Mastering the Art of Giving and Receiving Feedback
Summary:
Dr. Jim interviews Bryan Power, Head of People at Nextdoor, about getting people ready to lead. They discuss the importance of feedback and how leaders can create a culture of kind and candid feedback. Bryan shares Nextdoor's feedback loop program, which allows team members to give and receive feedback in a structured and facilitated way. This program has been successful in helping teams reset and improve their working relationships. Tune in to learn more about building high-performing teams and developing effective leaders.
Key Takeaways:
- Effective and fast-track leadership development heavily relies on giving and receiving feedback.
- Constructive feedback should always be kind and candid, avoiding both outright harshness and vagueness.
- Leadership preparedness expands beyond discussions – it requires systems and processes for practical application.
Chapters:
0:00:00
Introduction to the topic of getting people ready to lead
0:00:40
Dr. Jim welcomes Brian Power, Head of People at Nextdoor
0:01:03
Brian Power shares his background and experience in the tech industry
0:02:15
Brian Power discusses how his recruiting experience informs his team-building approach
0:03:51
The importance of feedback in preparing individuals for leadership roles
0:04:40
Elements of good feedback and how it should be delivered
0:06:06
Nextdoor's "feedback loop" program for team-based feedback
0:07:21
Importance of building systems and processes for practicing leadership skills
0:07:26
Dr. Jim and Brian Power discuss how to continue the conversation
0:07:59
Final thoughts on the importance of intentional practice for bridging the strategy-execution gap
Connect with Dr. Jim: linkedin.com/in/drjimk
Connect with CT: linkedin.com/in/cheetung
Connect with Bryan Power: linkedin.com/in/bryanpower
Music Credit: Shake it Up - Fesliyanstudios.com - David Renda
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Transcript
And what we're going to be talking today with a lot of our guests is getting your people ready to lead. Oftentimes when we think about building high performance organizations, one of the challenges is getting your individual contributors and your first time managers up to speed very quickly, instead of having to wait six or eight months for them to figure it out.
So we're going to be sharing some best practices in these conversations. So Brian, welcome to the show.
[:[00:00:43] Dr. Jim: I think before we dive into the main part of the conversation, it's going to be important for the listeners to know a little bit more about you.
articularly proud of in your [:[00:01:03] Bryan Power: Yeah, sure. Nextdoor for about five and a half years now. I lead the people function. My career in tech goes back to the late nineties.
I moved to San Francisco during the dot com era, and I've always been in the people's space. I started in recruiting. I worked at companies like Google and Yahoo and square. And so that, that's ultimately led me to next door. I'm really excited cause I've got to see a lot of different things.
The last few years have been really dynamic in the people's space. We've dealt with everything from COVID 19 to the changing work from home, work from office model. And just a whole new point of view on how employees think about their employers.
[:I've spent a lot of time in recruiting on the agency side. So I have a special place in my heart for people that are trying to fill roles and and basically get yelled at by every functional group in an organization when you're not getting candidates over to them fast enough. I can relate to some of the things that you've been you've gone through in your trajectory.
[:[00:02:04] Dr. Jim: One thing that I'm curious about, you're the head of people at next door. You have a agency and recruiting experience. What has that experience taught you in how you construct teams
underneath you?
[:was in recruiting for over 10 years. You start to really appreciate, how different skills and different strengths can come together and be impactful.
I think when I started out, you're trying to find that perfect resume for a role. But the more you see it, there's not really any such thing as a perfect resume. It's like different people joining different teams is what leads to collective success. And so when you really as a recruiter can look back at the teams you've built, you get a broad landscape of what works and what doesn't, which I think is a great jumping off point really for any leader.
[:So I appreciate you sharing that. So let's get into getting your people ready to lead. So when you think about what I talked about in the beginning of the conversation. A big problem for a lot of organizations and a lot of people leaders is identifying people in the individual contributor ranks and getting them ready to lead.
And also your new managers in your organization, getting them ready to lead versus having to wait six or eight months for them to get up to speed. So when you think about that problem, what's the best practice that you have in your toolkit that you would recommend to other leaders that they use to get their people ready to lead faster?
[:There are no good leaders who are not good at this, and it's one of the hardest thing for a first time manager to learn how to do for the first time.
[:So walk us through elements of good feedback. What does really good feedback look like and how should it be delivered for maximum impact?
[:The first is people just come right at you with something. It's difficult to hear and you get defensive or, they're just mad at you and they tell you something and become, becomes a conflict. It might not be [00:05:00] productive. That's one but more often it's the lack of being candid. So people tap dance around.
The feedback they actually have to give to someone. And so how can you find the right balance of being, kind and having the person you're talking to in mind as a person and a teammate, but also be candid, give them the information that they deserve on how they might improve working together or what they can do to be better in their role.
[:[00:05:36] Bryan Power: Yeah.
For us, the avoidance of conflict or the avoidance of feedback that needs to be discussed, we consider to be unkind, and while it might be difficult to start that conversation, the right thing to do is to have it. And so making sure a leader creates the space where someone feels comfortable doing that.
d and to give the person the [:And it's actually a team based exercise where each person on the team gets together in pairs and they rotate around. So by the end of this session, they've each met with one to one with every other person on the team, and they've had the opportunity to both give and receive feedback, and we found this feedback lead program to be really popular because it creates a space where people can give feedback and hear In a structure in a structured and facilitated way so they can operate at whatever level they like.
It can be simple feedback or can be direct, but we found this is a really powerful program that just with a short amount of time, that's the whole team reset on how they're working with one another.
[:And the reason why it caught my attention is because it's intentional and it's embedding practice and what [00:07:00] good looks like into the day to day almost on an every single day basis and making it accessible. One of the big problems with any sort of leadership principles that we talk about from a theoretical perspective, it's tough to define what good looks like.
And put it into practice. And I really like that you call that out. So appreciate you sharing that. Brian, I know that we could talk about this stuff for quite a while.
We're just scratching the surface on this. If people want to continue the conversation with you, what's the best way for them to get in touch with you?
[:[00:07:32] Dr. Jim: Thanks for hanging out with us. And for those of you who have been listening to this conversation, hopefully you liked it. When I think about this short conversation that we had, the one thing that really impacted me is what we just mentioned at the back end of the conversation, which is you can talk about all this stuff till the cows come home.
ke, it's going to fall over. [:So I appreciate you sharing that Brian, for those of you who have been listening, thanks for hanging out with us. If you haven't already joined the HR impact community, Make sure you do that. You can find that at www. engagerocket. co slash HR impact. Tune in next time where we'll have another great leader joining with us and sharing their game changing insights that helped them build a high performing team.
