hard. Like if I'm picking you as a business partner, you're not gonna be in the day to day with me. And then I could think about it, decide if that was for me. Turned out I was down. It worked well for us because

• 41:31Simon Sinek?

  Because it came up, because it was known. It was a known quantity.

• 41:33Speaker 00

  Whereas if we hadn't, if I hadn't known that,

• 41:35Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 41:36Speaker 00

  Every single day, I would have been like, why aren't you doing this? Like, why am I doing this all alone?

• 41:39Simon Sinek?

  And he either gets defensive or, or shames.

• 41:41Speaker 00

  Yeah, so that's another thing that I like to do is like the preventative work of feedback, even before I start working is like naming, what are all the things that are gonna get in our way?

• 41:49Simon Sinek?

  One of the things I'm learning from you is how much of feedback is preparation?

• 41:52Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 41:52Simon Sinek?

  Like, we've talked about like finding out how people like to receive negative feedback, finding out how people like to receive positive feedback and recognition, onboarding people with, you know, to eliminate surprise. I mean, so much of it is, is so much of what we're talking about is preparation and building the muscle.

• 42:06Speaker 00

  Okay, so we've talked about specific feedback. We've talked about doing it, prioritizing it, thinking about it in advance. How do you, how do you think about, I'm curious, when is the right time to give it?

• 42:14Simon Sinek?

  I don't know what it is. It's another military story. But all of these things, I swear, are applicable in any organization, big and small.

• 42:21Speaker 00

  Well, they're really good. They're people organizations.

• 42:23Simon Sinek?

  They're people organizations, right? So there's this woman I know in the Air Force, who, three things happened to her simultaneously. Any one of them is difficult and all three happened at the same time. She got promoted to senior leadership. She got her first command. And she was deployed for 365 days to the Middle East. Any one of those is, is, is hard and all three happened at the same time. And the command she was given, she was in charge of Balad Air Base for base operations. So housing, mess hall, food, laundry, morale events on the, on the base. Like, she was in charge of all of that. And the previous two or three commanders have all been fired, but for, for doing a bad job. Right? She's a hardcore, you know, high performer.

• 43:07Simon Sinek?

  I'm gonna blow the, you know, the doors off. I'm gonna be the one that succeeds. Me, me, me, I'm gonna get it done. Watch me, I'm a star. Right? And she shows up and it's an unmitigated disaster. Nobody's taking her seriously. She's, she's in charge of soldiers and airmen who are more seasoned than she is, bigger than she is, older than she is. They're ignoring her, even though she's the commanding officer. And she admitted that for six months, she cried herself to sleep every single night. And it was going so badly, she just regretted being there, didn't wanna be in the Air Force. All she wanted to do was go home. And after about six months, she resigned herself to the fact that she had failed.

• 43:49Simon Sinek?

  And she accepted the failure. And she changed her strategy. She said, well, I failed. So I'm not gonna even bother trying to do all the things I said I was gonna do. Instead, what I'm gonna do is everybody here is away from their families. Everybody here is under a lot of stress. I'm just gonna work really, really hard to help everybody just enjoy their time while they're here. And something happened. All of a sudden, things started to go really, really well. The way she adjusted doing things, just because she had this new strategy of helping people, rather than being a, being successful. After the next six months, she ended up being a huge success. Completely turned things around and everybody missed her when she left. And one of the things she learned in this change of strategy was when to give feedback.

• 44:34Simon Sinek?

  So when we're obsessed with making the machine be the higher performing machine, we give feedback at the time things happen. So, for example, you've organized a big corporate event, right? And they put the coffee table far away from the cups and the cookies. Even if you do it nicely, like, hey, move the coffee over there, right? Catching things and fixing them in the middle of the situation. And that's what she used to do. She'd be like, move this to there, don't forget that. Especially even in the middle of fun things, she'd be correcting. And she thinks, because she's trying to make it higher performing and work better. And what it did is it ruined it for people. They're in it, it's going, people are stressed, they're taking their job seriously. And she just kept ruining it.

• 45:16Simon Sinek?

  When she changed from, changed her strategy to like, I just want people to like, do well, have a good time. You know? She wouldn't give the feedback in the middle, unless it was like, serious, serious, serious. But that was rare, right? She wouldn't give the feedback in the middle. She would do it at the end. She would be like, alright, event was great, it's over. Let's just go through what we can do better next time. Hey, the cups and the coffee were really far apart from each other. I noticed that was really annoying for people. Next one, make sure the cups are next to the coffee. People like, got it, got it, got it. And this profound little change of when we give feedback. And I started adopting it. Make notes, you know? Make little notes, keep them, keep them with you. Instead of giving feedback in the middle of the presentation, wait till the end. Instead of giving feedback in the middle of the event, wait till the end.

