How Do I Give Feedback To An Employee When They Keep Making Mistakes?

Giving feedback is one of the hardest parts of leadership. You want your team to improve, but you also don't want every mistake to turn into an uncomfortable conversation. When the same issue keeps popping up, it's easy to wonder whether you're being too patient, too harsh, or simply not getting through.

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• 0:59Speaker 01

  Today's Q and A Wednesday's question comes from Patty, and she asks, "How do I give feedback to an employee that keeps making mistakes?" This is a very good question, because humans are humans. People make mistakes. How you react to that as the leader of your company is what's going to make all the difference.

• 1:22Speaker 01

  Welcome back to the $100 MBA Show. I'm your host, Omar Zenhome, where I deliver practical business lessons three times a week, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, to help you start, grow, and scale your business.

• 1:35Speaker 01

  Nicole, thanks for being here with me today. We've had to give our fair share of feedback over the last 20 years or so. But I have to say that one of the advantages that we've had is both of us were educators. We're both teachers for over a decade. And as a teacher, you're giving rapid-fire feedback constantly to students. And you have to be very sensitive to how you give that feedback to students, because everybody's different. Some students, they just want to hear the truth. Some students, you need to sandwich it a little bit with praise. Some students, if you don't give them enough feedback, they feel like you're ignoring them. There's so much you have to do, and you learn this very quickly on the fly in your first couple of years of teaching.

• 2:13Speaker 02

  You want to be discouraging.

• 2:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, so let's share some of the stuff that we do in our company, and what we've done over the last 15 years together as co-founders. How do we give feedback, Nicole?

• 2:23Speaker 02

  Yes, I think it's such a great one, because it's frustrating. We understand humans are humans, mistakes are going to happen. I think the part of this question that we're addressing is if it keeps happening. And that is probably where there is something that can be done. Because a one-off mistake, we're not saying someone can't make a one-off mistake. That is fine, we're not intolerant. And there's obviously different degrees of the kinds of mistakes. But let's focus on like, what happens if you've hired people, mistakes keep happening, maybe the same person continues to drop the ball in some way. I think there's some very clear things. And the first thing you need to identify is what kind of a mistake is it? Is it out of carelessness? Is it a knowledge gap? Or is it a systems gap?

• 3:08Speaker 02

  And I think over the years, we've found that most mistakes end up being one of those three categories.

• 3:14Speaker 01

  100%. And I want to point out that part you talked about, keep making mistakes. I've had countless conversations with other entrepreneurs who complained to me, vent to me, this person keeps making mistakes. And I asked them, "Have you spoken to them? Have you given feedback when they made the mistake the first time?" And they're like, "Not really, I kind of give hints." That's your fault if they keep making mistakes. You have to give what we call just-in-time learning, or just-in-time feedback.

• 3:38Speaker 02

  Just-in-time feedback, that's one of our mantras. It's always been the way. Yeah, I think, let's just set as a baseline, the fact that if you hire people, you're expected to talk to them, engage with them, set those expectations, set-

• 3:52Speaker 01

  Train them, yeah.

• 3:52Speaker 02

  Train them. Because this might sound really obvious, but I've spoken to so many entrepreneurs over the years who hire people, mostly probably in a remote context, and who never talk to their team. They let them go for weeks without speaking to them. And then they're disappointed, and I'm like, but you have to talk and meet with your team. I'm not saying every single day.

• 4:11Speaker 01

  So strange.

• 4:12Speaker 02

  So as a baseline, like, the expectation is if you're hiring someone and training them, touch base with them.

• 4:18Speaker 01

  Let's put it on the other end as well. Let's like flip it, you know? Imagine you hired a tennis coach, and all this tennis coach did is praise you and say, "Great job," you know, or didn't give you any feedback. And then you go play a match, and your form is off, and you're throwing the ball out of bounds, and like, "Hey, why am I performing so poorly in this match?" Probably because your coach never gave you any feedback to correct your mistakes. You would feel that they did a disservice. So the same thing goes with your employees. They want to do their best work. They want to perform at their best. But if you don't show them how to do that, if you don't correct their mistakes, which is part of showing them how to do that, then it's going to be really hard for them to be their best for your company. And this is what we talk about when it comes to just-in-time feedback, is an investment.

