Women at Work - The Essentials: Giving Feedback

Episode Date: May 3, 2021

Giving feedback is critical to being a good manager, somebody people look up to and not just report to. But very few of us actually like to do it. So how can we get better at this essential skill? Amy G is joined by a school principal to interview a feedback expert.

Over 40,000 businesses have future-proofed their business with NetSuite by Oracle, the number one cloud ERP, bringing accounting, financial management, inventory, and HR into one platform. Download the CFO's Guide to AI and Machine Learning for free at netsuite.com slash women at work. You're listening to Women at Work from Harvard Business Review. I'm Amy Gallo. Giving useful feedback is a critical part of being a good manager. But let's face it, no one really likes to give feedback. We worry that even mild criticism will make someone angry or upset, or that our feedback will demoralize them instead of motivate them. It's also hard to know what to prioritize and how to make sure your message is clear. And if we're working remotely, how do we carve out the time?

Being a woman can make this challenge even more difficult. We know from research that employees, both men and women, react more negatively when receiving constructive feedback from a woman as opposed to a man. So sure, giving feedback is complicated, but it's manageable. And for the next half hour or so, we're covering the essentials of this important topic. I'm joined by two other women who are bringing their expertise and experience to the conversation. First, Therese Houston, who's a social scientist. Her latest book is Let's Talk, Make Effective

Feedback Your Superpower. Therese is the founding director of Seattle University's Center for Faculty Development. For years, she's helped college professors improve their teaching so that students can learn more from them, which is similar to the work my second guest, Jessica Gomez, does. She's an elementary school principal in Southern California. A lot of her job involves visiting classrooms, sometimes virtually, observing teachers and then giving them feedback on how well they're engaging students. Therese, Jessica, thank you so much for joining us on the show. Thank you for having us.

It's a real pleasure to be here, Amy. Thank you. So Jessica, you've been in a managerial role for 13 years now, so you're probably giving feedback all the time. What aspects of the skill do you still find challenging? Well, for me personally, I think it's getting the time to do it. Because if you can imagine, if you're walking from class to class, let's just say you visit 10 classes in a one-hour period of time

or maybe 10 minutes in each class. Coming back realistically to sit down, write down your notes, find the time to find that teacher to go over that feedback. And so time passes and like, oh, shoot, I never got back to her and or him. And then right now over virtual, it's this awkward thing versus usually I bump into them in the hallway or I bump into them in the state, right? So it's so easy. And this way has to be like a very intentional meetup. Yeah. So finding the time, anything else you find challenging? Sometimes I think when it has to be a little bit more difficult of feedback, where sometimes there might be several things I need to give feedback on without overwhelming the person with, you know, there's this, this, this, this,

and this. How do you streamline that and say, okay, do I go for the most important piece that I think is going to make the biggest difference? Or do I go for the feedback that is maybe going to make the quickest wins? They could be the, oh, it's just a little tweak. So which one do I go to first without having to lay out a whole list of things? Because I know that if I was given that, it would be really challenging for me to be able to address them all. Yeah. The laundry list of our flaws is never easy to listen to, right?

Absolutely. Yeah. So we're going to address some of those challenges with Therese's help. But Therese, I want to just sort of lay the groundwork first. I've always thought about giving feedback as one conversation, but you split it into three categories, appreciation, coaching, and evaluation. Are these actually three separate conversations? And why do you think it's important to make distinctions between those? So those are three different kinds of feedback,

appreciation, coaching, and evaluation. I get that language from Douglas Stone and Sheila Heen, who have a great book, Thanks for the Feedback, which is a book on how to hear feedback more effectively and be more receptive to it. They don't necessarily have to be three different conversations, but let me first distinguish what they mean. So appreciation is what most of us think of as positive feedback or praise that's telling someone what you want them to keep doing or do even more often because they do it well, and it has a positive impact. And then coaching is advice. That's, in Jessica's case, helping someone figure out, you know, how can they keep students more engaged when they're doing all their learning from home on

their computers. But that would be advice, how to adapt, how to build, how to learn, how to grow. And then there's evaluation, which is the part that most of us will hesitate to give and maybe only give at annual performance review time. And evaluation is letting someone know where they stand. Are they in line for a promotion? Are they in line for a merit raise? Are they where Jessica expects them to be two months into their first teaching job? Are they in line for a merit raise? Are they where Jessica expects them to be two months into their first teaching job? Are they meeting expectations? You ask, do these need to be separate conversations? No, not necessarily. And in fact, you should be giving a lot more appreciation than you should the other two. That builds trust. It helps the person see that you

