[00:00:00] EMMA: Today we're talking about something that I know, I just know is gonna make some of you squirm a little bit. We're talking about clear conversations, the kind of conversations you've been avoiding, the feedback you keep meaning to give, the thing you keep telling yourself you'll bring up next week, and then next week comes and then you don't.
[00:00:20] You know the drill. And if you've got people working for you, whether they're employees, whether they're contractors, virtual assistants, a business partner, this episode is for you. Because here's what I know after years of coaching women through this stuff. One of the things that holds us back and holds the growth of our business back is rarely strategy.
[00:00:42] It's rarely marketing. It's almost always having the conversation that you're actually not having. So today I'm going to walk you through how to bring the right intent to a feedback conversation, a quick four-step process for delivering it, and a framework that is called SBI [00:01:00] that I will teach every leader that I work with, and also how to set the whole thing up so it actually lands.
[00:01:06] Grab a cuppa. Let's get into it. Woo, exciting. Probably not that exciting, actually. Let me start with something I wrote a little while back, and it's been on my mind a lot lately. We all love and know Brene Brown, and she has the brilliant phrase, "Dare to lead. Clear is kind. Unclear is kind." When we're clear and respectful, when we ask for what it is that we need and we check the other person has actually heard us, that's kindness.
[00:01:37] When we're vague, when we're nice on the outside but fuming on the inside, when we leave things unsaid because we don't wanna upset someone, we're not being kind. We're being unkind. We're eroding trust, and we're confusing people, and we're stopping them from doing their best work. I'm so sick of hearing the phrase, [00:02:00] "You need to have a difficult conversation."
[00:02:02] Can't we just start treating human beings like human beings? Can't we just have the courage to be clear and respectful? And can the people on the other end have the courage to ask questions if something's not clear? A lot of the women that I coach are people pleasers. I luckily am not. We are like nice on the outside, but we're fuming on the inside, and the only person who ends up not pleased is us, and then we carry the resentment.
[00:02:31] We carry the stress. We lose sleep over the things we should've said, could've said, would've said. Oh my goodness. So we need to fix it. We need to fix it. We need to be clear, and sometimes that's really hard to do. I wanna talk to you about bringing the right intent because the first thing before you do anything, before you script a meeting, before you book a meeting room, is to get clear on what your intent is.
[00:02:58] You see, people can [00:03:00] sniff that ill intent from a kilometer away. They can sense when judgment is coming. They know when you've already made up your mind about them, so you need to get your intent right before you open your mouth. There's one intention I want you to bring to every feedback conversation from now on, a strengths-based intention.
[00:03:20] That means moving from what's wrong about people to what's strong about people A strength, by the way, is like a naturally recurring pattern of thought, feeling, and behavior that can be productively applied, and we all have them. Your team member has them. You have them. The question is whether they're being used well or not.
[00:03:43] And I love Gallup. A Gallup study found that 67% of employees whose managers focused on their strengths were fully engaged in their work. Compare that to only 31% when managers are focused on weaknesses. More than double the engagement just [00:04:00] by shifting where you put your attention. Now, when you're preparing to give feedback, your intent will generally be one of three things.
[00:04:10] You're either trying to raise awareness, lift confidence, or grow capability. And let me give you a bit of an example of each just so that you've got this. Sometimes a team member has a real strength, but it's showing up unproductively. Say they've got a strength of responsibility, so they take ownership of everything.
[00:04:29] Sounds great, right? Except now, now they can't delegate, and they won't let anything go, and they've become a bottleneck, and they look stressed all the time. Your feedback right there is to raise awareness so that they can rebalance. Sometimes a team member underplays their strength. They've got brilliant ideas, but they don't speak up in your meetings.
[00:04:51] Your feedback there is to lift confidence and reinforce the value that they bring. Sounds easy, hey? Sounds simple. [00:05:00] And sometimes your team member is already using a strength well, and you wanna coach them to take it just a step further. That's about growing capability. Whatever you're doing, your intent should always assume the person is motivated and trying to do what they think is right.
[00:05:16] It just might be different to your view of the world, and your view, by the way, is only one. Hold that lightly. I've seen many things go astray by not assuming the right intention. Yeah? And so we don't wanna do that. We wanna assume the right intention. Right. So let's get into the mechanics. This is like cogs, right?
