Fearless Feedback: What’s in your Leadership Toolbox?

Do you have a Feedback tool in your Leadership toolbox? If not, I am excited to point you to our book, just launched on Amazon January 2019!  It’s entitled: Fearless Feedback: A Guide for Coaching Leaders (to see themselves more clearly and galvanize growth). 

Why did I join together with six other Master Coaches to co-author this book?  First and foremost, I believe that stakeholder feedback, when well-done, is key to helping leaders gain insight and become more effective. While there are many books written about feedback, there were none that provided a practical guide while addressing the underlying emotions.  We wrote this book to fill in that gap-  the book I wish had been written before I became an executive coach. I sure could have used it even when I was a law firm leader.

My experience with feedback as a lawyer

As a lawyer, I did not have much positive experience with feedback. In fact, law firms could be called a feedback-free zone (or a feedback-fear zone).  Many law firms don’t provide feedback except in annual performance reviews during a lawyer’s years as an associate, which cease when that lawyer becomes a partner. Often, those reviews contain opinions and personal critiques, rather than constructive, developmental information. Most lawyers are not trained at gathering or delivering feedback in a competent or confidence-evoking way, often their feedback can reflect their biases and discomfort.

Take, for example, one of the first times I recall receiving feedback from a law partner during a trial practice training program.  I was one of the younger lawyers participating, so was already nervous about my level of experience compared to seasoned trial lawyers. This male partner (who clearly hadn’t received any training on feedback, much less emotional intelligence) watched my video replay and literally snorted in laughter, blurting “well you certainly don’t want to do THAT in a courtroom!” He then proceeded to critique my appearance, attire, and voice, with no substantive, behavioral suggestions of how I could improve as a trial lawyer (other than to grow a foot taller and look less feminine).

I vowed, once I actually did gain experience as a trial lawyer, that I would get trained on how to provide actionable, unbiased, behavior-based feedback to less experienced lawyers. I wanted to be able to coach lawyers so they could improve their advocacy and communication skills- while still being authentic to their unique style.  I continue to provide that training today.

The foundation of that feedback process is for me to be an objective observer, and to check my biases at the door.  Easier said than done.  I look for the three pillars of communication- what do I observe about the lawyer’s content, tone, and body language.  Then I replay and provide concrete examples of what the lawyer can keep doing, start doing, and stop doing for more effectiveness.

My experience with feedback as a coach

As an executive coach, I began searching for a similar process to provide feedback to leaders. Most leaders do not have a video camera filming their performance, like I had when training trial lawyers. So, for feedback on one’s leadership skills, we are dependent upon the observations of the leader’s stakeholders- those people who work with and observe the leader. I believe that providing leaders with objective observations of their impact on those around them is key to their success.

Over a decade ago when I became certified as an executive coach, there was no universally accepted framework for gathering stakeholder feedback in an objective way, while attending to the underlying emotions and filtering out bias.  In fact, it was more trial and error; more art than science. 

Of course, 360 interview instruments have been around for decades.  However, I resisted the push and pull to providing feedback through means of a leadership 360. First, most law firms didn’t routinely use 360 feedback assessments anyway.  And in corporate America, I found that the anonymity of answering a questionnaire allowed the individuals giving the feedback to hide their own biases. Oftentimes those feedback questionnaires did more harm than good.  I found developing a customized interview-based process to be a much more effective method of providing the kind of feedback that would feed-forward positive change in the leader’s development (and reduce the level of confirmation bias, negativity, and stereotyping that often goes unchecked).

In 2016, I was blessed to be a part of the Master Coach Program at the Hudson Institute with a dozen other experienced coaches throughout the globe- both internal and external. One aspect of the credentialing program was a stakeholder feedback research project- to conduct stakeholder interviews on each other, deliver that feedback (in a written report, and an oral debrief) in order to co-create an action plan.  Each of us was randomly assigned to be a coach for another, be the leader being coached, and be a stakeholder providing feedback. While the initial purpose was to learn best practices of gathering and delivering feedback, we learned at a much deeper, experiential level.  We discovered the strong emotions, including FEAR, underlying much of this process.  The most impactful learning for me was how to anticipate, attune, and attend to those emotions- as a coach and as a leader.

Seven of us decided to write a book together on our experience.  We created the guide I wished I’d had when I was a lawyer, and when I was a novice coach. This book combines the practical 7-step framework we created, with the stories and emotions behind the scenes.  Think of it as a mashup between a coaching/leadership book, and vignettes of emotions (inspired by the Pixar movie Inside Out).  We take you through the fictional characters of Greta the coach, Sue and Richard the leaders she coaches, and their respective stakeholders, along with their emotions.  I hope you enjoy reading it as much as we enjoyed writing it!

Next Blog:  My reply to the March-April HBR cover article “Why Feedback Fails!”

Published 3/15/19
Kathleen Marron is a Master Coach/author/leadership consultant from Minneapolis, MN. Her new book, Fearless Feedback, is now available for purchase on Amazon as of January 16, 2019 (see www.fearlessfeedbackguide.com ).



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