• 46:01Simon Sinek?

  Because you're ruining, you're ruining somebody's flow, you're ruining their fun, you're ruining the fact that they take their job seriously and they're trying to do hard work. There's a time and a place. And that time and place is not the time you have the thought of the feedback.

• 46:13Speaker 00

  I totally agree. And I would even underscore one of the things that you did automatically is, is you, even as you were giving the example, okay, the cup's over here, the table's over there. Next time, let's do it like this. Like, it wasn't like, this was bad. It's, it's growth oriented.

• 46:25Simon Sinek?

  You want the affirmative language for the growth orientation. A hundred percent agree.

• 46:30Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 46:30Simon Sinek?

  Yes, but still

• 46:31Speaker 00

  And it's not fixated on what already happened for the thing that we can't change. It's like, oh, we learned this thing. Next time, let's do it like this.

• 46:37Simon Sinek?

  Yes.

• 46:37Speaker 00

  And you still get the, the result that you want.

• 46:39Simon Sinek?

  And she was wildly successful as a result. I actually learned the story when she got back from deployment and I sat down with her, probably a week or two, right after she got back. So all the emotions were super raw.

• 46:50Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 46:51Simon Sinek?

  And she tells me the whole story about crying herself to sleep and everything. And I, she gets to the end of the story. I said, so what did you learn? And she starts crying. And she says, I've never had such a profound feeling of having a positive impact in people's lives like I did from that experience. And it wasn't about her success and it wasn't about her metrics and it wasn't about, it was about a leader's decision to take care of their people, to learn how to give feedback in a more constructive and positive way. And the result was performance through the roof. I think you and I have been sort of dancing around the point here, which is, if you learn how to give feedback, if you learn how to receive feedback,

• 47:36Simon Sinek?

  if you learn how to crave criticism and negative feedback, if you learn how to ask for feedback, if you learn how you like to receive recognition, if you learn how you like to receive criticism and you tell somebody what they don't know so that you can get it in the way that you need to hear it. The result is, you love work, you feel psychologically safe, your performance is through the roof, the company's performance is through the roof, and everybody, quote unquote, wins. If you choose to ignore all of these things because we're a performance organization and blah, blah, blah, right? You will accidentally break the machine and burn your people out.

• 48:10Speaker 00

  I love that. It's a beautiful story and I totally agree.

• 48:13Simon Sinek?

  Talking about feedback is like talking about exercise or talking about eating well, which is, the results don't happen immediately. And it is a muscle that you have to build and it is a practice that you have to work on. And it is something that you need to ask other people to watch your form, because sometimes you're not good at it, you know? Am I bending my back? No, keep your back straight. Okay, thanks, because you can't see yourself. That's what feedback is. I cannot see myself.

• 48:39Speaker 00

  Tell me what's in my blind spots.

• 48:41Simon Sinek?

  Tell me what's in my blind spots. Tell me what I can't see in the mirror, you know? The result is, everything is healthier when organizations and leaders and people and teams get good at feedback.

• 48:52Speaker 00

  Mm hmm. And that's the most empowering part of what you just said is like, it's a muscle you can build. And even though it'll be hard at first, so, so quickly, you will be able to feel the positive impacts and you won't need to be like trusting that they'll arise. It's a beautiful self fulfilling prophecy. It's a virtuous cycle as opposed to being in a vicious one.

• 49:08Simon Sinek?

  I'm curious what you've learned in your practice about how we can learn to receive criticism better, feedback better. Like, how do we build that muscle to receive? Learn how to receive or learn how we receive?

• 49:21Speaker 00

  Yeah, because not just giving feedback, it's also receiving.

• 49:23Simon Sinek?

  Yeah. It's both.

• 49:24Speaker 00

  We kind of talked about it earlier, but for me, the most important, the most important thing is to ask for it. I ask for it regularly. I ask for it big and small. I always say, what are big things that are really hard to say? And then also what are small things that I can improve? I ask as many people as possible. I'm obsessed with asking for feedback and I ask for it like I mean it. You know, there's a way to ask for it where you're kind of just giving it lip service and everyone can feel that and they won't actually give it to you. And so I ask for it. When I receive it, I get curious about it. It's not just like hearing the first thing that someone says. I'll ask questions until I genuinely understand.

• 49:54Simon Sinek?

  You receive the feedback and listen to understand.

