Book Resources

 “As a manager, if you are not willing to ask for and accept feedback, then you don’t have the right to give it”

Seth R. Silver

“Feedback is the breakfast of champions”

Ken Blanchard

“Usually, we judge ourselves based on intentions.  But, we judge others, and they judge us, based on behavior”

Rudolf Dreikurs

Problem behavior ignored or tolerated is problem behavior encouraged”

Seth R. Silver

Impact of Not Giving Feedback

• The person with poor behavior may think everything is okay and there is no need to change anything and undesirable behavior is allowed to continue.
• Someone who has not received regular feedback can get “surprised” at the end of a project, during a tenure review, or during an annual evaluation.
• People become demotivated when they see others “getting away with” poor behavior.
• At work, employees have less trust in a manager when that manager does not hold direct reports accountable

Three Types: Planned feedback; Feedback in the moment; Recovering from explosive feedback.

Guidelines for Planned Feedback:

• Ask permission to provide feedback
• Express your intention – to be supportive
• Praise publicly. When you see good work, say it.  Never let good work go unnoticed
• Make it private when it’s negative, and as possible as you can, make it positive and developmental
• Be timely and have the conversation as soon as possible, and at most within one week
• Self-assessment, if possible, should always come first
• Prepare in advance. Think through your opening remarks
• Be cool and deliver your message calmly and objectively
• Use Start, Stop, and Continue method
• Use the 80/20 rule: 80% future to 20% past focus in feedback
• Always end on a positive note

The GROW Coaching Model

• Goal
• Reality
• Options
• Way forward

Resources about Giving Feedback

Some Relevant Articles/Videos

• Leaders: Your Team Is Your Customer at https://chiefexecutive.net/leaders-your-team-is-your-customer/
• Creating a Culture by Choice, Not a Culture by Default at https://www.hr.com/en/magazines/all_articles/creating-a-culture-by-choice-not-a-culture-by-defa_kucawz6t.html
• Coming Soon: How to Give Honest Feedback without Being Hurtful in Authority Magazine
• Video on my YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUz_I5oLrz8&t=2s
• Intended to be played for students giving peer feedback, but many of the concepts are the same

Other Relevant Articles

• 5 Steps to Good Feedback at https://www.themuse.com/advice/5-steps-to-giving-good-feedback
• 7 Tips to Giving Feedback at https://www.roberthalf.com/blog/management-tips/7-tips-on-giving-feedback-to-employees
• GROW Model with example questions: https://positivepsychology.com/grow-coaching-model/
• 15 Ways to Give Negative Feedback Positively: https://positivepsychology.com/negative-feedback/

Thanks to Leaha Eidman for the graphical representation!

An article that Seth Silver and I published in the RBJ:

How to lead in the time of COVID-19

Published to LinkedIn on 4/9/20: How to Help Class Teams Work Virtually

Hope you’re all safe, whether it’s from home or remaining healthy if you are essential and absolutely must go to work.

The ideas below are taken from my book titled “Group Dynamics and Team Interventions.” This are tips you may find useful, whether you’re teaching online, working in a virtual group at school, or working on a team project!

The first piece of advice is to match your online task to the technology. Remember, most of us have many different modalities available to us now. First, consider whether you would like a synchronous or an asynchronous tool. Then, determine which tool you have best suits that task.

The second piece of advice is don’t forget about your users. Some may be technologically adept, some may not. Make sure to consider the team member, the technology, and the tool when making the determinations about how to work.

Finally, remain flexible! Many of us are learning these tools on the fly. Have a backup plan and recognize that things will go wrong!

Stay safe and healthy!

In the “what’s coming” category: Lauren Vicker and I are doing are first talk about our upcoming book, Making Team Projects Work. Here’s a teaser: Our instructor’s guide to running team projects

It’s arranged using the classic I-P-O model of group work. To make team projects successful, instructors need to properly design a task, form groups, and set the context. These are the inputs. Then, they need to manage the team project. This requires observing and checking in about team process. Finally, instructors need to examine task and social outputs – both of these are important to our students long-term success.

This is the summer of writing for me. I have a new laptop, a clean sun porch, and a sailboat in the water. I’ve set some serious reach goals for the summer – two book drafts. One of the books is with my colleague Lauren Vicker, where we are writing about how to make team projects better. The other is with my colleague Seth Silver, where we are writing about a team intervention.

So far, I’m doing pretty well. I’ve really been moving along. I make sure to give myself breaks to bike and work out. I’ve done some (but not many) little projects around the house. And, I’ve worked on some training for National Ski Patrol/Bike Patrol. But, so far, I’ve spent more time writing than I have in years.

Hopefully, this all comes to fruition before the semester starts, and kicks my butt again.