[00:05:41] There is a four-step process that I want you to actually go away and use. Don't just nod along and go, "Yeah, that sounds amazing." Actually use it. Step one is you need to reflect on the event. Before you say anything to anyone, sit with what happened, what actually occurred. What are you feeling? What are you [00:06:00] telling yourself about it?
[00:06:01] And here's where I need you to be really careful. Notice your binary language. "They always do this. They never listen. They constantly drop the ball." The moment you hear an always or a never in your own head, make sure you pause because that's not data. That's a story that you are telling yourself Your thoughts are driven by your values and your strengths.
[00:06:25] And if you've got a strength of responsibility and your team member missed a deadline, that's gonna land really hard for you. Harder than it might do for someone else. So part of reflecting is recognizing that your reaction is partly about you and not just about them. I know that hurts. Step two, you need to manage your emotions.
[00:06:46] Most people skip over this one, right? But they feel the thing, and then they march straight into the conversation, and then they wonder why it goes sideways. There's this cool quote from the Dalai Lama, "What you say about me says [00:07:00] more about you than me," and I love that quote. So before you go in, separate the situation as it actually is from how you're interpreting it.
[00:07:08] Get to the facts and the data, like what actually happened, not what you think it means about them as a person, just what happened. And then ask yourself, "How might I interpret this differently? Could there be another explanation? Is there context I don't have?" And when you do that, you'll notice that your anger drops, your defensiveness drops.
[00:07:30] You become curious instead of reactive, and that is the energy you wanna walk into the conversation with. Don't you reckon? I had a client who had one of her employees, and she had been clear about what she needed done, and the employee just had missed the deadline. And it meant that my client also missed her deadline.
[00:07:53] So there was a ripple effect for all of that, and I got a very grumpy Marco Polo from my [00:08:00] client telling me about this situation. And I asked her to, once she got off the phone to me, to go walk around the block and think about the actual facts of the story. Think about what she was thinking and what she was feeling and what narrative she had put to this missed deadline.
[00:08:19] After she'd calmed down a little bit, she got curious. She wrote out the data and the facts, and she realized that maybe the person didn't have enough information to do what she needed them to do. Oh my goodness, this story is-- goes on and on, and I see this story happen every time. See how I've just used the word every?
[00:08:38] That's what we're talking about. Don't use every, don't use never, don't use all the binary language. And so my client, my client reached out to the person and just went, "Hey, I'm really curious. I have missed the deadline for my client. You've missed the deadline for me. Can we talk about what has happened?"
[00:08:57] And she learnt very quickly that coming in with her [00:09:00] emotions even meant that the person wasn't scared. Also, when you say to someone, "I wanna give you some feedback," oh my goodness, watch them run away, because no one loves that sentence. And so she got curious, and they figured out a plan together so that that didn't happen again.
[00:09:17] But you have to allow yourself to-- if you're angry, you have to allow yourself to be angry and a little bit frustrated in order to move forward. She's lucky she had me on the other end of the phone who told her to put her big girl pants on, go for a walk around the block and sort it out. It's not that hard, and it wasn't that hard I digress.
[00:09:35] I digress. Step three, you've got to put it into words, and this is where most people get stuck. They know what they wanna say, they just don't know how to say it. So we're gonna use a framework I referred to earlier called SBI. It simply means situation, behavior, impact. And before I explain it, let me ask you something.
[00:09:59] What [00:10:00] feedback models have you used? You've probably heard of the feedback sandwich. You know, you say something nice, then you slip the bad news in the middle, and then you finish with something nice. The problem with the feedback sandwich is that people can sniff your intent. They know that the bread is just there to cushion the criticism.
[00:10:18] They don't hear any of the good stuff because they're, they're waiting for the bad stuff. That's where SBI is different. It anchors your feedback in facts. So the situation, when and where did it happen? Be really specific. Behavior, what did the person actually do or say? Observable behavior. Not what you think it means about them, not what someone else told you about them.
[00:10:42] And impact, what was the effect on you, the team, the client, the business? I'll give you an example. "Sarah, in yesterday's client meeting, y- when the client raised the budget concern, you jumped in before I finished responding. The impact was that the client looked confused about who was leading the conversation, [00:11:00] and I felt undermined."
