Move to Better Feedback: A Conversation with Joel Silverstone

CommLab Podcast with Joel Silverstone

Sherna Varayath 01:39

Hello and welcome back to the eLearning Champion Podcast, where we delve into strategies, trends, and triumphs shaping the world of learning and development. Today we're diving into a topic that can make or break your corporate training programs. Feedback. Get ready to master the move to better feedback.

Our guest today is Joel Silverstone, the owner of TFR, a communication expert with over 25 years of experience helping leaders and teams transform how they communicate. He's worked with thousands of people at Fortune 1000 companies like TD Bank and ABO, providing practical techniques rooted in emotional intelligence and improv.

We'll dive into how this dynamic, hands-on approach can directly help L&D professionals like you design more engaging training, improve presentation skills, and facilitate better collaboration within your organization. Hi, Joel. We're super thrilled to have you speak to us today.

Joel Silverstone 02:46

Sherna, it's a pleasure to meet you and to be on the eLearning Champions podcast. I love the title.

Sherna Varayath 02:52

That's really nice to hear. So, dear listeners, before we dive in, make sure you subscribe to us on a platform of your choice so that you never miss an episode packed with valuable tips and inspiring stories. Moving to the first question, Joel, what gets in our way of giving feedback?

Joel Silverstone 03:14

Sherna, I think you can agree that as soon as we hear the word, I've got some feedback for you, already our heart starts to race, our pulse starts to quicken. So already there's a little bit of a stigma with the word ‘feedback’. And 2 things are happening. One is this, like I just said, the anticipation, right? As soon as I say, sure enough, sure enough,

I like to talk to you at the end of the day, or I've got some feedback for you, you start to feel that. When you think back to when we were kids, we were never called into the principal's office because we got an A. It was always bad news, right? And so, we associate feedback with that, that there's bad news, that we did something wrong. And then the anticipation. Sherna, have you ever seen the movie Jaws with the shark?

What's interesting about that movie is that we don't even see the shark until an hour and 21 minutes into the movie. The whole time the music goes on da, da, da, da, da, da. It's that anticipation that leads towards the feedback. So those are the two things that happens emotionally for us, leading up to that moment on both sides. If you've had to give feedback too, you start to get a little nervous too.

The second thing, and I hear this all the time from leaders in organizations and even people in the learning world, is how do I make this negative sound positive? So those are the two things that get in the way. I'll talk a little bit more about positive and negative in a bit. But it sounds like this, what I'm saying already just kind of resonates with you as I'm saying this.

Sherna Varayath 05:09

So, would you walk us through the Move Model and give better feedback?

Joel Silverstone 05:16

Yes, well, the Move Model is, as you said in the intro, from the world of improvisation. So, in my former life, I was a professional actor, doing theater, improv, and maybe some film and television. I was not a successful professional actor, let's put it that way. But what I took away from that is this idea that an actor's job is to move the other actor.

And the same thing happens when we're designing learning, when we're having our conversations. Our job is to take the focus off of ourselves and put the focus on the other person. Who's your audience and how do you want to move them so that they see something practical, something that resonates for them? So, take that and we make that into an acronym. MOVE stands for Mindset, Observe, Validation, and Exchange.

And so, when we go back to the first part about positive, how do I make feedback to make it sound more positive? That's where the M part starts, with Mindset, and to clarify your intention. If your intention is instead of right now, all that you're thinking about is how do I make negative feedback sound positive, you're going to fall into a trap, yeah?

So, what we want to do with that is we want to change that intention. For example, how can I make this feedback more respectful of the other person? And already your shoulders start to drop. Your voice might start to calm down a little bit. And let me give you a quick example. I was working with an organization and one of the people was saying, how do I give feedback to this person because they're writing things. The writing is accurate, but it's lacking creativity; it's lacking emotion. It's accurate, but it doesn't move people.

And I'm like, okay, we can frame that feedback to say that exactly, listen, your writing is accurate, and I have some ideas on how we can elevate it. Would you be open to hearing some of that?

So that's the first part about mindset. And then Observe. What did you see and hear from the other person that they did, the impact that it had? And the second part of that is observe, what do you see that's happening right now in front of you? As I'm looking at you, you're listening, and if I was giving you feedback, I would pause right here and I would go,

“Sherna, I see that you're listening and you're nodding. What are your thoughts so far?”

Because I haven't given you a chance to speak.

And then the V for validation is if you are going to speak, and this is where people fall into the trap, is that they don't often validate what the person has just said.

They gave you some information. Maybe it's not what you wanted to hear, but it's the idea of acknowledging what they said. This is what they believe.

And the final part is putting it all together and we're now hopefully in a place of having an exchange and having a dialogue where I would then make the request. “Sherna, most importantly, I would ask you, know, how do you see it? What's one thing that you want to do moving forward?”

And we do this in learning, right? We always say, “What's your takeaway to the people in learning?” We should be doing that in feedback too, because if the person doesn't say what it is they're going to do, then they don't own it.

