The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Unlocking Hidden Potential Through Feedback and Leadership Development

Episode Date: December 23, 2023

Unlocking Hidden Potential Through Feedback and Leadership Development Learningbridge.com Show Notes About The Guest(s): Glade Holman is the founder and managing partner of Learning Bridge, a company that helps individuals, teams, and organizations unlock their hidden potential for business and career success. With over 20 years of experience in strategy, leadership, and executive coaching, Glade has worked with notable companies such as Barclays, Proctor and Gamble, AstraZeneca, Citigroup, and Visa International. He is a sought-after speaker, consultant, and executive coach, and has taught graduate courses at New York University Wagner School of Public Service. Summary: Glade Holman, founder and managing partner of Learning Bridge, joins Chris Voss on The Chris Voss Show to discuss the importance of feedback in personal and professional growth. Glade emphasizes that feedback is essential for growth and improvement, as it provides a different perspective and helps individuals see themselves through the eyes of others. He explains that feedback should be viewed as an opportunity for learning and development, rather than a personal attack or threat. Glade also shares strategies for receiving feedback graciously and using it to one's advantage. He highlights the importance of creating a culture of feedback within organizations and normalizing the process to foster continuous improvement. Key Takeaways: Feedback is essential for growth and improvement, as it provides a different perspective and helps individuals see themselves through the eyes of others. Feedback should be viewed as an opportunity for learning and development, rather than a personal attack or threat. Receiving feedback graciously and using it to one's advantage is a skill that can be learned and developed. Creating a culture of feedback within organizations is crucial for fostering continuous improvement and growth. Quotes: "You cannot grow without feedback because you cannot see yourself through your eyes. You can only see yourself through the eyes of others." - Glade Holman "Feedback is biased and incomplete, but it reveals more about the person giving it than the person receiving it." - Glade Holman "Receiving feedback graciously and acting on it visibly shows that you are about learning and growing." - Glade Holman

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Or else. We have an amazing gentleman on the show today. We just threaten our audience every now and then to keep them in line. You know, we got to keep the audience in line. We have Clay Holman on the show with us today. He's going to be talking to us about his product, his journeys, and what he's learned. He's a feedback guru, a leadership expert, and executive coach. And he'll be talking to us about his stuff. He is a firm believer that everyone has the capacity to grow and improve he clearly has never met some of our relatives glade helps individuals

teams and organizations unlock their hidden potential for business and career success his dual focus on the human and analytical dimensions of strategy growth and change and leadership have made him a sought-after speaker, consultant, and executive coach. He's worked across the globe with C-suite and frontline leaders, building the practical skills to develop and execute growth strategies for businesses and careers. He's led global engagements for notable companies such as Barclays, Procter & Gamble, AstraZeneca, Citigroup, Visa International, and Phillips Semiconductor. astrazeneca city group visa international and off to talk to about my crack card and phillips semiconductor he's also had the privilege of teaching graduate courses at new york's university wagner school of public service and he reaches the pinnacles career here on the chris voss show welcome to the show glade how are you i'm doing great thank you for that thank you for that coming

as well on the show we certainly appreciate that give. Give us any dot coms. Where do you want people to find you on the interwebs? Sure. You know, best place to find it, probably learningbridge.com. Really easy to kind of like find it. Those two words are just smashed right together. You can always find me on LinkedIn too. One of the things about having the name Glade and Holman, there's just kind of only one of us out there. There you go. I'm jealous of you, man. I'm so jealous of you. So there you go. So you work with and at learningbridge.com. Is that correct? And then what's your official title over there? I'm actually the founder, but I call myself managing partner at this point, but it's been, you know, that was 20 years ago when we started the business. So 20 years ago, congratulations,

man. That is awesome. So give us a 30,000 overview of what Learning Bridge is. You know, just a real quick one. Like I started out my career as like a management consultant which I still do that and it was specifically around strategy and leadership and helping organizations build their strategies in a very participatory way and a lot of times you know clients get to know you they like you and they say hey Clay can you do this for me too I know you don't I know you do this but can you do that and one of the things they asked me to do back actually was like in the early 2000s was they just said, hey, can you build this? We do these surveys around leadership development, and it's really a hassle to manage. We go out and get feedback from someone's boss, their peers, their direct reports. It's a mess.

Can you do that? Can you help us take a model and put it online? And I said, no. But in a period about six months i got somebody else asked me to do it and like by the time the seventh month came and the fifth person asked me i said yeah we do that and i called up my brother who happens to be a program guru and he built some software back then mostly to automate and we that's how we started for learning bridge but then we set it up as a separate business but a real focus on how do you help people get the feedback they need to grow because Because without that feedback, growth very rarely happens. You stumble into it otherwise. And I want people to go do it with intention and

with some knowledge. And ever since then, we've said, let's make feedback be our thing and take it for being something that's done to you rather than make it be something that's done for you and by you. There you go. So why is feedback really important? What can you do with it? And do you find that some people are resistant to it? I guess multi-questions, I'm winging at you there. You know, this is kind of like if you're in the corporate world, and right now we're in the last part of the year,

most folks are going like, oh, I've got to have a performance review. Ah. Feedback. And so I think when you say, what's the deal with feedback in some ways, it's got a bad rap because people have a, most of folks will remember a time when the feedback hit them, like a ton of bricks, knock the wind out of them and put them down or was used or weaponized in some way to prevent them from getting something. But I wish, you know, but that's the memory, the post-traumatic syndrome that comes up for some folks.