• 5:03Speaker 01

  It's a small little investment you're making into that team member so that they can be able to be amazing at their job. Now, having said that, I believe the biggest reason why people struggle with giving feedback and improving their team is because they believe that this is confrontational. They believe it's uncomfortable. "I don't want to have a difficult conversation." Or maybe there's like, "It's not that bad, I'll let it go this time." And that's a dangerous place to live as a leader, because you need to get comfortable having these conversations. And it doesn't have to be uncomfortable.

• 5:36Speaker 02

  That's right. And I think especially, and why just-in-time feedback is a great mantra to live by, is because you're not saving up a whole bunch of feedback for that six-month review or that annual review. No, it allows you-

• 5:49Speaker 01

  It's like a ton of bricks, yeah.

• 5:50Speaker 02

  You're right. How, you know, it's a disservice to the person too, that you've been saving and storing all this, you know, feedback that you've got for how many months. And I think the just-in-time feedback allows you to course correct in a really respectful way and start to build that pattern or the habit that this is how we operate. We provide just-in-time feedback because we want to see you win, and we're comfortable with having these conversations. It's actually no big deal. And I think sometimes the other person might feel like it's a huge deal if you wait three months, six months to have a conversation.

• 6:21Speaker 01

  We're going to talk about some examples of giving that just-in-time feedback. But if you don't do this, then you don't actually get a chance to see if your team member can learn, can improve, can change. If you don't give them enough iterations to change what they do based on your feedback.

• 6:36Speaker 02

  Right.

• 6:36Speaker 01

  So let's give some examples of what this looks like. Let's say, for example, you're working with a marketer, and this person is not using your branding colors when they're creating ads. What would you do in this situation, Nicole?

• 6:49Speaker 02

  So if someone's not using branding colors, I'm going to go back to those three categories. The mistake is out of carelessness, a knowledge gap, or a systems gap. In this case, it's a knowledge gap. Have you provided the brand guidelines? Have you sat down with the person and said, "Hey, anytime we create any marketing assets, we'd love them to be with these brand guidelines in mind." To me, that's a, I don't know, that's pretty straightforward. It's a knowledge gap, you haven't provided adequate training.

• 7:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, and it's good to kind of start with the first initial feedback with saying like, "This is probably my fault. I probably screwed up here and didn't give you the information that you needed." So here it is. Let's say, for example, another ad goes out after that meeting with their brand colors being off.

• 7:30Speaker 02

  Wow, you're really testing me. Okay, in that case, I would say that you have a systems problem. I mean, it could be a couple of things. That could be just a, hey, carelessness. I'm not heeding and learning from my mistakes, that's one thing. If it, why I defaulted to a systems gap is that there might be a checklist or a process or a procedure that is really clear. Before anything goes out, it's reviewed by one person, a set of eyes, for example. Nothing goes out without check, you know, cross-referencing or cross-checking off these items. Especially if it's a critical mistake. I mean, checklists obviously help to avoid critical mistakes. That could be a systems gap.

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• 10:32Speaker 01

  One of the things that we learned is that when we were giving feedback, when somebody makes a mistake, one of the best ways to wrap up that feedback is to ask them, what system do you have in place to make sure you're not going to make this mistake again? It's a good question to ask because you're putting the onus, the responsibility on them. Hey, listen, now you know how to do it right. How do we make sure this doesn't happen again? And they have to come up with a system. They have to, well, actually, yeah, you're right. Before I put out an ad, I should have a checklist. I should make sure that it hits all these criterias, not only the branding colors, but my own criteria as well, to make sure that, you know, the copy is no typos and, you know, the spend is the right budget or whatever it might be, the demographic, all that kind of stuff. And this allows them to be a little bit more aware of the system of their task

• 11:17Speaker 01

  rather than just saying, I'm just doing a bunch of tasks with no system.

• 11:20Speaker 02

  Right.

