Episode transcript The transcript is generated automatically by Podscribe, Sonix, Otter and other electronic transcription services.
Hi everyone, here is Ricardo Vargas, and this is the 5 Minutes Podcast. Today, I would like to talk about feedback, but of course, I will not talk about the lack of feedback and how feedback is important. I want to discuss a very specific point: how harmful poor feedback can be in your project. So, feedback is one of the most powerful tools you can use to improve your team's performance. But what is the problem? Many times, we provide vague or generic feedback. For example, we come to people who say, oh, look, um, you can improve that. What do you want to mean by improving that? Is it bad? Is it almost good? What is the point? Many times, we do not give feedback at the right time. Many times, we give inconsistent feedback, and many times, because we are so concerned about being objective, our feedback is a three-hour meeting, and at the end, you don't even remember what you were talking about. So remember, feedback is an absolutely strategic tool. And I want to explain to you how I give feedback and what the technique is. It's a super simple technique I use every time I want to give very smart feedback; I use what is called the SBI technique, situation behavior impact because I want to make feedback very clear. So the situation, I tell when I see something that deserves feedback. So, for example, situation: in yesterday's meeting. Then I go behavior. What happened at yesterday's meeting that requires my feedback?
You presented the report without the latest data and then were impacted because you did not present the report with the latest data. The impact caused confusion among the team and delayed the decision. So, did you see how important this feedback was? I explained to the person when the situation happened, what happened, and what the impact was. So it's a very simple look. It took me a couple of seconds to provide this feedback. And did you see that I am not making any personal attacks? I'm not, I would say, challenging the person. I'm not attacking the person because one of the most dangerous things on feedback is when you use feedback as a tool for vendetta, as a tool, I would say to harm the other side and not to give feedback, or maybe just to make a criticism to reduce the morale of the other person. I saw this happening 100 times when people, for example, are struggling to show power in a meeting, and then you provide feedback that is not feedback but just criticism in front of everybody. And what is the intent of this feedback? It's not to improve the result, but it's just to show the criticism to, for example, to show the lack of commitment or the lack of competence or whatever of the other side. This is not what feedback is about. Feedback is a way of building a culture of learning. Nobody does everything right, so you need to provide feedback. And for example, I welcome very much all feedback I received.
Many times I record a podcast and people say, oh, this podcast, I disagree with this. You could do this better. And this is a learning opportunity for me. Of course, over time, you become more prepared to see when someone is providing true and genuine feedback or when someone is just looking for ways of attacking you. And this happens. But when people start attacking you, the best thing you can do and this is a personal tip. It's just disregard. For example, I received it in the past hater messages, and you know I don't reply. I don't waste my time on that. I don't go on that type of discussion because that type of discussion, there is no winner because the person is not providing a feedback. Sometimes, these types of people are just trying to package this as feedback, but it's not feedback; it's just criticism and attack. So be mindful when you are leading a project to make sure you take care of very specific because feedback is one of the best ways for you to improve your performance. Many times when I receive a positive and smart feedback, you know I thank the other person and say, oh God, I bet you now I will do differently and I do, and I learn a lot. And this will make you a much more prepared project manager and team member. Think about that, and see you next week with another 5 Minutes Podcast.
