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you make it clear to your stakeholders that you need their help in order to improve an area of development they become willing to share their ideas and thoughts on how to get better. They finally feel like they have a stake in the process.
•FeedForward is focused on sharing positive, future oriented suggestions.
•By following up on the suggestions you receive, you demonstrate your commitment to grow and your stakeholders develop an increased desire to help you and to share their thoughts and ideas.
How Do I Implement the Process?
•Make it informal.
oYou can ask for FeedForward suggestions in person, on the phone or via email.
oDon’t wait for scheduled meetings. Pay attention to what is being said and what you are doing and use the natural opportunities to ask your stakeholders for help.
•Keep your conversations focused.
oThe purpose of the FeedForward conversation is to answer the question, “What can I do to get better in my area of development.”
oAvoid using this time to talk about other items or concerns.
•Keep the conversation very simple.
oI am working on becoming a better listener. Can you give me a positive suggestion on how I can do this?
oWhat can I do to become a better listener?
oWhat are some positive things you have noticed that good listeners do?
How Do I Select My Stakeholders?
•The best people to help you are those that are in a position to give you accurate information about your behavior? They might be supervisors, peers, and/or direct reports.
•You need to make sure that they feel safe enough to be completely honest with you?
•Will they be fair in their assessment?
•Will they take a few minutes on occasion to give you their suggestions?
How can a stakeholder be most effective?
•Make a commitment to forgive and forget the past.
•Make observations constructive, specific and behavioral.
•Be positive and supportive.
•Be honest and fair.
•Understand the client won’t be able to act on all suggestions.
•Stakeholder role is to become a helpful coach to the client, setting aside any impulse to be a cynic, critic or judge.
What are the major roadblocks to doing FeedForward?
•What are the roadblocks that keep you from doing FeedForward with your stakeholders?
oIt feels awkward.
oI think it needs to be a formal process.
oIt is difficult to change culture; this is not reflective of the current culture.
oI am so busy already, how do I fit it all in my schedule.
oI don’t know how to do FeedForward.
oI don’t know how many stakeholders I need.
•How can I overcome these roadblocks? What are some of the best practices used to create success?
oDon’t put too much pressure on yourself.
oMake it an informal experience. Fit it into your regular conversations.
oCreate a reminder in outlook.
oPractice what you are going to say with your Mentor/Mentee partner.
oCast a wide net and include as many people as you possibly can.
oBe quick – 2 minutes may be long enough.
Some Important Things to Remember
•Your stakeholder’s recommendations are accurate reflections of how you can improve from his/her perspective.
•The responses you receive are current indicators of your behavior.
•FeedForward is a way for your stakeholders to support you in your goal and challenge you to get better.
Say Thank You
•The answer to every stakeholder suggestion is “Thank you”
oYou are not thanking them for the content of their ideas.
oYou are thanking them for willingly helping you.
•Avoid the temptation to grade or debate responses. Just say “Thank you”
•You do not need to implement every suggestion.
oDiscussion suggestions with you peer coaching partner.
oAsk yourself, “What would happen if I implemented this suggestion?”
Your success in getting better in your selected area is directly correlated with the amount of follow-up you have with your stakeholders.
The fascinating part of this exercise is that you’re often asking people you don’t know at all … and amazingly enough their suggestions are pretty useful!
Another surprise … we find many other people have the same issues we have! And we can help them even if we feel lost helping ourselves!
The magic of FeedForward is that it’s a positive way to get many more ideas than one could ever actually use … and there’s no commitment to use the ideas!
The only requirement … just say “Thank you”. Don’t argue, complain, analyze … just say “Thank you” and write down the idea verbatim.
Peer Coaching Support
Here are some tips to help you provide effective support to each other:
•It’s easy to focus on the negative. Help each other look at the good news in information gained from stakeholders. Give equal airtime to the good as well as the more challenging areas.
•Remind each other it’s not about the past. Reframe everything in the form or what can be done in the present and future.
•Avoid criticism, judgment, analysis, blame. Remember, this is Peer Coaching so you both are getting comments that aren’t so easy to hear! It requires courage, honesty and humility to admit past mistakes. Look at them as clearly as you can without dwelling on them, make your sincere apologies and move on. Your only point of effectiveness is what you do with this information in the future.
•Help each other move past personalities. Don’t try to figure out who made what comments, if you’ve received anonymous suggestions. Just look for the nuggets of opportunity, forgive everyone else for their side of the challenges, and look forward to how you can create a positive outcome for the future.
Daily Questions
Accountability is a key ingredient in a successful Peer Coaching relationship. How often you check in with each other depends on your schedules and how you’ve set up your goals. The most effective method we’ve found for staying on track and making maximum progress is what we call “Daily Questions”.
Andrew Thorn introduced Marshall to this idea. After trying it out with Andrew, Marshall continued the practice with his good friend Jim Moore, former CLO of Sun Microsystems, Nortel and BellSouth. Both Marshall and Jim report amazing results.
Every day Jim asks Marshall the same 24 questions. Every day Marshall asks Jim the same 17 questions. Marshall and Jim each have a spreadsheet of each other’s questions where they record for each other the answers: ‘yes’, ‘no’, or a number. Structuring the questions in this way keeps the phone call moving. Each phone call lasts only a couple of minutes. They send each other their completed spreadsheets weekly. If they miss a day or two, they simply ‘catch up’ later.
Some keys:
•Each person writes their own questions.
•No negative feedback. No comments that might produce any form of guilt.
•Yes to positive feedback! If you can make positive comments to reinforce success, by all means go ahead!
When writing your questions, you might think about different areas of your life, such as health, relationships, things you want to accomplish but don’t seem to get to.