• 11:21Speaker 01

  So you want to train your team to be like, hey, mistakes can be avoided if you have a system to avoid them.

• 11:26Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 11:27Speaker 01

  And that's a good kind of way, I think we learned the hard ways, like, hey, we used to kind of just say, oh, man, this person's not doing it the way we want it. We need to be all over them, be micromanagers. But what we realized is that we're not really empowering them to come up with their own systems so that they can prevent these issues. And that's a good kind of feedback loop.

• 11:46Speaker 02

  And I think one of the things that we also learned in teaching that applies to this is that people learn in different ways and you understand that as a teacher. Not everyone internalizes, remembers information with the same. Some people are more visual learners, some people are more auditory, like all the different types of learning modes that there are. And so I think, let's say, we go back to this example, how did you correct that first, you know, mistake? Or how did you train the person? Perhaps like the way you delivered that training in one line in a Slack message or whatever communication doesn't, might not have landed or it wasn't clear. Perhaps that person is more like visual learner, they might need to see it on the screen. Hey, and record a quick loom and say, this is where you can find our brand guidelines.

• 12:31Speaker 02

  Make sure anything that goes out, just go here, this is a font. And then they can connect a visual instruction to, you know, that correction. So I think being mindful of how you, you know, you train your team, how you teach them and all of that is also just as important.

• 12:48Speaker 01

  You break up a good point. I think that when we're giving feedback, one of the things that we learned is we need to trust but verify. You need to verify that they actually got what you told them. In the beginning, especially, they're not going to feel super easy to say, I don't understand what you just explained to me. Or even though you just spent five minutes explaining this to me, I don't get it.

• 13:09Speaker 02

  Right.

• 13:10Speaker 01

  You know, they're just going to say, yeah, that makes sense. Like, you're probably going to say, that doesn't make sense. And they're like, yeah, yeah, that makes sense. And then it was like, I'll figure it out later. So it's important for you to get them to repeat what you did. This is something we learned from teaching again, is that like, if I'm teaching somebody long division, I'm going to teach them each step of long division. I'm going to show them, hey, you know, this is the first step, second step. You go ahead and do it. This is called input output. I'm giving them the input and then they have to output what I just taught them so that I can verify they got what I taught them. And this is super critical as a teacher because you got to make sure that they understand these concepts so they could pass the exam. As a leader in your team, you or your leaders in your team need to do this. You need to make sure like, hey, this is the procedure to do XYZ. When you're emailing a sponsor, this is what we're doing, 1234. This is who you CC, this is the format of the email, this is what you attach,

• 13:55Speaker 01

  this is the branding guideline, this is the price list or whatever it is. And then you get them to do it again. It's like, okay, next time you're going to send this email, I'll pull my chair over. And you see, okay, you didn't CC me on this email. Why didn't you CC me? Oh, yeah, you're right. What procedure, what SOP do you have to make sure that this doesn't happen again? And like, oh, I need a checklist. Make the checklist now. So getting them to repeat it in front of you is a little tedious, but they can go out and work on it and then come back to you. And then you can just verify, like we said, trust but verify, that they actually understood the instructions.

• 14:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, and one of the things that we've done is with providing feedback on more complicated tasks is not to just provide it in a written format because I think a lot of meaning and nuance is lost and it's not really clear when someone's just reading something that you've written. So if you're giving design feedback, I think it's really helpful to provide that feedback in a recorded video, sharing your screen, because you get other input in terms of the tone and the, yeah, there's nuance, right? To a message where you're hearing somebody's voice. And one of the things we did is that when we provide that feedback via a recorded video like that, is that we expect a video back. Because that is, rather than just a, hey, got it, noted,

• 15:12Speaker 02

  depending on the, you know, the scope of the feedback or what's being talked about, because you can verify that the person's gotten the nuance, gotten what you've actually tried to communicate and they've responded in kind by, by sending you a recording back.

• 15:27Speaker 01

  All right.

• 15:27Speaker 02

  That's been really helpful.

• 15:29Speaker 01

  There are cases where people make mistakes despite all your training. Can you recall a scenario and how we dealt with it?