My view is you can't grow without feedback because you cannot see yourself through your eyes. You can only see yourself through the eyes of others. If you don't have access to that view, you're not going to grow in the way you want to. So you can take control of feedback. Rather than having it be something that's done to you. Move yourself into the driver's seat and take control of what happens to it. Or it may

come to you in a bad way, or it may have come to you in a good way. I mean, corporate America out there, you have like so many folks that are teaching people how to give feedback. I got to tell you, if you're sitting in corporate America right now, you say like, I know they've invested a lot of money and teach people how to give it. But my goodness, I'm sure not getting good feedback. It's not working for me. I can't control how people give feedback, but I can help you figure out how to take whatever that feedback is and turn it to your advantage, even if it was delivered with ill intent or poorly. There you go.

I like this idea. We should change this on the Chris Voss show. We're about to do our year-end reports, and the way we do it is I keep it really simple. I either write on the thing, you suck, and then if they're good, I wrote, you don't suck yet. And that's how we do things here on the Chris Voss show. So give us a 30,000 overview of your life journey. What got you into this?

Some of the things that you've done, all that good stuff. You know, I told you, I didn't know what I, so I came through school. I went back, you know, did my education and grew up in a small town in Utah, but ended up getting educated out in graduate school anyway, back in New York City. And from that landed about doing management consultant work. And one of the, I had a really great opportunity early in my career. My job was to work, we had about, there were about three or 400 executives spattered across the globe at different organizations. And my job was pretty singular. I was supposed to go in and observe them and manage simulations and live settings, and then give them feedback on that. Because these

are folks, the organizations wanted to be the future. So they invested in them in this way. And so it was pretty, I think, pivotal for me to get that experience early in my career to see leaders in situ and just be tasked with watching them. And then giving them feedback that would help them grow so they could hit the target the organization wanted for them. Now, that was 20 years ago. And now you roll the tape forward. And I can kind of sit back and say, hey, from those 500 folks, where'd they land? You know, what happened? Did they actually hit the target the organization hoped? Did they hit

the target they hoped? And if they were removed, you know, where were they removed? And why weren't they removed? And so I've just had a great opportunity over the course of my career to say, what makes a difference for someone to be successful in their career, achieve what they want, and also be accretive to the success of the organization and whatnot? And that was a, so you say, what's my journey to feedback? It started with that, Glade, you have to give it to these people. And I found out I kind of could do it pretty well in a way that they could actually use it. But I got to watch them over time, see where they landed and see what made the difference. There you go. You know, it's always interesting to me when I interview leaders, I'll ask them,

you know, what's your leadership style? Or, you know, what's your principles that you use in leadership? Or how do you lead lead and like a lot of times i don't know what i hear from most of the people i interview on a show like yourself most people don't know i'm kind of surprised by that do you find that most leaders that you know obviously haven't taken your your engage with your company kind of are operating on the kind of autopilot i think you raise a point that i think is quite interesting. And leadership is not, it's something people acquire through experience, not through education. Sometimes some people are lucky enough to actually learn from somebody else's experience around it. But most of the time, people learn leadership by doing it and by failing at it and then doing it again.

And I say that because that's where feedback comes in for me without, without feedback, because there isn't a, if you did take a course in leadership, you took it when you were in, you know, before you could actually use it back in college, you know, and you didn't really have to use it till much later in your career. And so where do you pick it up? It's a craft, right? It's not necessarily a domain of study. And that means it's like an apprenticeship and it's learning and it's feedback and it's coaching. And if you don't get that, you won't do it. So you say like, if they get to someplace, they don't know their leadership style, I would say they've probably tapped out on their progress. They probably hit a ceiling at that.

And I think that's why probably servant leadership and raising leaders underneath you and teaching them and mentoring them is so important is to try and make sure that, you know, they become good leaders. That or, you know, just write on their progress report, you suck. You suck. You know, you were showing a growth mindset though when you said you don't suck yet. You know, the yet part is like, yes, you still can become something. Just the one direction you were talking about. Yes.