• 49:56Speaker 00

  Yeah. I receive the feedback, I listen to understand. I get excited about it, like, like what you're talking about of like craving it is, oh my, this is the, this is the information that I need in order to get better, in order to fix this thing, in order to improve.

• 50:08Simon Sinek?

  It's like an endorphin rush when you start exercising, like,

• 50:10Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 50:11Simon Sinek?

  You start really wanting it.

• 50:12Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 50:12Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 50:13Speaker 00

  That's another one. And also I try to model for other people how to receive it. So I always express my gratitude first thing, even if I disagree with it or even if I know it's valid, but I can't implement it. Because I have a picture that sometimes the person giving the feedback doesn't, they can't see the full picture. So maybe they're telling me something, it's true and it's not changeable. I'm still like, thank you so much. I'll think about it.

• 50:32Simon Sinek?

  When people give me feedback, I first tell them that they're wrong.

• 50:39Speaker 00

  I mean, sometimes you're joking, but that's it.

• 50:41Simon Sinek?

  Unless it's positive, then I tell them that they're right.

• 50:43Speaker 00

  Of course, but it's real, though. You know, like, I got feedback last week. I just ran a month-long program. And as I am one to do, I ask for feedback after every single class. And at the end, someone who didn't fill out her feedback form the whole time, gave me a piece of feedback at the end that was about the structure of the program. And I caught a little defensive or I got frustrated. It's like, okay, well, now it's too late. I said, thank you so much. I sat with it. I tried to hear what actually the information was, even though it was too late. And I was still frustrated. It's okay to be frustrated. And then I tried to figure out what can I do to repair? What is something that I can tangibly do? Because it's one thing to say, sometimes there's nothing you can do. And then other times it's like, okay, well, this person is feeling this way. What are other ways that I can make it up to them? And not being shy about trying to get creative. And I think that's another one.

• 51:24Speaker 00

  And so especially as leaders, modeling how we want feedback to be received is also helpful for other people who we're giving feedback to. If we can show that we're curious and open and grateful and excited to receive it, then that also creates a psychological safety for when we give it. And so it becomes this beautiful cycle between people.

• 51:42Simon Sinek?

  Virtuous cycle, yeah, that's true. One of the things that I've tried to, and we can't avoid talking about the generational differences. And again, it's not a rule. Like, I know people put in the comments, I know plenty of young people who love negative feedback. It's like, yeah, yeah, yeah, I know that. Younger people say they want feedback, but what they want is positive feedback. And negative feedback is more difficult for them. And the younger generations at work, there is a trend that that they really try and avoid anything uncomfortable. And to the point where, and I've seen this happen, where they confuse discomfort for toxicity. Nope, just uncomfortable, you know? Or they confuse an uncomfortable situation for somebody who's a terrible boss. I went for a walk with somebody and she literally started the conversation with me like, my boss is a horrible person.

• 52:27Simon Sinek?

  I was like, oh, my God, does she like kick her dog when she comes home? And she's like, no, I'm like, okay. So we don't know that she's a horrible person. We know that she's not a good leader. Okay, that they're very different things. It goes back to character versus skills, right? Learning to be uncomfortable and learning to sit in discomfort is hugely valuable. And, and, and I don't mean you put up with everything. That's not what I'm talking about, right? What I'm, what I'm talking about is learning to crave. Crave is the word I would use. Learning to crave negative feedback.

• 52:57Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 52:57Simon Sinek?

  Right? And it's, there's a very simple way to get into that habit, which is no matter what, you know, if somebody pays you the compliment, because everybody loves a compliment, no matter what you do, even if somebody offers you nothing, you do a presentation. Everybody's like, thanks for the presentation. You walk out of the meeting, get in the habit of saying, hey, what can I do better? Not tell me what was good and what was bad. What can I do better? Because you're asking for it, it eliminates the fear, the discomfort. It opens the door to it. And what starts to happen is you start craving the feedback because it's making you better. It's making you more aware. And it's, it's really funny how even somebody who like is uncomfortable getting negative feedback or somebody who really like, really likes positive feedback, you actually, you start craving the criticism because you, you're getting better and stronger.

• 53:42Simon Sinek?

  It's wonderful.

• 53:43Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 53:44Simon Sinek?

  It's wonderful.

• 53:45Speaker 00

  We've talked about so many different things. I don't even know how to begin to summarize it. First of all, we have some big picture things.

• 53:50Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 53:50Speaker 00

  We talked about feedback as preventative care.

• 53:52Simon Sinek?

  Yes.