• 15:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think it comes back to the business owner. I think if that's happening, there's a few things. Have you been clear enough in what you expect? And I think we put a lot of systems in place like KPIs. We put a role description in place. When someone starts, we write out, these are the things, this is what the role is about.

• 15:53Speaker 01

  This is how you win.

• 15:54Speaker 02

  This is how you win. And it's a conversation with the person. And also that conversation allows for them to say, you know what? This is actually maybe a stretch for me. This could be something I could ramp up to in three to six months. So you get clear on where the person feels comfortable in the things that you're asking them to do. So I think that role description and having that time at the very beginning to be super clear about what's expected, you have to do it. And I think it goes a long way to avoiding mistakes. And the other side of it is, so once you've done your bit as the leader, as a manager, whatever, in providing very clear instructions about what the role is about, you might have put the wrong person in place and there might be a mismatch of skills.

• 16:37Speaker 02

  You might be expecting them to do something that is beyond their capability, you know, despite all your efforts in course correcting and just in time feedback, if it keeps happening, and I am thinking of an example where that has happened, and I've either, I've decided that that person is probably better suited to working within this scope. And I can't expect them to do something beyond that. That could be a solution. You might have more to say on this, though.

• 17:02Speaker 01

  Yes, it actually leads to something I want to mention to everybody who's watching and listening, is that you should subscribe because we have an episode on how to make your first hire. It's coming up really soon. So make sure you hit subscribe. It's a step-by-step playbook of how we go through the hiring process, from writing a job description to the interview process, to checking references, through the onboarding, through the test project, all that stuff. So hit subscribe so you don't miss that episode. It's, I think, the next episode, actually, that's coming up. So you don't want to miss it. But I do want to push back a little bit because I'm a true believer that sometimes people just don't have what it takes to do the role. Sometimes people just don't have the raw stuff that you need. Intelligence is a thing. Capability is a thing. Talent is a thing.

• 17:43Speaker 02

  Yes, okay.

• 17:44Speaker 01

  An attitude, the right attitude to learn and grow is a thing. But sometimes you just can't change. You can't change that at all. Like, so sometimes people are just not going to have the capability to do what you want them to do. By the way, like you said, it's your fault. You're the person that hired them.

• 18:00Speaker 02

  I was going to say, isn't that on you?

• 18:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's totally on you. But what I'm saying is that like, sometimes you just have to mark it up like, hey, I'm asking, it's kind of cruel. I'm asking this person to do something they just simply can't do.

• 18:12Speaker 02

  Right.

• 18:13Speaker 01

  And even though I'm training them, they're just, still don't have the aptitude to pick it up. So you don't have to just like chalk up the loss. I made a mistake, I made the wrong hire. We've had situations in Webinar Ninja where we made a hire and this person struggled for years.

• 18:29Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 18:30Speaker 01

  And we kind of just tried our best to train them, make them better and like shore up their mistakes and da, da, da. And then when we had that tough conversation, we said, listen, we don't think this is a good fit. I think it's time for you to move on. You know, we're happy to give you, you know, an honest reference as you move on. This person was so relieved. They're like, oh, finally, we're having this conversation because I felt like an imposter the whole time. I felt like I was struggling. I felt like I was trying to fake it till I made it, but I never made it.

• 18:55Speaker 02

  Right.

• 18:55Speaker 01

  I think it's sometimes you just have to like, cut your losses and say, hey, like I always say, don't put good money after bad money. Don't reinvest into something that's just not working. That sunk cost fallacy is a real thing. Like, just move on, have that tough conversation and remember that pain. So when then you make the next hire, you don't make the same mistake again.

• 19:14Speaker 02

  Right, because if it is, I still stand by those three categories. In this case, if it's a knowledge gap where the person is with your training and your coaching, whatever the situation, you know, calls for, with training and coaching, they're still not able to meet your expectations of what you want them to do, then you've made the wrong hire.

• 19:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 19:33Speaker 02

  Then they're the wrong fit for the role. You still give them that chance. And if it's not carelessness, it's not lack of training, it's not a lack of systems, then you really need to, yeah, accept the fact. And what is it, hire slowly, fire quickly?