I have a vision for people. And the vision is that they will eventually depose me on a, or they will eventually disappoint me on a long enough timeline. I had to pull a Fight Club reference and juggle me there. There you go. So I like this idea, you know, of doing these surveys because, you know, I've often often like sometimes i've had friends that are going like hey you know our ceo friend i'm like yeah i'm like you know how he's kind of toxic and i'm like yeah and have you ever read his glass door reports you know and so i've always used glass door as like a way to go like let's see what's going on with this company and and that's

kind of a so this is a horrible way to have reports on yourself. So this is a lot more safer to do it this way and do it internally. So tell us some of the process. How does it work? What happens when you get some ugly nasties maybe? It's anonymous, right? Yeah. I can't hunt down that employee and kill them? Sure.

Or throw them out a second story window? No, there's no opportunity to do that. We do that on Fridays around here. Fridays, that's, you know, it just depends on how high up you are there. Just a second story because? No, there's no opportunity to do that. We do that on Fridays around here. Fridays, that's, you know, it just depends on how high up you are there. Just a second story because then... Second story, so they have a chance to recover. You don't want to get that murder charge.

Yeah, they have a chance to recover. You know, if you say, you mentioned one thing, you know, where do you figure out something about a CEO? Here's a truism. Oftentimes, the more successful and senior you get, the less access you get to feedback. Yeah. And if you need feedback to grow, which I'm saying you do, you start to stall out because no one tells the emperor he's not wearing clothes, right?

Yeah. And so sometimes what happens for those folks is they'll hire someone like me to go out and get the feedback because they're not giving it. But this isn't just for the CEO. And it's funny you say that. There's a couple of boards that hire me specifically to get feedback on the CEO and then report back to them or university presidents that hire me because they can't get it to do that. But that's not really what gets my juices going. What gets my juices going is trying to get people access to feedback at all levels of the organization. Cause I really do believe that without it,

you can't grow. You might stumble into growth, but you're not going to have control of your own growth. And sometimes organizations think that, you know what, if we're going to give you feedback, we got to spoon feed it to you. We got to be careful.

You might cry, you know, so better not to give them any feedback at all, rather than risk them having an episode and i want to get rid of that mentality and say no no feedback is for the masses and if you can i can teach you the skill of receiving it and maybe that 360 survey tool that some folks are familiar with might be your first opportunity to work with feedback and that is hey we're going to go out with an online survey. It's going to go

to your people that report into you. It's going to go to people that work with you on the same team. It's going to go to your manager and it's going to consolidate it and give you a view of 360. You know, here's what it looks like when you're managing up. Here's what it looks like when you're managing down. Here's what it looks like when you're managing across. Take that source of intelligence and then use it to map your map, map your trajectory forward. Where I think people get in trouble with, with feedback being viewed as something that's harmful to you is that number

one, I'll tell you one thing about that's true about feedback. It's true about every piece of feedback you're ever going to receive from, from now until you go into the grave. And the first thing about that piece of feedback is, is it's wrong. All right. Because it's biased. All right. And the first thing about that piece of feedback is it's wrong, all right? Because it's biased, all right?

And if you have a brain, you have a bias. And since feedback is coming from people with brains, usually, they're gonna have a bias. And so you can always say the feedback's wrong, it's biased. Number two, it's incomplete because no one sees the whole picture. So if all feedback I receive is biased and incomplete, if I want to,

I can throw it out the window and say it's not useful. Or I can say, hey, this is an opportunity for me to increase my situational awareness. This is an opportunity for me to understand what's in other people's minds. Because when someone gives you feedback, they're telling you an awful lot about themselves. They're telling you about their leadership beliefs. They're telling you about their expectations. They're revealing more about themselves than they are about you. And so if you're a leader, you want to know, and you can learn about them from the feedback they give you, right? You're going to find out that narrative that they've constructed in their head. Now that narrative is going to be incomplete and it's going to be biased, but now you know it, you can figure out what to do next. So I try and depersonalize the feedback for someone incomplete and it's going to be biased. But now you know it, you can figure out what to do next.

So I try and depersonalize the feedback for someone so it's not like a personal attack or a personal threat. Use it as an intelligence-gathering tool to understand the situation that's around you. Then you can plot your course forward. There you go. I mean, it sounds pretty good where people can have that situational awareness and development, like you say.

There was a thought I had about leadership. And one of the aspects, I'm not going to find it. I'm just going to wander in the desert with it. So we'll segue to the next point. What are some of the size of the companies that, it'll come back to me. What are some of the size of the companies that you deal with or that can access your services? Is there a minimum sort of thing, whether it's size of company, numbers of deal with or that can access your services is there a minimum sort of thing whether it's size of company numbers employees or budget sure now you know like for us i tell you i just we just finished up with one company where we just did over a thousand people

at one time a thousand of these 360 surveys at one time and and that was great and that's that's a that's a big that's a big chunk at one time to do 1,000 people at one time to all get individual feedback. To each other? And think about how do we help them take that feedback and turn it to their growth, not just turn them to jumping out the window, right? And that's great. We also do it for just one-offs, you know, just one person. And so there's really no limit. Like I said, I'm passionate about giving people the feedback they need to grow.