• 53:52Speaker 00

  About the kind of like food in your teeth phenomenon. You had a few amazing examples about culture of feedback of like Spears as a culture and recognition, being able to recognize each other, remember that credit is free and figure out how to recognize people in the way that they act, that actually lands and impacts them. Those are cultural ones. But I think also, we talked about a lot of ones that even if you're not in a culture that values feedback, you can also implement it in your working relationships. For me, the, the most important thing, if people are going to leave with one thing, it's to do it, to care about it, to prioritize it, to put thought into it and literally to do it. Send me it regularly, ideally every two weeks. Do it once you start working with someone, and I also do it before. But then we also, okay, with giving, we had FBI.

• 54:33Simon Sinek?

  Which is a technique for how to have a difficult conversation, how to have, how to, how to give feedback in a, in a way that is more likely to be received.

• 54:41Speaker 00

  So it's feelings, behavior, impact?

• 54:42Simon Sinek?

  Yep.

• 54:43Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 54:43Simon Sinek?

  Any order, but you have to have all three.

• 54:45Speaker 00

  We had timing.

• 54:45Simon Sinek?

  Yep. Both checking in with somebody when they want to receive it. Do you want to do it now? You want to schedule it? And if it's an event, unless it's mission critical, save it for the end. For the debrief.

• 54:56Speaker 00

  Yeah. And we also had asking people how they want to receive feedback and giving them options. And then for receiving feedback, ask for it.

• 55:03Simon Sinek?

  Ask for it.

• 55:04Speaker 00

  Proactively ask for it, ask like you mean it. And when you get it, get curious about it, be open to it, be grateful, be excited that you're getting it. Model how you want feedback to be received.

• 55:13Simon Sinek?

  Because remember, we always talk so much about the giver creating the environment. But if the receiver keeps getting defensive and going off the handle, then the giver would just be like, you know what? I can't deal with this stuff, just. So how you receive it also will set the conditions for getting more feedback. Because if you're resistant, defensive, angry, you know, all those things.

• 55:30Speaker 00

  They're going to withhold.

• 55:30Simon Sinek?

  They're, they're just not going to bother because who wants to, nobody wants to be attacked.

• 55:33Speaker 00

  And I think also remembering with all of these things, as we've said many times, and I think this is core to what both of us believe, is that we can build the muscle. And even if we're not in a culture of feedback, we can develop little one-on-one cultures where we are getting the information that we need and sharing it honestly, so we can all improve together.

• 55:49Simon Sinek?

  The way I would summarize this conversation is that feedback is kind, even if it's not nice. If you're trying to be nice and like avoid the feedback or only give positive, you're not being kind to the person because you're not allowing them the opportunity to grow. Feedback, when given appropriately with some of the techniques we're talking about, is always kind.

• 56:11Speaker 00

  It's a gift.

• 56:11Simon Sinek?

  It's a, feedback is a gift and it, even if it doesn't feel nice.

• 56:15Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 56:15Simon Sinek?

  It is always kind.

• 56:17Speaker 00

  Yeah. And I think remembering that feedback is a gift that we can give people and one that we also have to learn to receive.

• 56:21Simon Sinek?

  Yeah. So the first thing you and I are going to do.

• 56:25Speaker 00

  The debrief.

• 56:25Simon Sinek?

  After we, after we call cut, is we're going to give each other feedback. And I think what people aren't seeing, because it's not on camera, is that as we've been developing this podcast, we have been giving each other feedback. We've been giving each other notes. I love that term from Hollywood, by the way. Do you have any notes? Because like, do you have any negative feedback for me? It's like, notes is just a nicer word.

• 56:48Speaker 00

  But now I can ask you for spirits.

• 56:49Simon Sinek?

  I have notes, you know? I've got notes. You and I have been giving each other feedback to help each other do well and do better. And some of it is personal, like you have to do this better. And some of it is like, how, what kind of system do we want to make to make this better for both of us? How do we play to our strengths? And it's been really fun for us to develop this podcast with lots and lots of feedback. And from our team, there's a crew behind the cameras here that are giving us feedback too.

• 57:13Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 57:14Simon Sinek?

  Which has been really, really helpful. And it, it's really a team effort. It's fun to model it while we're actually talking about it. Yeah, yeah, good times. Uh, thank you. Until the next one.

• 57:23Speaker 00

  Until the next one. Thank you.

• 57:26Simon Sinek?

  A Bit of Optimism is a production of The Optimism Company. Lovingly produced by our team, Lindsay Garbenius, Phoebe Bradford, and Devin Johnson. Subscribe wherever you enjoy listening to podcasts. And if you want even more cool stuff, visit simonsinek.com. Thanks for listening. Take care of yourself. Take care of each other.