• 19:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, hire slowly, fire quickly, yeah. I want to get a little bit into the detail of giving feedback. How do you give it without feeling like you're a monster or something, you know? I personally like to start with my intentions. I like to say to the person I'm giving feedback, hey, listen, I want you to do your best. I want you to win. When you win, I win. You know, as a business owner, you know, I'm getting the best version of you. And this is where this feedback is coming from, okay? That sometimes just drops all the nervousness and drops all the tension. From that point on, I've tried to be as honest and as caring as possible. Like, it's, there's no reason to be around the bush. Too many people, they are too vague about their feedback. They're like, can you try this X, Y? Just tell them how to do it.

• 20:31Speaker 01

  Just say, this is what I'm expecting, this is how I like it, this is how you're doing it, this is how I think you should do it to get this result. You know, just paint the picture, just like you're coaching somebody to like, shoot a free throw, right? In basketball, I use basketball metaphors all the time because I play basketball. But like, if I'm going to give them instructions like, hey, you're not bending your knees enough. Bend your knees a little bit longer. No, more, more. Okay, great, that's how you do it. You know, like, that's how, like, you wouldn't feel bad about that as somebody who's being trained. You understand, oh, yeah, there's a difference between what I was doing before and what I'm doing now, and I see the result as different. So I think that it's important to come with intention, be as honest and clear as possible, and You can sandwich with praise, but what I like to do is I like to hold my praise

• 21:15Speaker 01

  until they actually get the chance to do it themselves again. And it's like, okay, great. Look at that. That was amazing. So much better this time. Now you're on the right path.

• 21:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 21:24Speaker 01

  That positive reinforcement actually makes sense when they do something right. But don't just give them praise when you just gave them some training.

• 21:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's very forced when it's the sandwich that everybody talks about.

• 21:38Speaker 01

  They know it's coming. They know like, here's all this praise, here it comes.

• 21:41Speaker 02

  That just feels so inauthentic. I think from what you just shared, I think about the feedback that's devoid of emotion, that focuses on the facts versus I'm frustrated. Or like, you really have to take the emotion out of it and focus on facts so that it's not attributed to the person. I think the way feedback is given, you need to be really mindful of that. You know, it's not an attack on the person. It's, it's a task. It's an output of something that you want to focus on versus, and I mean, you know, an attitude. It depends on, I think, what the feedback is, but I think I'm speaking from an example. I'm thinking about an example where I, this was early, early on when I was delivering

• 22:25Speaker 02

  feedback and I let my emotions get in the way.

• 22:28Speaker 01

  In what way?

• 22:29Speaker 02

  Um, I, I think, I think it was more the, the frustration of the situation. Well, I think in that situation, because I wasn't used to, you know, you talked about this at the very beginning, you have to get used to having difficult conversations. It is a form of confrontation and confrontation sounds really harsh, but it's not harsh. It's, you know, there is an element of confrontation that I think probably at that stage I was uncomfortable with. And so I think probably my nervousness got in the way. And when your nervousness gets in the way, then you become a little bit more emotional than you want to, when really we're just talking about the facts. This is the thing that happened. I can't remember what it was. It was a customer service situation.

• 23:12Speaker 02

  And if you just focus on that, you really do separate the emotion out of it. You separate the person out of it. It's like, this is the thing that happened. We're just talking about the thing that happened. I mean, that might sound super vague, but.

• 23:25Speaker 01

  No, you're right. And you're right about the reps. You have to get used to this. I remember when we started working together, I had a lot more experience giving feedback than you did because I was managing 30 teachers twice my age for a decade at that time, or maybe at least seven years. I would have to have conversations with teachers that were like chronically absent on Mondays, right? And, you know, I had the science teacher saying to me like, hey, this is not fair. I have to sub for this teacher. I have an extra period now every week. And that's a tough conversation. Like you've got to say, hey, you're abusing the system. At the same time, you've got to say like, you've got your colleagues relying on you. On top of that, like, hey, this is just a bad look for you, your reputation here. It's a tough conversation. And I had to do that at a young age. I had to do that.