If they don't get it, they don't grow. If they don't grow, they don't get what they want. I have about nine personalities. Can I have all nine of my personalities to evaluate my first one? Absolutely. So there you go. Now on the site, I think I see a couple different services, right? On top of the 360. Tell us about some of the other tools you have. You know, we will do a fair amount of so 360 is our passion because that's a primary way for us to get feedback to help people grow but what we found is if you just give people feedback sometimes it doesn't work you want to build in them a skill to help them use feedback themselves and so we do do a series of seminars on how to work with feedback, how to use it to

your advantage. We'll call it generative feedback. And that's how you can take any feedback that, regardless if it's ill-intended, like I said, or even poorly conceived or poorly delivered, and rather than have it suck the wind out of you, actually put wind into you and help you kind of go forward, make it generative. So it takes you forward in a forward space, regardless of how it came or where it came from. So we do around that we do leadership feedback jiu-jitsu that is one one of them is like i'm glad you bring that up we it's funny because we we talked about someone's like glade you're really great at helping people work with feedback how does that happen and i'm one organization called me the vp whisperer because i could i could get people to

take even very challenging feedback whatever they, and get them to the next level. And I said, what are you doing with that? And I said, look, I'm just teaching people how to receive it. So if you hear jujitsu, you know, I usually said feedback jujitsu. For those of you that are familiar with jujitsu, it's a combat art. You know, so like, oh, are you saying feedback's combat? No, I'm not. But there's a central tenet to-jitsu if you're familiar with it

and actually if you translate the word that the jitsu part means skill and the do part means gentle means submissive means yielding means bending so it's like what is this gentle yielding bending art in jiu-jitsu you don't meet strength for strength right it was how do you go up against the samurai warrior and if you're a peasant and expect to come out on top you don't meet strength for strength, right? It was how do you go up against the samurai warrior? And if you're a peasant, and expect to come out on top, you don't meet them head on your strength for their strength, you take their energy, you take their force, and you let it come to you and you grapple with it and you roll with it, you receive it, and you grapple with it and you put yourself in a position of, of, of, I guess, benefit on the other end. So when we talk about how do you receive feedback, I'll say, look, we're going to teach you six jujitsu moves

on how you can receive feedback and put yourself in a position of strength, in a position of benefit, regardless of how that feedback came to you. Now, it's not always going to come to you in a combat environment. And that's where my analogy breaks down. But the idea of yielding to it and receiving it is what I want people to actually take away rather than fighting

at it and pushing it back. There you go. And, and I imagine how people handle feedback can tell you a lot about a leader or people, right? Oh, absolutely. Yeah. I mean, I, I've had, I've had employees walk into my office and tell me straight out four letter expletives what they think of me and i think there's a few famous stories i've told on the i think ones and no that didn't make the book but ones one i've told on the show before it's kind of long but basically you know they told me what it was and they're they're like are you gonna fire me and i was like no i was, you actually did something most people won't do in my office. You came and told me what you thought.

And you stood up to me. So props to you. You can go back to your office and do your work now. Because you've been not doing it well. That's why we're having this discussion. And they were shocked. And I was like, look, everyone I thought, everyone I ever worked for, or even parents or authoritarians, to some degree, I thought was an asshole sometimes.

I respected them. They did a good job. But every now and then I didn't like them. They were kind of an asshole. At least I thought so. And so if you're telling me I'm an asshole, then I'm just doing my job. But, you know, having that feedback and being able to take it is so important. I think the thing I'd lost was, you know, as leaders or as people, we can live in these

skitoma blind spots where we're not seeing what's going on. You know, one of my last CEOs that I worked with, I used to say, you know, how come we let Bob into the board meetings? Because Bob is like negative Nancy 100% of the time. The world's always on fire. The world's failing. You know, what the hell is with that? Why do we have to have that? And he said, Chris, never surround yourself with yes men. Like what you talked about where you can get isolated. You can get into a bubble.

US presidents and stuff talk about getting into a bubble and CEOs, everyone's a yes man around you. And he goes, never surround yourself with yes men. You've always kind of that one guy. Cause when that one guy, he might be wrong all the time cause he's a negative Nancy, but the one time he's right, he's saved you millions of dollars. So you've got to listen to him. You've got to keep your thumb on that pulse because, because when he's, when he's right, he's, he's on point and everybody else will be telling you, no, no, no, whatever. But he'll know it. And so I've seen that in action.

You know, I learned a long time ago, I'm not the center of the universe on great ideas in business. I had a couple home runs, but you've got to have that feedback and stuff. And I think that's really kind of a, would you say it's a character trait of a really good, high quality, high value leader? You're welcome to stroke my attitude there about it. I think you can. I think it's a character trait. I think it's a learned, actually, to some degree. And it's the reason why they succeeded to where they are.