My colleague Lauren Vicker and I are drafting a book designed to help high school teachers and college professors better design and run team projects. We’ll be posting information here as we progress. Hopefully you find some useful tips!

We have seen, over the years, that many instructors run group and team projects. Too many of them do this by assigning the team project, and then at the end of the semester finding out that things have gone wrong.

But, team projects are not like individual projects. In individual projects, instructors never have to worry about group process – that stuff that happens between assigning the project and getting the results.

Group process can yield some great things! Groups, whether in class or at work, can have “process gains,” or things that happen to make the group even more successful. This type of “synergy” is what instructors, and team leaders at work, hope for.

But, group process also yields “process losses,” or those things that prevent a group from succeeding. We’ve all seen these things occur in our classes – conflict, social loafing, the inability to make decisions, and there are many other problems that occur.

Our upcoming book is designed to help instructors to design, run, track, and assess group projects. Hopefully you’ll find it useful!

Written by Tim Franz, 6/21/19

Seth Silver and I are writing a book about an intervention for leaders and teams. The intervention, developed by Seth, is called the Workplace Covenant. We’ll start to post some teasers here.

At this point, we’re about three chapters in. As a preview, here is a diagram that outlines the process for the Workplace Covenant:

WC Steps Diagram

When building teams and imporving organizational performance, facilitators must consider ERTAP: Empathy, respect, trust, alignment, and partnership.

Team members who have empathy and respect have trust in their leader. This leads to leaders and teams that are aligned and working together as partners.

For more information as of now, you can check out Seth’s website about the Workplace Covenant at:

The Meaningful Workplace CovenantTM

How do you handle peer conflict within teams? What about between leader and staff? What do you do when engagement is low among the team?

I’m sure there are times when you have two staff members who just don’t get along. Perhaps they snip at each other or try to always have the last word. They won’t answer each other’s email. One member thinks the other doesn’t pull enough weight. The staff are now complaining about their leader and productivity has gone down because of it.

One structured approach to resolving behavioral conflict between people is a simple process called Start-Stop-Continue. It is easy to remember and can even be conducted in the moment when the tension is rising. Or, it can be during a planned or facilitated meeting with a little more formality.

The first step is to introduce the reason for the meeting. Explain that it is often helpful to put structure to a difficult conversation, which helps employees refrain from “beating up” on someone and allows the conversation to remain professional.  This format also allows for action items and is the foundation for follow up conversations (check-ins).

For example, let’s imagine there is a team of employees complaining about their manager. The employees have been to HR several times or even taken their concerns to their manager’s manager. And, the tension is still increasing. The team may also have low engagement scores if there is a lack of trust in the manager’s ability to resolve this or other complaints.

When you meet and first introduce the structured format, then ask, “What do you want your manager to start doing?” Don’t be discouraged if employees are quiet at first. It sometimes takes a little while for them to warm up and once they do the flood gates will open.  You may also experience staff going straight to what the manager is doing wrong – all of their complaints come out. Be prepared to patiently listen and paraphrase their complaints back to them in a ‘theme’ format. Some of the complaints can be restated into “Starts”. For example, if staff tell you “our manager doesn’t share any of the new guidelines that she receives from the insurance companies, we are always finding out after the fact.” You can ask the group, “do you want your manager to start sending you the notices by email?” And then, you have the first thing the manager can start doing to improve team performance.

The stop section is very similar to the start one. You ask the group, “What do you want your manager to stop doing?” By then, you have probably heard many complaints when you get to this. So, sometimes, it is easiest to summarize and ask if there is anything else. Other times, a skilled facilitator may try to generate a few more ideas.

The continue section can be challenging because the group is tasked with identifying what the manager is doing well. So, at this point, ask “What do you want your manager to continue doing?” It is often a short list but that’s okay because it is always best to end with a positive note. Be sure to tell the group that you will not share specific comments or who said what but rather will provide the manager with themes and maybe one or two anonymous sample quotes.

It is important to be prepared to give the manager feedback about start-stop-continue and to help him or her identify the low hanging fruit and quickly implement the changes. Moving quickly will speak volumes to the staff. It is also important to go back again and again and again to keep the communication line open with staff. Ask them how the changes are going. Does it have as much impact as they would like? What else would they like to see changed, within your sphere of influence that would help ease the stress and tension?

This exercise can also easily be modified so that you can conduct a start-stop-continue between two peers.  You can meet with each separately and then bring them together or keep it simple and go straight to having the three of you meet. It is important that each walk away with no more than three action items that they are committed to start doing. Again follow-up conversations are key.  Sometimes peers can recover from conflict and other times one ends of leaving the team. Both situations will move the team forward toward reducing interpersonal conflict and improving team performance.

By: Elizabeth Franz