• 24:10Speaker 01

  My first conversation like that was at 23. So I had to get that uncomfortability.

• 24:16Speaker 02

  Discomfort.

• 24:17Speaker 01

  Discomfort. And one of the positive things about getting these reps in is you start to focus on, hey, I have to get something done here. I gotta give this feedback so I can get the result I'm looking for. And you stop worrying so much about how they're going to react. A lot of us, we don't want to give feedback. It's like, what if they get upset? What if they start crying? What if they, you know, storm out of the room? Like all these crazy scenarios in our head. None of that really happens ever, but like, maybe it will. But the point is that that doesn't really matter. You can't control what they do. You can't control how they react. What you can do is do your best with giving feedback and follow the tips that we offered today.

• 24:51Speaker 02

  No, it's your responsibility as a business owner to do that for sure.

• 24:55Speaker 01

  I want to talk a little bit about private feedback versus public feedback. Sometimes it's okay just to give a quick tip in front of everybody. You know, like we have a big shared office here at the studio. Sometimes it doesn't need to be like, let's go have a walk and talk, you know, or let's go into a separate room. Sometimes it's okay to like, hey, I just saw you just do this, one, two, three, four. How about we try this next time? And I mean, I'm speaking as a leader of the company, but it's probably better to ask Josh who's behind the camera. It's like, I think that by being okay with saying smaller pieces of feedback, small course corrections in public in front of the rest of the team, we create a culture where we're okay with feedback. We're okay with receiving it. We're okay with delivering it. There's many times that Josh gives me feedback on how I'm performing

• 25:38Speaker 01

  on camera, what I'm doing differently, or, you know, not following instructions when I'm supposed to take two steps before I start talking and all that kind of stuff. So I think that there's a culture element to it that I think public feedback helps.

• 25:50Speaker 02

  I love that you brought this up. I think we had an example of it this morning. I think one of the things I'm really mindful of and the way you can instill this culture that feedback is not a scary thing and it's not a negative thing is always, is to own up when you feel like you've done something less than.

• 26:07Speaker 01

  A hundred percent.

• 26:08Speaker 02

  Great. And, and that it's okay to own up to it and be very open about it, open about what you would do differently. And I try to do that as much as possible. I'm really mindful of that. I think probably to the point where I often talk about how many times I might make a mistake, but it's fine. I.

• 26:23Speaker 01

  Well, you're also not making mistakes to be a catastrophe.

• 26:27Speaker 02

  No.

• 26:27Speaker 01

  It's okay to make a mistake.

• 26:29Speaker 02

  Right. And I think if we're comfortable with having that open feedback culture, it makes it so much easier to have these conversations. Cause we talk about having a growth mindset. Like, that's really important. It's one of our values and it's not a wishy washy value that we just say, it's great to have a growth mindset. Cool. What does that look like? It looks like saying, you know what? I could have done this a little bit better. This is what I'm going to do next time. Anyone have any, any other thoughts?

• 26:55Speaker 01

  Being open to that.

• 26:56Speaker 02

  But just being open to having that conversation.

• 26:58Speaker 01

  By the way, you can grow if you're not pushing the envelope and trying new things. And when you try new things, you make mistakes.

• 27:03Speaker 02

  Right.

• 27:03Speaker 01

  And that's going to happen. So mistakes are a good indicator that you're actually pushing yourself a little bit. We picked up this whole idea from Netflix, sunshining, sunshining mistakes.

• 27:13Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 27:13Speaker 01

  Where they have this culture where it's like, everybody on the team, every quarter, every month, whatever it might be, talk about a mistake they made. They sunshine or they spread sunshine or they direct sunshine.

• 27:22Speaker 02

  I think sunshine is like bringing it out into the light. Cause most people try and cover something they've done wrong. Right?

• 27:28Speaker 01

  Right.

• 27:28Speaker 02

  So I think sunshining, it meant that you just put it out.

• 27:31Speaker 01

  Point the light.