What I mean by that, I think early on in people's career, they try and gather credit to themselves and show how smart they are, right? By leaning forward. Now, that gets you so far. And if you can't get beyond, how do I amass credit to myself? How do I give credit away? Or how do I get value from others?

Then you've kind of, you've plateaued in your career. So when you're saying, what did that leader do? At some point he learned, he doesn't, and nor should he be the smartest person in the room. What he should be doing is making the room smarter. Yes. Serving leadership. Yeah.

And if he's making the room smarter, that means he's bringing opposing views to the table where they can kind of have more fleshing out different light that you can see different nuances because you've got perspectives that are coming from that. So the leader's role transition. So I think he's gotten wise to be a leader. He said, you know what, I got to bring in more perspectives that are not mine. And my perspective is one among many. And perhaps right now it's not as important as everybody else's. I want to get the smart people in the room that I want to make the room smarter. Definitely. And that's where I go to. So I say it's a learned behavior that they figured out if I'm going to lead effectively, this is how I do it. I'm not worried about my ego. I'm not worried about getting credit. I'm worried about getting the room smarter because that's how we get decisions that are made that are going to move our business

forward. Yeah. And even if people are, you know, mean, or like you said, they're projecting some of their own attitudes about leadership or I don't know, maybe some trauma they had from a kid or whatever, some bad boss or whatever it is, you know, even being able to look at it and go, hmm, this is me. Is it really, you know, just having that state of mind where you can be reflective, self-actualized, self-accountable, where you can say, hey, you know, maybe they might be wrong. I don't know, but maybe we should explore it a little bit and see, you know, anything where I can improve. You know, I think another trait of a successful leader is they want

to improve and do better for their people. I mean, I want my people to succeed. I want, we joke about throwing people out of windows and stuff, but you know, I've always wanted my employees to succeed because if I know they succeed, you know, these are the people who are going to come up through my company. They're going to be the people who are going to be leading it, hopefully in the future. A servant leader builds leaders underneath them. And so I want to know how I can do the best that I possibly can with them. Do I always do it? No. I mean, we've seen that in my progress reports, right? But this is really important. To really, to me, it's really a benchmark of a high-quality leader. You know, like I said, for me, when I, leaders, I have a central kind of a phrase that I say,

if I could gift somebody with something that I think would get them through their career, here's the skill I would gift them. And it would be to receive feedback graciously and then to act on it visibly. And if you receive it graciously, why? It keeps coming. And because as soon as you say no, thank you for the feedback, particularly if it's coming from below, it stops coming. And then to act on it visibly. Why?

Because it shows everybody everywhere that you're about learning and growing. And if people know you're someone who can learn and grow, people find opportunities to give you. They put you into stretch situations. And so as soon as you kind of say no thank you to the feedback, regardless if it's right or wrong, you want to receive it graciously. One of the leaders that I just admire that I've worked with over 20 years, he is so good with the poker face at receiving feedback that's completely off base he never he never he just keeps it coming the person will say it and and he'll just say tell me more about that say more about that it's like boy tell me how come you keep letting that go um and keep that he goes

he goes glade i'm learning so much about that person i'm learning so much about them and then what i can do with it is now that I know You can throw him out the second story window? Yeah, now that I know where that person is, I can plot a path forward. I learn something about them. To me, I distilled that into a principle

I call flip the chair. When someone gives you feedback, rather than saying it's about me, tell yourself it's about them. Put them in the chair rather than yourself. And then say, what are they revealing to me about themselves? Like a quick example. Someone says,

you know, you're a micromanager and you could say, yeah, you're incompetent. And that's why I'm micromanaging. Or you could say, what is that person saying? When they say,

Glade, you're a micromanager. They're saying, I like autonomy. You know, they're saying, I like autonomy. They're saying, I like to be able to make decisions on my own and free. They're telling about them. And he said, well, you know what, where they are right now, I can't give them autonomy because they don't have the skills. Let's have a conversation about autonomy and see where it goes. Or let me put them someplace where they can have it. The feedback was about

them, not me. And now I'm going to have a conversation. Someone says, you're a stubborn son of a gun. What are they saying? They're saying, I like to have influence on people that I work with and I don't have any influence with you. And I think that's probably true. They don't have any influence with me.

Well, let me think about that. I love the paradigm shift you're doing on all of these. It's brilliant. This is the piece we love on the show. It takes it to a non-threatening place, right? One of the things we talk about in Feedback Jiu-Jitsu is the problem is that most feedback in the world comes to you from a measure and assess framework. And if something comes from measure and assess, you're going to be worried about losing something.

You don't measure up. You're not going to get something. And as soon as that happens, the amygdala right above your brainstem says fight flight response. It floods your system and blood goes to your heart. It goes to your lungs, goes to your limbs. And guess where it drains from? It drains from your prefrontal cortex. And so as soon as that trigger happens, because feedback came from measure and assess, your prefrontal cortex is where your personhood is. It's where your planning is. It's where learning is. All of a sudden, it doesn't have blood.