Questions Marshall suggests for improving relationships: “Did you say or do something nice for your wife? Your son? Your daughter?” For tasks you would like to do: “How many minutes did you spend ___?”, or “How many sit-ups did you do?”
This process works well because it forces each Peer Coach to confront how they actually live their values … every day. You find you either believe that something matters or you don’t. If you really believe it, you can ‘put it on the list’ and do it! If you really don’t want to do it, you can face reality and quit kidding yourselves.
Measure Results
An important aspect of Marshall Goldsmith’s coaching is measuring if the person being coached is actually improving. Improvement is not measured by the coach or the client, but by the stakeholders.
Mini-surveys are a simple and efficient way to measure behavioral change. They are very short and focus only on the leadership behavioral goal that has been selected by the person being coached. They are designed so that the stakeholders evaluate behavior that occurs only during the coaching period. They focus on the stakeholder's perception of the individual's improvement - not their effort.
After receiving the mini-survey results the client thanks the stakeholders, involves them in future change and continues the process. This is almost always a positive experience for the individual and for the stakeholders. When done consistently well, the positive change is seen quickly, builds momentum, and is sustained.
Managing Perception
(adapted from What Got You Here Won’t Get You There by Marshall Goldsmith, Hyperion 2007.)
Wouldn’t the world be a better place if we each had our own presidential press secretary to answer tough questions and “spin” our message all day long against any and all adversaries? (It would be great for us perhaps, but I’m not sure I want to live in a world where everyone is “spinning” everyone else.)
That said, there’s something to be learned from the methods that politicians employ to stay in power.
Chief among these is staying on message – i.e., knowing what you want to say and then repeating it with extreme discipline and near-shamelessness, until it sinks in. If there’s one thing we’ve learned in this noisy media age, it’s that simple, un-nuanced messages break through the clutter and hit home with high impact. (I’m not saying that’s always a good thing, but it’s a fact of life.)
It’s the reason politicians in a hard election campaign run the same ads over and over again. They know that repeating their message works. The voters may get tired of hearing it, but the message sinks in.
You cannot rely on other people to read your mind or take note of the changed behavior you’re displaying. It may be patently obvious to you, but it takes a lot more than a few weeks of behavioral modification for people to notice the new you.
That makes it all the more vital that you proactively control the message of what you’re trying to accomplish. Here’s how to start acting like your own press secretary.
•Treat every day as if it were a press conference during which your colleagues are judging you, waiting to see you trip up. That mindset, where you know people are watching you closely, will boost your self-awareness just enough to remind you to stay on high alert.
•Behave as if every day is an opportunity to hit your message home – to remind people that you’re trying really hard. Every day that you fail to do so is a day that you lose a step or two. You’re backsliding on your promise to fix yourself.
•Treat every day as a chance to take on all challengers. There will be people who, privately or overtly, don’t want you to succeed. So shed the naïveté and be a little paranoid. If you’re alert to those who want you to fail, you’ll know how to handle them.
•Think of the process as an election campaign. After all, you don’t elect yourself to the position of “new improved you.” Your colleagues do. They’re your constituency. Without their votes, you can never establish that you have really changed.
•Think of the process in terms of weeks and months, not just day-to-day. The best press secretaries are adept at putting out the daily fires, but they’re also focused on a long-term agenda. You should too. No matter what happens day-to-day, your long-term goal is to be perceived as overcoming an interpersonal challenge – to the point where it isn’t a roadblock anymore.
If you can do this, like the best press secretaries, you’ll have your personal “press corps” eating out of your hands.
Recommended Reading:
Acting Like a Professional or Acting Like a Phony? by Marshall Goldsmith, Workforce Performance Solutions, May 2006.
Ask Questions Daily by Marshall Goldsmith, Leadership Excellence, October 2006.
Coaching for Behavioral Change, adapted from The Art and Practice of Leadership Coaching, edited by: H. Morgan, P. Harkins and M. Goldsmith, Wiley, 2005.
Give Yourself a Chance by Marshall Goldsmith, Fast Company, November 2003.
Helping People Achieve Their Goals by Marshall Goldsmith and Kelly Goldsmith,
It’s Not About the Coach by Marshall Goldsmith, Fast Company, October 2004.
Leader to Leader, No. 39 Winter 2006.
Leadership is a Contact Sport by Marshall Goldsmith and Howard Morgan, strategy + business issue 36.
The Success Delusion by Marshall Goldsmith, The Conference Board Review January-February 2007.
To Help Others Develop, Start With Yourself by Marshall Goldsmith, Fast Company, March 2004.
Try FeedForward Instead of Feedback by Marshall Goldsmith, Leader to Leader, Summer 2002.
What Got You Here Won’t Get You There: How Successful People Become Even More Successful! by Marshall Goldsmith with Mark Reiter, Hyperion 2007.
Andrew Thorn
16183 Siskiyou Ct
Apple Valley, CA 92307
760-559-3548
Marilyn McLeod
P.O. Box 703
Cardiff, CA 92007
760-644-2284
Marilyn@CoachMarilyn.com
Marshall Goldsmith
P.O. Box 9710
Rancho Santa Fe, CA 92067-9710
858-759-0950
858-759-0550 - fax
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Andrew Thorn is President and Founder of Telios Corporation. He can be reached at athorn@telioscorp.com. Marilyn McLeod helped Marshall and Andrew launch Peers@Haas, the first Peer Coaching Program at the Haas School of Business, UC Berkeley, in 2007. She can be reached at Marilyn@CoachMarilyn.com. Dr. Marshall Goldsmith is a world authority in helping successful leaders get even better. He can be reached at Marshall@MarshallGoldsmith.com, or his website www.MarshallGoldsmithLibrary.com
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