• 27:32Speaker 02

  Point it out in the open.

• 27:32Speaker 01

  Yeah. And the open, hey, I made a mistake and this is what I learned from it. And this is kind of the growth opportunity. And by doing this, everybody learns from that mistake. Everybody kind of embraces mistakes. Now, obviously we're not going to try to make mistakes on purpose so that we can sunshine them. But the point here is that you're embracing the fact that we're a company that are not, every piece of feedback, not every mistake needs to be discussed in private.

• 27:55Speaker 02

  Right. Yeah. There's common sense too. And it's hard to teach common sense, but obviously what is more sensitive and what needs to be, you know, a private conversation, hopefully is pretty obvious to people.

• 28:06Speaker 01

  Exactly. But just to wrap up, I think what you mentioned earlier is very important. You need to be open to feedback as well. You need to model the behavior you're looking for in your team. So if you make a mistake, own up to it. Share what you've learned from it. Show that you have a system to prevent that from happening again. All that kind of stuff. So ask people for feedback. I would love some feedback on this, you know, and it's good to have an ally on your team. Maybe somebody who's a senior that's been with you for a while that is okay with saying something in front of everybody else. That's maybe less than favorable, less than flattering about you. Cindy was a person for us for years who's been with us so long. She's fine. She's like, I'm not going anywhere. I'm part of the furniture. I'm just gonna say it like it is. And that's fine. It's good to have

• 28:48Speaker 01

  somebody like that to start that culture and make sure people feel comfortable with that. And then they'll understand that, hey, it's only fair that I receive feedback as well and be open to it if the leaders of the company are doing it.

• 29:01Speaker 02

  Absolutely. And I would encourage, I think one of the big changes we made when we were previously, when our team was distributed and all our team members were remote. So we didn't have in-person team. That shift to making an effort to record a loom, a video and sharing screen and voicing comments, feedback, I think goes such a long way. I think people might get a little bit lazy or just default to writing a message, but a lot can be lost in that communication. A lot can be gained if you're sharing feedback verbally.

• 29:32Speaker 01

  And we worked through that. Like we, a lot of times, you know, one of us would complain like, oh, they're not doing exactly what we want. And you, you know, we would hold each other accountable and be like, well, actually, did you tell them that? Did you tell them that they're not doing it? No. Okay. Then you need to tell them. You need to, and obviously it's much easier when you're in a physical space together. But if you're running a remote team or managing remote players, you need to make an effort. You need to like over communicate whether it's text or a video or even a video call. You agree with this, right? It's more of an effort, but you owe that to them so that they can do what's right.

• 30:03Speaker 02

  I got that from TJ. I can't remember. It was a vice principal that I worked under. He used to walk around saying, they got to hear it three times. And he was talking about the staff. Cause he, of course, he's always sharing, you know, things that the teachers that they need to do. And if it has, has it been shared three times? If it hadn't been shared three times, you could expect that people hadn't done it.

• 30:19Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 30:20Speaker 02

  And I think that goes to like, how are you sharing that feedback? Is it just one way? Have you just said it once and expected?

• 30:25Speaker 01

  Yeah. Did you give them a little post-it note?

• 30:27Speaker 02

  A little post-it note, little message, a little voice memo. Lots of ways. At least three times.

• 30:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:32Speaker 02

  In some cases.

• 30:34Speaker 01

  Patty, I hope today's Q and A Wednesday helped. And everybody who else is listening, who's dealing with this challenge of giving feedback to their team members. If you have a question you want to ask, you could submit it over at one zero zero MBA dot net slash Q and we'll answer it right here on Q and A Wednesday. Thanks so much for listening. Thanks Nicole for being here. We'll check you in the next episode.

• 30:52Speaker 02

  Bye.

• 30:54Speaker 01

  If you found today's episode helpful and you want more practical business lessons to help start, grow and scale your business, subscribe to the podcast. All you gotta do is hit subscribe or follow on your favorite podcast app, the one that you're using right now. By hitting subscribe, you get our next episode automatically. It's absolutely free and it's a way for you to commit to growing your business. I'll check you in the next episode.

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