It doesn't have oxygen. So you can't reflect. You can't learn. Because your amygdala got involved and said threat. But guess what? That's because someone gave you feedback in the framing of measure and assess. So I work with people and say, you become feedback in the framing of measure and assess so i work with people and say you become an expert you hear measure and assess you say measure and assess i say grow and improve i just swap those words out you know you say it because until i can

go to grow and improve my prefrontal cortex is going to remain deprived of oxygen and i'm going to respond defensively to the feedback that just came and it's not going to look good. Yeah. Because it'll be worse, whatever it was going on before. Where the good is, is right here, you know,

prefrontal cortex and it's not functioning because the blood has gone to the heart, the lungs and the limbs. So just knowing that little bit of neuroscience when you're giving feedback or receiving it, if you know you've been triggered, my advice to you is do not respond receiving it, if you know you've been triggered, my advice to you is do not respond in the moment because you will not be responding from a position of

strength. It is going to come out poorly. You're going to be beside yourself because yourself doesn't have the oxygen to actually respond cogently. So that's when you say, thank you for the feedback. You've given me a lot to think about. I really appreciate it. Let's talk again tomorrow. This is where my stoicism comes in really good. There you go. Yeah. Being stoic when people throw stuff at you. In fact, the famous-

Well, you have to discipline so many times, right? View yourself as a work in progress, not as a finished product. If you view yourself as a finished product, it's game over when it comes to feedback. That's true. Because then feedback can only harm you. I had a CEO that asked me to work with his chief legal counsel, who was kind of a bit of a jerk. Everything was all caps, very condescending. This is out on the West Coast. And I said, I don't know that I can work with him. I know you want me to, but I don't know that I can. And he said, well, why is that? I said,

because I think he's got a path and it's about four years that he's going to stay here and then he's going to retire. And he's got no other ambition other than to stay here for four years and retire. And without an ambition of wanting to become something different than he is today, the feedback is going to bounce right off him. So I said, I cannot get change unless they have an ambition in the future. It's just not going to happen. And after some cajoling, he got me to say yes. And I said, look, I can maybe get 20% change, but I can't get you 80. But we had to figure out something that he,

some future aspect of himself that he wanted to be different than today before he'd receive any feedback. That's interesting. You know, you've got to have that future aspiration out there. In fact, that's the whole point for me. Oftentimes, I've got to shift people away from looking back to looking forward. Because as you look back, which feedback is about looking back,

your natural tendency is to defend. And that's where the amygdala gets involved. As soon as you look forward, there's a call that goes out to the and that's where the amygdala gets involved as soon as you look forward there's a call that goes out to the brain that says oh future planning what does that oh pre fungal cortex does it have the oxygen it needs i better funnel some blood to the prefrontal cortex so sometimes in the feedback setting i'll just say look let's stop debating about the past it's feedback a little mantra I'll get people to adopt. It's not about last time.

It's about next time. And as soon as I can shift them to the future, everything changes. You know, make your home court be the future. And all of a sudden you can receive feedback if you make it about next time. Regardless about last time, because like I said last time, it's always biased. It's always wrong. It's always incomplete. I can always go and fight it and so yeah i was on the phone with a with a leader trying to give

advice to a colleague of hers that had just presented to the c-suite it didn't go well and she's giving him the feedback and he's like defending himself and telling us because it was after lunch and he's relitigating it really and they were like she goes stop stop stop you know sarah stop right there i'm not concerned about last time. You're going to present to the same group in two weeks. Let's talk about next time. Soon as we shift to the future, we get all the opportunity to grow.

In the past, it was measure and assess. In the future, it's grow and improve. You just got to move it. You got to move your focus and your intention forward to the future if you want the prefrontal cortex to get involved. want the amygdala to stay there stay in the past be defensive reliving the past you can't change the past you've got to operate in the present and have a vision for the future but i like what i like the paradigm what you talked about is approaching to listening to people's concerns as a reflection of what they're projecting i think

i kind of do that in some different ways in my life, especially in dating. But because people throw shit at you and you're like, hmm, what was your relationship with your father in trauma again? And stoicism is my anchor of life. And so, but as a leader, you have to understand your people and your people are different. Each person is different. I've joked about this on the show where I used to, I used to, when I would go around my office, when it was hundreds of employees and, and touch the hearts and minds, that's how I thought of it. And, you know, I check in with employees. Hey, how are you doing, man?