[00:11:02] That's it. No judgment. No, "You always do this." Just situation, behavior, impact. Every single part matters. If you skip the situation, your poor little team member is left guessing when this happened. And if you skip the behavior, they don't know what to do differently. And if you skip the impact, they don't understand why it's such a big deal.
[00:11:22] Do you get it? Three sides. Now, there's something that I talk to pretty much all of my clients about. Once you've scripted the feedback, practice it out loud, for the love of chocolate. Not in your head, out loud. I know, I know, you're going to feel like a bit of a nutter, and that's fine. Do it anyway. I always say the tongue has memory.
[00:11:43] When you practice something out loud, the tongue learns the shape of it. The words flow better. The tone settles. You hear yourself and you go, "Oh, that came out a bit harsher than I meant," or, "That sounded a bit waffly," or... And you get a chance to, like, go in and fix it before you're [00:12:00] sitting in front of the person.
[00:12:01] The clients who don't do this, they're the ones who come back to me and say things like, "Oh, Emi, it sounded so much better in my head." Or, "I don't know what happened. It just came out wrong." Please don't do that. In your head, you're the director and the actor and the audience. You sound amazing, and you can't actually hear how it lands until you say it out loud.
[00:12:25] That's why when I'm preparing for anything, whether it's a masterclass or a keynote or a difficult conversation or a clear conversation, I'm walking and talking . It's actually part of why I do my 20,000 steps a day. I'm always practicing something out loud. Practice in the mirror, practice on a walk, practice to your dog, just practice out loud.
[00:12:46] Step four is about coaching. Here's where I want you to turn the feedback into a conversation. After you've delivered your SBI, you don't lecture. You ask, "What was going on for you in that [00:13:00] moment? How could we approach it differently next time? What support do you need from me?" This is the bit that takes feedback from the boss is telling me off to we're solving this together.
[00:13:14] Your team member or the person you're giving feedback to walks away feeling respected, not flattened. There are a lot of flattened people walking around. That makes me sad. Let's sort this out. So we've kind of got the intent right. You've managed your emotions, you've scripted your SBI, you've practiced it out loud, and you've thought about how you're going to coach.
[00:13:40] Now you need to set the conversation up so it actually lands. And there's a really cool concept I love called SCARF. It comes from neuroscience, and it tells us when the brain needs to feel safe. SCARF stands for status, certainty, autonomy, relatedness, and fairness. And when any, if [00:14:00] any of those things feel threatened, the brain goes into defense mode.
[00:14:05] And when the brain is in defense mode, your feedback is gonna go nowhere. So how do you set up a brain-friendly feedback conversation? You need to pick the right moment. Don't give critical feedback five minutes before they walk into a client pitch. Don't do it on a Friday afternoon when they're freaking exhausted.
[00:14:24] Don't do it in front of other people. Think about the timing. Give them a heads-up. A simple message that says something like, "I'd like to chat about the client meeting yesterday. Can we grab 10, 20 minutes this afternoon?" That gives them autonomy and certainty. They're not blindsided. Make sure you choose the right environment.
[00:14:44] Sometimes that's a coffee, sometimes that's a walking meeting, sometimes it's a video call with both cameras on. It kind of depends on the person and on the topic. And you need to start with your intent. Tell them why you're having the conversation. Something like, "I want to [00:15:00] chat because I think there's something we can improve together, and I respect your work, so I want to be straight with you."
[00:15:07] It's that easy. That settles the brain. They know you're not there to attack them. I want to talk about follow-up. Sometimes people need time to process. They need time to sit with it for a day. Check in. Make sure that they've understood. Make sure your relationship is intact. I thought I'd share a little story with you that brings this home.
[00:15:30] I worked with a woman called Natalie. Natalie's not her real name. Natalie ran a growing business, and she had a team member, Paul, who was technically brilliant but kept overstepping. He'd make decisions that weren't his to make. He'd email clients without looping her in. He'd commit the business to things she hadn't agreed to.