So, that's basically the model. What are your thoughts on that? I'll borrow from my own example.

Sherna Varayath 09:27

I believe the way you've structured it from mindset to observation and then moving to validation. Like you said, validation is a key piece that a lot of people miss, especially in the domain of L&D. So, the way the structure works, and the framework, I think it's a really good model. If we put it into practice, I'm sure we'll have a lot of value coming out of this.

Joel Silverstone 09:55

The important part is that beginning, how you start it, like any conversation. Do you make the other person feel safe? Do you make the other person feel comfortable? Do they know your intentions are true?

And in the world of learning, it's like people are always going to be a little bit hesitant, like, oh, is this something the organization wants us to do or is this something that's really something I can use? So, making sure there are no ulterior motives in that beginning.

Sherna Varayath 10:28

We've also noticed that there are situations where we have a large pool of frontline workforce and middle managers, there's often a gap in leadership development programs. It's evident that some of it can be structured and feedback, like you said, carries a negative connotation. So how that can be improved and bought into a picture in the setup of learning and development so that it helps not only in professional development, but even personal growth? That is something I believe a lot of L&D teams can look into. That is somewhere back in the subconscious, but if you can bring it to the front, there's nothing like it.

Joel Silverstone 11:15

That's a great observation, because it's in there. We know it's there. How do we make sure when the pressure's on, when we feel all eyes are on us, how do we make sure that we bring that to the front?

Sherna Varayath 11:28

So now, in the same line of thought, where do you think organizations and even learning teams get it wrong in feedback?

Joel Silverstone 11:40

We have this expression, sugarcoating, which is again, going back to that, how do I make negative feedback sound positive? We don't want to have confrontations. We don't want to have conflicts. We think about making it safe, we say something nice.

And that's okay. It's good to say something nice. It's good to be nice. But the nice has to be genuine. It has to be accurate. So, if I say to you, “Hey, Sherna, you rock. You're just doing an amazing job. But here's the problem.”

You're not going to listen to the ‘you rock’ or ‘you're doing an amazing job’ because I'm basically going to say here's the problem. And I'm going to go on for 20 minutes sharing a problem. This is something that in learning a lot of organizations do. They teach people to do something called the sandwich model.

And in the sandwich model, start with something positive, put the problem in the middle of it, the big part of it, because often the sandwich is just a thin piece of bread. And then we got that big piece of something. And then we got another little positive at the end. And what happens is that positive is so thin. It's exactly what I just said, hey, you rock, you're doing great. But it's not genuine. It's built on something they're already doing. For example, a lot of times we have to coach people, maybe with their presentation skills. And maybe they lack confidence in how they present. So, how you might start that feedback is to tie it into something that's important to them, maybe a goal of theirs, maybe an objective, maybe from a performance review that they had to get better at it. And so it might be, I want to talk about presentation skills. And I know this is something that you want to continue to grow in and feel more comfortable. We don't want to say confident, feel more comfortable doing it. I have some ideas, and I'd like to get your thoughts as well. Would you be open to discussing that? So now we're looking at the problem together versus making the other person the problem.

So, the sandwich model, I think, is #1. And the other one is that we often wait for feedback, and we tie in feedback even when we're designing learning. We tie in feedback in a performance review, meaning that feedback is not consistent. We wait for feedback, for that once a year or twice a year moment. And we talk about something that happened six months ago, and the other person goes, Yeah, what? What did you tell me?

Sherna Varayath 14:44

Yes, the time periods are too long sometimes, and I believe that we lose the worth of certain feedback with such a large time gap,

Joel Silverstone 14:55

For sure, if feedback is not timely, because feedback should be in the moment. I will give you feedback, right here, right now, or even better is ask you, Sherna, how do you want to receive feedback? Do you want me to give it to you in a timely manner? Do you want us to have a meeting one-on-one once a week for 15 minutes? How do you want to receive it? Do you want us to talk about our kids first and the weekend before I dive into it? How do you want to receive it? Or do you want me to be direct?

Sherna Varayath 15:31

Right. Another problem that we often hear from L&D professionals is, there's feedback, it's timely, it's structured, but it doesn't stick. So why doesn't feedback stick?

Joel Silverstone 15:46

That's a great question because the goal for feedback is we want to see change happen.

And the model I just described requires a lot of patience to go through. We just want to go, look, Sherna, you need to be more confident when you present and just do it. And boom, I walk out. So that's number one why it doesn't stick, because we're just telling you to do something. Two, we might go through this model of making it safe. But at the end, at the feedback, we kind of chicken out a little bit. We'll go, all right, Sherna, so you got this, right? You know what I mean? You understand this, right? Oh, okay, I know you got this. All right, you're good, you're good. The most important thing is to ask the person at the end, Sherna, what's one thing that you're going to take away from this? Or what's one thing you want to continue to practice from this? Or what's one thing that stood out from you from this, from what we just discussed?

