Greg Kunkel, Next Jump Leadership Academy - Jan 2018

1. @thom_fuller@gkunks
Organizational Design:
Building A Culture of Feedback …
January 2018

2. ORGANIZATIONAL DESIGN : Making Strong teams Stronger
2
1. Hiring/Recruiting
2. Onboarding
1. Developmental Gym
2. Selection
a) Promotions
b) Recognition

3. ORGANIZATIONAL DEVELOPMENT TOP 3 CHALLENGES
3
1. No place to make mistakes - everything is “Mission Critical”
2. Very little candid feedback (especially among peers, bottoms up)
3. Coaching tends to be intense (classrooms) and/or for senior leaders via Executive Coaches

4. SETUP: DEVELOPMENTAL GYM
4

5. Feedback Loop: Lots of practice everyday in giving
feedback to peers, upwards & downwards
Monthly: Leadership 360 (in-app); 10X (in-app)
Weekly: Staff Meeting (in-app) Throwdown (in-
app);
Monthly: L360 (in-person); 10X (in-person)
Weekly: Throwdown (in-person)
Monthly: L’ship 360 (in-app); 10X (in-app)
Weekly: TP (in-person); Throwdown (in-app)
UPWARD
PEERS
DOWNWARD

6. Coaching: Lots of practice coaching REPS
Daily: Talking Partner Bi-Weekly: Situation Workshop, Deep Dive Coaching
PEERS DOWNWARD
As a coach, we try to achieve:
• Awareness Building (Self and Situation)  ID Root Cause(s)
• Building new rituals/behavior
• Holding Accountable
1 2

7. Building a
Culture of
Giving
Feedback
(Lessons and Insights in building a culture
of giving feedback)
• 21st century organizations are flattening
organization structure while empowering
more decision making throughout the
organization
• Teams that have higher rates of learning
(development) will be the most
successful
• Feedback is decision making data

8. 8
NxJ
10 years ago
Appreciation
Feedback
Developmental
Feedback
Evaluative
Feedback
Servant
Leader
FEEDBACK SYSTEM (3 LEVERS)
“Zero Mistakes” culture
Outcome Focused Outcome +
Developmental
Decision Making Gym
Outcome
Ruinous empathy
Focus on the “Not Quite Rights”
NxJ
Today
Organizational Silence

9. Giving and
receiving
feedback
Lessons and insights from Next Jump in
building the habits of feedback

10. Giving and
receiving
feedback
Lessons and insights from Next Jump in
building the habits of feedback
Last Updated: Jan 2018
• As leaders, we are decision makers
• Feedback is decision making data
• The root cause of bad decision making
is bad information, or more accurately,
“unsaid” feedback -- especially the
unpleasant truths

11. How to
give
feedback
• With self-awareness, humans are
equipped to “do the right thing” and
make better decisions
• Yet, without honest feedback, teams and
organizations are making decisions on
bad data
• It starts with practicing GIVING candid
feedback

12. Giving
Feedback is a
muscle
• Counter-intuitively, the best way to
prepare for receiving candid feedback,
is to give it
• Practicing putting the “truth” on the
table. Even if it’s unpleasant, it
increases your situational awareness
and builds up your feedback muscles

13. Tip:
Practice being
direct first
It takes time to build up muscles of
giving truth with empathy
• The target is truth + care
• Most of us care, but many of us find it
difficult to be direct, which means our
feedback lands in ruinous empathy
GOAL

14. Using the
Feedback App
• The Feedback App is a tool to help you
start practicing giving Feedback
• It provides data points that are crucial
for others and yourself to improve
awareness and ultimately performance
• The tool is designed to facilitate getting
“truth” on the table (anonymous and
transparent)

15. Step 1:
Leave a rating
“Normalize
to a 2”
• Start with giving a rating of 1-4 based
on your expectations
• Professional Feedback Givers normalize
to a 1 or a 2, and focus on giving
feedback that adds value (mission
matters)
• Amateur Feedback Givers normalize to
a 3 or a 4 and mostly focus on giving
compliments
• NOTE – these ratings ARE NOT used in
performance rankings – they are for
putting truth on table for
Developmental Feedback

16. • Make your “internal chatter” visible
• What is your version of the truth?
How did their presentation/decision
land for you. Be specific.
• Example: “When you started the
presentation, I felt confused because you
had not set the intent and desired outcome.
There was good info throughout and I made
some takeaways but was hard to follow
because of the lack of structure.”
Step 2:
Leave a
comment
Share what you felt and observed

17. Tip:
Give visceral
feedback quickly
• Be visceral and fast (timely) vs wait
• The longer you delay giving feedback, it
will be more likely that you water down
the feedback or not give it at all

18. Receiving
Feedback
“Feedback is data I need
for improvement” • Research has shown that while getting
a lot of feedback doesn’t guarantee
better performance, NOT getting
feedback is correlated with failure
• Feedback is data to help you make
better decisions

19. Make it easier
for others to
tell you the
truth
• As a receiver of feedback, you are in
charge.
• Start to observe the subtle signals that
we all do to “ask for comforting lies.”
Such as leading with excuses, or fishing
for compliments.
• Feedback is often badly delivered,
poorly phrased, feels unfair. But it is
up to you to find the gold.

20. Recovery
Programs
Help recover when you receive
uncomfortable truths • Step 1: “Burn off” your emotions
with a trusted person (colleague)
• Step 2: Sleep on it
• Step 3: Print out feedback, cross out
what does NOT resonate and
highlight patterns
• Step 4: Process the feedback with a
trusted person (colleague) and/or
coach

21. Redefine what
“Bad” is
Investment in Loss is better than hiding
(no feedback at all)
• When all of us practice a new skill, a
new ritual or habit, we are not very
good at it. The outcome likely
suffers. This is what we call
“investment in loss”
• That investment will pay off with
practice, seeking feedback and
course correcting

22. Seek out
feedback more
frequently
• Higher performers seek feedback
consistently
• Value is in seeing patterns
• It is rare that one piece of feedback is a
“huge” insight – rather the patterns