[00:15:50] And Natalie was furious. She'd been simmering on this for months, and by the time she came to me, she was ready to fire him. And I'm like, "Hang on, hang on, hang on. Have [00:16:00] you actually told him what the lines are?" And then there was this, like, silence, and she said, "Well, you know, he should know. He should know."
[00:16:09] How many times have we said that? He should know. She should know. They should know. They don't know. Not unless you've told them really explicitly, they don't know. So we sat down, and we did the work. We got her intent right. She didn't want to fire Paul. She wanted to keep him and get the best out of him.
[00:16:29] And we worked through what actually happened, separating the facts and the data from the story that she was telling herself. We scripted her SBI. She practiced it out loud with me three times until it sounded like her, not a corporate memo. And then we set up the conversation. She booked a coffee. She gave him a heads-up.
[00:16:48] Note, no one says, "I wanna give you some feedback." She started by telling him she valued his work, and she wanted to have a clear conversation about how they worked together. She delivered the feedback. [00:17:00] Then she asked him what was going on for him. Turns out, turns out Paul thought he was being really helpful.
[00:17:06] Of course he did. He thought taking initiative was what she wanted. Nobody had ever told him otherwise. Months. And what was Paul? Paul was mortified. They walked out of that conversation with a clear agreement about what decisions were his to make and which ones needed to come from her. Paul's still with her, years later now.
[00:17:27] He's now her second in charge. All of that nearly didn't happen because Natalie was about to fire him for something he didn't know he was doing wrong. Can you see where this goes? That's the cost of an unclear conversation, and it's also the gift of a clear conversation It's crazy, ladies. It's crazy. Now, before I wrap up, I wanna share something that completely probably changed how I deliver feedback.
[00:17:57] It's about how people actually remember [00:18:00] what you say to them, and there are, like, four things that you need to know. There's what we call the primacy and recency effect. People remember the first thing you say and the last thing you say. So don't waffle in the middle and don't bury your point. Lead with what matters and end with what matters.
[00:18:18] No surprise sandwich. The next one is the surprise effect. People remember things that are novel or different, which is why positive feedback so often gets lost. We deliver it in the same way every time, and it washes over people. If you want positive feedback to land, find a fresh way to share it. Write a card, send a voice note, mention it in front of someone they respect The repetition effect, number three.
[00:18:43] People remember things that are repeated often. So if you've ... If you're giving feedback for the first time, assume it might take a few conversations for it to really land. Don't expect one conversation to change a pattern. It won't, and you'll be thoroughly disappointed. [00:19:00] The closing the gap effect, our fourth one.
[00:19:02] This one is fascinating. The brain fills in logical gaps. People remember things you didn't even say because their brain filled in the blanks, which is exactly why being clear matters so much. If you're vague, their brain will write the story for you, and it probably, well, it probably won't be the story you wanted to tell.
[00:19:24] So let's bring all this together, hey? Clear conversations are not difficult conversations. They're respectful ones. They're the conversations that keep your relationships really strong, the team performing, and your business growing. But you've gotta get your intent right. You've gotta reflect on what happened.
[00:19:43] You need to manage your emotions, and you, you need to use SBI to put it into words. We need to practice out loud. We need to coach, not lecture, and we need to set up the conversation so the other person's brain feels safe. And remember that people will hear the first thing, the last [00:20:00] thing, the surprising thing, and the thing you repeat.
[00:20:03] That's what I want you to do this week. Pick one conversation you've been avoiding. Don't tell me you're not avoiding anything. There's something there. Just one. Script your SBI. Practice it out loud in the mirror, on a walk, to your dog, wherever. Get your intent right. Book the time. Have the conversation. I promise you the discomfort of having it now is nothing compared to the discomfort of carrying it for another three months.
[00:20:30] And if this episode has made you think, "I need help having those conversations with my team," that's exactly the work I do with women one-to-one. Whoop. We build the leadership foundations that make running your business and leading your people so much easier. Come see us at emmamcqueen.com.au and book a clarity call, and we'll have a chat.
[00:20:50] Until next week, enjoy your cup of tea. Thanks for listening to Tea with the Queen. If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave a rating and review on [00:21:00] Apple Podcasts. It really does help to get the word out. For more about me, please visit emmamcqueen.com.au, and I look forward to your company next episode.