That person has to say it. If they don't say it, they don't own it. It's Change 101. If you want someone to change, to stop drinking, stop smoking, to exercise, to whatever, if you want them to change, you can't tell them to do it. They have to verbalize it. That's how we make change stick.

Sherna Varayath 17:13

Interesting. Change management is quite a concept as well.

Joel Silverstone 17:19

Yeah, absolutely. Because you're asking someone to change their behavior. We don't want to change their personality. We just want them to change their behavior. But also, we want them to be on board. We don't want to tell them, unless, of course, unless we reach that fine line where someone is really doing something that is completely disruptive, and they are not willing to acknowledge it.

Sherna Varayath 17:48

Coming to the organization side, what have you seen in organizations when they started applying the Move Model?

Joel Silverstone 17:58

I'm sure you can attest, Sherna, that sometimes we go in, we deliver the learning, and then, fingers crossed, it's stuck. They're applying it. Sometimes I'm going through the whole organization for a few months delivering the feedback, delivering the course. And then I start to hear from the people that I'm delivering the training to, going, oh, You know what? My boss just did this with me.

Or they don't quite recognize it, but they go, I just had some feedback the other day from my boss, and it was really good, it was really motivating. And that's how I know that it's being applied, when you get people start to say they've seen a change. And the positives in a learning organization to come in and work on a course helping people meet with difficult conversations or giving feedback is that there's a ripple effect in the culture. This is how we, as learning people, can make a difference. We can have a ripple effect on the culture where people are having better conversations, getting better and motivating feedback, we're having a ripple effect on that organization where people, as human beings, are a little bit happier at work, a little less stressed, because often people in organizations spend enormous amount of time thinking about their boss. They spend more time thinking about their boss than they do thinking about their partner.

So, if we can have an effect on those conversations where it feels more collaborative, then I think we've done a great job. If we go in with that intention as learning people, that intention of how we can make that ripple effect on the culture, where it's more collaborative in giving feedback or difficult conversations.

Sherna Varayath 20:09

Coming to a term that has been really catching our attention, especially on social media, Psychological Safety at Workplace. How do you think that aligns with feedback?

Of course, like you said, the environment has to be positive, it has to be safe for feedback. So, what are your thoughts on this?

Joel Silverstone 20:35

We talk about psychological safety. Also, when we talk about the word confidence, we're not quite sure how to define it. It's sort of something in the cloud, so to speak. But that idea of safety is an intention, How can I make this situation more collaborative, if you want to change the word. collaborative, where the other person doesn't go to fight or flight. That's the idea of psychological safety.

How can I make it a situation that was comfortable where the other person doesn't be really quiet?

And what I call is the ‘yep yeps’, where they just nod their head and just go, yep,

So, you're going to do that, right? Yep.

So, you got this, right? Yep.

Or they right away become defensive and start to go to fight and say, I don't know what you're talking about. No, that never happened.

A lot of times, because we start with feedback, we start with being very vague and say general things like, you know, Sherna, you're always late.

And then Sherna right away, you would go, No, maybe once? Always? No, I don't think so.

And it's hard to remember this because I make this mistake all the time with my kids.

I'm always making general statements like, You're always leaving the dishes.

That affects the mindset, right? It just makes everyone defensive.

So that's what psychological safety is.

How can I come into this conversation with a mindset of, I want to make this collaborative.

And I want to notice signs that someone has gone to fight or flight mode, that they become very quiet or they start to become defensive. They start to be a little bit more aggressive.

Sherna Varayath 22:27

If there's one thing we should remember while doing feedback using the Move Model, what do you think it should be?

Joel Silverstone 22:36

The number one thing should be, how can we look at the problem together versus making the other person the problem?

If you could take this whole model framework and then sometimes, we get into frameworks and we're like, oh no, what's the next step?

If you just keep reminding yourself the whole time to stop making the other person the problem.

Let's look at the problem specifically, and how can we look at this problem together?

And this is like negotiation skills. In negotiation, you don't want to make the other person the problem. It's like we both want to solve this problem. So, let's look at it together.

And if you have that framework, that mindset, you'll make sure that you're involving the person in the conversation, you're asking them questions, you're listening, you're acknowledging, and you're coming in already with that mindset that we want to collaborate versus I want to fix you.

Sherna Varayath 23:31

And that brings us to the end of another thoughtful episode of the eLearning Champion Podcast. Thank you so much for sharing your thoughts and ideas with us, Joel.

Joel Silverstone 23:42

Oh, Sherna, no, thank you. It was a pleasure to be here, and it was so nice to meet you.

Sherna Varayath 23:47

Dear listeners, I hope you're walking away with ideas to transform your feedback process from a passive review to a powerful driver of learner growth. And of course, if you haven't already, make sure you're following the eLearning Champion podcast.

Do follow CommLab India on your favorite social media platforms and share your thoughts with us whenever you find time. Thank you for tuning in to the eLearning Champion podcast. Until next time, take care and happy learning.