You know, oh, the boss has come to the desk. He's going to bug me about his TPS reports. No, I'm checking in from a human basis. How are you doing? How's you doing? How's things going? You know, especially with salespeople, salespeople, you know, they're just like, they're just like Tom Brady's or, or any great player in a team. Most people are, but with salespeople a little bit more so where if they get a bug in their head, they got on a bad

streak or they get, they get some sort of psychological, you know, something's bugging them at home. You know, some, something's just not going right. The cocaine hasn't been delivered today. I don't know, whatever their thing is, you know, they can get off track. And so I learned a long time ago that as a CEO, part of my job is to be a psychologist. I've got to get in there. I've got to figure out, you know, like a surgeon and be like, okay, what's, what's going on with Bob? And why is he making his numbers this month and you know and and a lot of times you know it's kind of like that what's that old story of

the lion who has the who has the who has the sliver in his finger or whatever sure yeah yeah yeah and so you just got to get in there and and fight through whatever they're going through and do it but understand your people are are better and you've given me a real epiphany and a paradigm shift on really thinking it from from what their approach is and what they're trying to say to me because like the one example you gave of of the person who says you micromanage me you know you alluded to a little bit where you know maybe that person feels that they need a little more freedom or like you said a job title or area that where they can kind of feel more fulfilled you know i've been an entrepreneur at companies where i was the entrepreneur inside

of the companies i know how much how much how better it is to find something that's a fit for what you do and you know so listen that feedback you know maybe maybe the feedback of somebody saying you know we micromanage Maybe it's not so much me. Maybe there's some structures to the company or some, you know, TPS reports, you know, from OfficeSpace, that sort of thing. Maybe there's some of that going on in the formula of the company that we're like, hey, do we need to, like, dial back a little bit on some things? Do we seem like we're micromanaging people with some of our formats? So I would, you know, analyze it. Well, is it me too?

Or maybe there's some applications of the company as well. There's definitely an interplay between the two and you want to open it up that way. That's where I think it can be liberating. You said like, oh, you know, I want to go around. I want to listen to my people. When I talk about feedback in terms of giving it,

what I'll tell people, I'll say like, you know, there's that phrase people don't ask, don't tell. Now, guess what? When it comes to feedback, it's don't tell ask and for me that's what I want you to do is is ask don't go in and give somebody feedback go in and ask and then and then you and then ask again and then when you don't get the answer you want you say tell me more and if they say more about that because what you really want to do is prime the ground for them to receive. And until they've actually been kind of shared out, they're not ready to take in. And half the time in the asking, they uncover the feedback you were going to give them anyway.

And so I tell someone, don't go in and tell, go in and ask. If they're not seeing something, you point to it. Anybody that was like, you're looking in the mirror, you say, how did you think that went at the meeting last time? When Bob raised his hand, what do you think was on his mind? Or you go through that process, you don't tell, you ask. And that's one of the better ways to give feedback is to help them discover the route with you. And you can kind of shine the light in an area where they haven't looked before by asking rather than telling and then you'll find that they're much more receptive to the learning because now all of a sudden they're seeing you as a coach guide rather than as a critic

and a judge and it probably brings a lot of companies maybe closer together with what you do with the surveys where they kind of feel more like they're on a team? Oh, definitely. I mean, like to me, effective teams are teams where feedback is just part and parcel of the way. It's just what we do. I give it to you, you give it to me, and we learn together. And, you know, people start to acquire a taste for feedback over time. But sometimes it takes time. And I don't know where someone is on that

continuum you know is it have they acquired the taste for it yet or not sometimes you got feedback junkies down here and you're saying like whoa slow down buddy slow down versus you know hey the other person is here to avoid it at all costs you know one time a year is too many times a year and i want to move people's capacity to receive feedback down to the other end of the continuum and usually that means helping them find a piece that helps them. And then all of a sudden they're like, hey, that actually helped. Or, hey, you know what? It's not about me as much as it is about them.

Or, hey, you know what? Now I know something. I can do something. And you see it click for somebody. And all of a sudden they start to do that thing we talk about, which is to receive it graciously. So it keeps coming. And they don't lose that sight. And then they act on it visibly. And then all of a sudden opportunities come to them and they eat it up. They eat it up at that point. Once they apply the principle and it starts

to generate a benefit for them, they want more of it. I love this concept. I've tried, and I imagine you can make this a cultural thing to help the culture of your company and to make everyone more self-aware and self-accountable, which is a big deal these days, getting people to be self-accountable. You know, when I built our companies, I'd read Peter Singe's book, The Fifth Discipline. Yep. And I used the workbook to try and build what I wanted to be a learning organization. Cause I learned, I learned, I didn't have all the great ideas. And one of the sayings we used to have around the office that would try and

lay that foundation was the only stupid question is the unasked question. Yeah. And so people would be like, what does that mean? And then be like, if you have questions, please ask. You're not, we're not going to treat you like you're stupid. We will throw you out the sex story window, though. But it's a great callback joke, people. But we will

retrain you. If you did the training, because the one thing I learned is that guy who, I don't know, was thinking about something during training and he missed which button not to break the $30,000 machine on, he'll break the $30,000 machine on, he'll break the $30,000 machine if he doesn't ask me,

