Black Belt Dojo

Can I give you some feedback?

Are these the most chilling words in the English vocabulary for you? Or do you relish the opportunity to learn and develop from hearing someone’s different perspective?

It’s that time of year again. School report time. And my son has just come home with a 5-page report with some really useful comments to take on to secondary school. In light of last week’s news that the official UK SATs exam results have been delayed, probably just as well.

The most important aspect is that the feedback is balanced – some good comments, a few positively glowing (that’s my boy) and some pointers for improvement, with good suggestions to take forward. And the comments are not generic – they are very specific and I definitely recognise that they’re about my son! The report is supported by a face to face discussion and everybody gets to put their view across – teachers, pupils, parents alike.

Last month, I came across my own old dusty school reports. What a contrast! The one-line comments that I read from each teacher bore no relation to my own experience or what I recall about what was said to me in class. If you can’t relate to the feedback – positive or negative - you learn to discount it.

Getting used to giving and receiving feedback is key to building teams and forming relationships – inside and outside the work environment. Although we’re getting better at it, my past experience is that it’s not particularly in our British culture to do this instinctively well!

So we have systems in place to make sure that the feedback gets through – but, let’s be honest, how much of it do we allow to get through? Performance and bonus appraisals; one to one meetings to discuss progress with managers; 360 degree feedback; team meetings; project meetings; employee surveys; focus groups.

It’s very easy to ignore feedback and in the past I’ve spent far too long chasing managers for actions, as a result of running an employee survey. “I’m too busy.” “I’ve got a business to run.” “I’ll look at it later.” “I don’t want my team to be distracted.” Thanks to changing attitudes, few managers would openly get away with similar behaviour in today’s environment. No time for complacency, though. As the report card says, “still room for improvement” in this area.

For me, the value lies in having an ongoing discussion and choosing to do something differently as a result. Ongoing is the keyword here – it’s not enough to review feedback once. As we know, it takes time and effort to change behaviour. Over the years, I’ve learnt to accept feedback for what it is – an opportunity to hear a different perspective and learn from the insight. And it’s about choice, too. To do something differently or to continue to do the same – your own perspective is still a valid one. Learning from the experience moves you on. I hope it’s taught me how to give feedback in a constructive way, too.

At 16, my performance was summed up in two sentences. “Rosemary gives the impression that at the moment she is too much of a perfectionist to succeed. She should remember the proverb that the man who never made a mistake, never made anything.”

I can’t recall now whether I felt the comment was valid or not, but maybe I did take on board the feedback, after all – I’ve certainly made the mistakes to prove it. So please give me your feedback - just don’t call me Rosemary!

Rosie

In any other language

   

Hi and welcome to my first blog! I'm Rosie Mowatt and I’ve been let loose on the Black Belt Dojo as July’s guest blogger – thanks, Sue, for a great learning opportunity!

Last month Jeffrey talked about the different routes to market for internal communications professionals …. And so by way of introduction, this is my story. I love languages – always have and studied French, German and Spanish at school, uni, college before getting my first job at an international bank in Switzerland and then I discovered I loved skiing, too (with chocolate a close third). When I left 12 years later (having added Italian and Swiss German to my language belt, along with far too many tales of diplomatic incidents to recount here), I had to start my career again in the UK. I didn’t realise at the time how often I would draw on that early experience – all about internal communication, I recognise now with hindsight!

So my love and technical training for translating languages to seek shared understanding is a different perspective that I bring to internal comms – and is invaluable on a daily basis when “translating” business jargon and industry speak. I started my first "proper” internal comms role in 1995 and I’ve never looked back (along the way I also discovered I love change – phew!). For the past year, I’ve headed up the UK internal communications team at RWE npower (great opportunity to use German!) and I’m based in Swindon, Wiltshire - please feel free to look me up on Linked In to fill in the gaps.

Reading Lee Smith’s blog post about the launch of “My BT” and comparing that to an article in the UK weekend press (Sunday Telegraph) about how Google and Intel are seeking ways to protect workers from email overload, it struck me (not for the first time!) how at odds we are in different organisations with our approach to the advent of social networking at work. And I believe that the gap will get ever wider between those companies that embrace new social networking techniques in their internal communications and have the spend to do so and the companies that will have to hold back because of any number of multiple choice reasons - culture, infrastructure, budget to name a few.

As an internal communicator, how does that make me feel? Do I see it becoming a deciding factor in any future career decisions – of course! Along with the more obvious factors, I think it’s certain that future recruits will want access to the same communication tools that they’ve been brought up with (and any other parent of teenagers, who are simultaneously texting, IM-ing, emailing and webcam-ing would tend to agree, I think!).

And just as in dealing with any truculent teenager, if you’ve had the good fortune (and believe me, it can be fun!), I just can’t see much success with “telling” employees that they can’t use that technology on “no email Fridays” and on Tuesday mornings because it’s “quiet time” … would love to hear from anyone at Intel on this – does it really work in practice?

Back to that article – based on findings from a Basex think tank report, 28% of an office worker’s day is spent dealing with email and other messages. Few would disagree that email can have an invasive impact on productivity but it’s never that “black or white” or about “good” or “bad” email – I have to assume that a proportion of the 28% is made up of “grey” transactional email, such as contract and document exchange, which would take days by snail mail. Don’t get me wrong, as someone bombarded on a daily basis and drowning in emails, I totally support all efforts to get the right balance in place, so we can appreciate email exchange as the major advance in communication it was and still is … after all, we didn’t even have email when I started in Switzerland – unimaginable to me now! What did we do? It’s certainly made me pause for thought and reach for the many guidelines on email etiquette I’ve compiled over the years – once again, it’s all about behaviour and having the right basics in place.

Looking forward to exchanging more ideas on the subject – but don’t email me on Tuesday mornings – I’ll be having my quiet time!

Rosie