Are You Encouraging Honest Feedback?

Welcome to Darren Daily On Demand, your most trusted resource to help you become better every day. Here's your success mentor, Darren Hardy.

So my team and I do a personal development hour together every Friday. Usually it is in discussing the key takeaways and the new action items that they're going to apply to their life or their role on our team from maybe a module from insane productivity or a module from the E fast past or a chapter out of the compound effect or a chapter out of the entrepreneur roller coaster book. So we were between programs one week and I asked them to give me some

personal development and coaching. For them to coach me. The question I ask them to address is, why are you not pushing back on me as a leader more? Why are you not speaking up stronger? Why are you not pointing out things that you think are lame?

The issue came up when our video editor, who's on the other side of this camera right here, misinterpreted a production note that I gave him and did something odd to a video as a result. He never pointed out that this made the video look pretty lame. And my production manager who later admitted that she did think it was lame, but thought, well, that's just must be the way that Darren wants it.

And that is a very dangerous mentality. Your people might start taking on with you in your organization. There is a great scene in the movie Bohemian Rep City where Freddie Mercury comes back to apologize to his band members after an ill-fated run at a solo career. He had gotten to Munich, hired a bunch of musicians, and told them all that he wanted, and they did it, he said. And that was his failure. He surrounded himself with, yes, people.

Freddie went on to explain how he needed his original band back because they were willing to push back hard, which is what helped hone each song to perfection. I confess that I had been grappling with this question. Why was my team not pushing back?

on me hard, which is necessary to truly do excellent work consistently. And I went down all the possible answers. Maybe they just don't care, and I sat with that for a moment. Nah, that definitely can't be it. You haven't seen a group of people put their full heart and soul into the service of other people, of our work, into the community, and to each other, like this group of human beings. So that's not it.

Two, maybe they just aren't smart enough to see what's lame and have the smarts to know of what would make it better. Well, that one was easy to scratch. The team I have is incredibly intelligent, insightful, and intuitive, not only intellectually and artistically intelligent, but incredibly emotionally intelligent, too. So that couldn't be it at all. OK, well, then maybe they just aren't courageous enough to speak up. Well,

I've been working really hard with them on that. We have been practicing radical candor with each other and pushing each other for extreme ownership. And I've created tight feedback loops every Monday and Friday on our huddles and a team engagement survey every month. So then the only possible reason why people aren't speaking up is me.

Am I doing something wrong? Am I micromanaging and thus disempowering autonomy? Am I saying no too often, thus cutting the legs out of somebody's sense of control and artistic license? Or not doing something to encourage their feedback, not making it clear that it is actually encouraged, it's wanted, it's appreciated, creating the conversations to give that feedback, something I was doing wrong.

And then I turned it over to them, please tell me what I'm doing or not doing to have you not be raising your hand and standing up to tell me, hey, this thing right here is lame. We can do better than this. It was a great conversation where they mostly discussed their own lack of courage or confidence in their ideas and opinions or their

previous employment experiences where they had tried to give dissenting feedback and it went terribly bad and thus realized that they were carrying that PTSD of sorts into their current role with our team. So in the end, it was the very question and conversation about this that they needed to know that not only is it critical,

that feedback is allowed, but it is actually desired and desperately wanted. If the organization is dependent upon one or two few people's preferences, opinions, directions, or review and approvals, that organization is going to stall. High growth and high performance will not be possible, and enterprise needs everybody protecting and contributing to the art.

It requires everybody to be applying pressure to the coal to make the diamond possible and everybody polishing it up and then protecting it. So this morning ask yourself, are you surrounded by yes people? This might not only be the people at the office but also the people in your personal life. Do you have people who will push back hard on you if they see something lame where you are screwing up or could be better?

If you are not sure, share this Darren daily with them and ask them, do they feel that they not only have permission, but it is also encouraged and desired that they give you dissenting opinions, ideas and feedback when they have them. Just initiating and engaging in this conversation might be what everybody needs to know that they can feel safe doing so and that it will be accepted with a welcoming spirit in the desire for improvement.

Hey, Darren here again. I just wanted to take a moment and thank you for being a listener of the Darren Daily On Demand podcast. I hope that you're experiencing the value of having lessons like this at your fingertips each week throughout the week and that what you hear on the podcast is making an impact on your life in a big way.

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