if he's not clear on things. I've seen that movie. And so being able to ask questions and then have that environment where it's not antagonistic or reputative, where, you know, your retribution, where you can go, hey, I just want to kind of get some clarification on this stuff. Can I ask a question? And to me, that helped contribute to a learning organization. The other thing I would do a lot was when we would teach people how to do whatever they were taught we would do,

we would also teach them why we built it that way. Yeah. And so then if they had suggestions where they would go, hey, Chris, you know, we could do this a better way. And we had to be open to that in our culture if people made suggestions as to maybe you could approve that. And a lot of times, sometimes they would say to me, hey, you know, Chris, here's how we could do this better around here. And then I would have to explain to them sometimes,

you know, that's a really good idea. I'm glad you brought it up, so let me tell you how that works. We tried that, and here's what happened. And so that's why we still do it this way. But you already had a good idea like we did. And so trying to just build an organization like that was really important i can see that this takes it to a whole new level of a learning organization because you're teaching people to be self-actualized you're teaching to be self-accountable and you're just building a better team really when it comes down to it i want to do everything i can to make feedback just be

ordinary now one of the problems that people have with feedback is because they receive it so infrequently when they do get it it terrorizes them when you get feedback every day and you get a piece of bad feedback today it doesn't matter i'm going to get a good piece of feedback tomorrow you know what i mean i've got it's it's it's some days good some days bad and if i can just normalize this process of feedback inside an organization make it safe you hear the word psychological safety and if i can just normalize this process of feedback inside an organization make it safe you hear the word psychological safety used where i can actually speak my mind with candor without fear of retribution and that it will be accepted then you start to kind of build momentum towards really unlocking the collective intelligence of the entire group and and avoiding

mistakes because i got to tell you, almost every time there's a mistake that's made in an organization, there's somebody that knew it was a mistake. Yeah. Like the guy who cost me 30 grand on a machine because he's like, I'm like, how did you not know that you shouldn't do that? I missed that in training. And I thought to ask.

And so for me, it's like, how do I make it safe for folks to speak up and speak out? How do I make it safe to bring a beginner mindset to the table? How do I make it safe to challenge folks? And safe sounds like a soft word. It's not. It means we're going to speak with candor and we're going to speak with directness and it's going to be accepted. And, you know, I don't put on soft gloves.

And, yeah, we're not striking each other in the face either. But we are speaking with candor because we know how it's going to be received on the other end and because we know that's how we grow. There you go. So give us the final pitch out on what you guys do at the company, how you do it, how they can onboard or reach out to you to see if they're a fit, et cetera, et cetera. Oh, sure. Hey, you know, for me, I hope it's come through already. If you want to improve your career, if you want to improve your team, if you want to improve your organization, you need access to feedback. And not only access to it, you need to know how to actually take it

and use it. That's what we do at LearningBridge. We do it through surveys. We do it through seminars. We do it through training. And we help instill that skill. We do it through coaching. And we believe you don't need a coach to deliver feedback. You can do it yourself and you can get co-ops and colleagues around you to give you the feedback you need to grow. So if you say we could do with more growth, if you say we could do with more abilities to actually receive feedback rather than just give it, then we're the organization for you to reach out with. And the solution you get will be tailored to your organization and to your fit. We've got tools, we've got techniques, we've got the capacity. And I tell you, we know it works. And you will be surprised at the momentum that your business

will maintain and that the careers inside your organization will actually pick up when you're able to take feedback and make it everyday normal, whether than something that's to be feared or pushed aside. You've got to have feedback. It's like when you're taking a ship across the ocean, you've got to have feedback to know how to correct and course correct in order to get there and that feedback has to be constant because otherwise you know you're gonna you're like we're going to africa and you end up i don't know an arctic or something so i i love that analogy you know just to throw one more thing on that analogy i often think about a ship with a cell and the feedback right is blowing at you

and it's coming one direction if you know how to take that one direction of feedback and you use the the the cell right and the rudder right and the tacking and that you can go any direction you want to even though the feedback is blowing at you one way when you know how to receive it and channel it you can make it work for you that's what people't get. And it's a skill that can be learned. And once you learn it, you can go where you want to go. Not before the wind blows you. So, Blake, give us your.com as we go out.

Yeah, sure. Learningbridge.com. Pretty easy, straightforward. Find us there. Send me a note. I'd love to respond. If you want to figure out how you can take feedback to power your career forward or your organization, I'm the guy.

There you go. Thank you for coming on the show. Great discussion on leadership. You give me some great epiphanies on how to build a better learning organization in the future. Thank you. There you go. And let's see. Note to self, stop throwing people out of the second story floor.

Just throw them out of the first. Thanks, Manish, for tuning in. Go to goodreads.com, Fortress Chris Voss,oss, LinkedIn.com, FortressCrispFoss, YouTube.com, FortressCrispFoss, CrispFoss1 on the tickety-tock, and CrispFossFacebook.com. Be good to each other, stay safe, and we'll see you guys next time.