know what they're doing well. But it is very possible to combine the two. For instance, in an evaluation conversation, if you're letting someone know where they stand, you wouldn't want to just say, Emily, you need to improve blank because you're not performing where I'd expect someone in their second year of teaching to be. And then in the conversation, right, you'd want to offer some coaching after that on what Emily perhaps could be doing to improve or adapt. And the tricky part is that the reason I emphasize separating these two is all too often employees will come in saying, you know, Jessica, could you give me some feedback on my teaching? And Jessica's like, of course. And Jessica assumes they want one kind of feedback when they really want another. So the advice I would have for principals,

for Jessica, for anyone in a management role would be to say, I'd love to give you some feedback. What would be most helpful to you right now? Do you want me to let you know what I love about your work? Would you like some coaching and advice or do you wanna know where you stand? And the other person might be really surprised because no one's ever asked them that question, but there's a good chance that because you've invited them to get specific,

they can now say, actually, what I'd really like is some coaching. I'm having trouble with my math curriculum. Or no, I would like to know where I stand. Would you be willing to tell me? Right? And so if you open up those possibilities, it's especially hard to ask for appreciation. Everybody feels needy if they're asking for like, what am I doing well? So to offer that, to say, would it be helpful to hear what I love about your work? Just about anybody would love that question. Yes. And just having that vocabulary to be able to have what can be a challenging and difficult or very uncomfortable conversation really opens it up to being a very comfortable opportunity for me to be able to highlight all the amazing things they do, because they do do a lot more amazing things than areas

of growth. What I like about it too is, you know, one of the things that I find difficult about hearing feedback is that I'm not sure what's coming, right? So when someone says, can I give you a piece of feedback? I, of course, embracing myself to hear the worst. But if they say, can I give you a piece of coaching feedback or appreciation for the work you've done? I'm more in the right mindset to hear what's about to be said to me, which I think is a big part of what you're describing, Therese. It is. And one of the things you're doing when you ask the other person, what kind of feedback would be helpful to you is you're putting them back in the driver's seat. And so they're much more receptive to whatever you're about to say.

Absolutely. Let's talk about Jessica's challenge around trying to decide what to focus on. I used to make early in my career in giving teachers feedback, because one of my roles is to give professors feedback, is that I would give them the whole laundry list. You know, I'd have 11 different suggestions and I would just go down every suggestion and the other person would either be collapsing, right? You know, they'd be shutting down or they'd be getting angry because they're so overwhelmed with their work that they're like, how could I do all of these things? You're just adding to my troubles. What I really like to draw upon, there's a great book called The Progress Principle

by Teresa Amabile and Stephen Kramer. And what they point out is that if you want to keep people motivated, because I think that's one of the issues that you're addressing there, Jessica. Yes, exactly. How do I keep their motivation up if I'm offering them feedback? And what Amabile and Kramer found was that the number one thing that motivates people is a sense of progress. Managers often think that the thing that will motivate people is appreciation and recognition. But the truth is, when they analyze work diaries of different participants in their research

study, the most motivating days people had were days where they felt they made progress. Not that they reached a huge deadline, but that they made progress on their important goals. So what I take from that is if you're trying to figure out which of the 11 things should I point out, if I'm only going to point out two or three, don't give the hardest ones and don't give the easiest, but give something in the middle where that person is going to be able to see some immediate gains. And also you want to help them see their progress. So if you can identify something that's in the middle there, that's going to be an easy

win, they'll be able to make some progress, but it's still important. And then you can circle back to them and say, hey, two weeks ago, we talked about how you were going to be doing this with your third graders. I'm curious, how's it going? And then that person can say, it worked. I tried blank and you wouldn't believe it, but the students were so much more engaged and it was a Friday afternoon at two o'clock and they were still paying attention. And so you're both getting to acknowledge the progress. So that's what I would suggest. Start with something where they could see immediate progress and check back with them to find out how the progress is going. Because that also gives you a chance if they're not making progress to do some coaching to help them problem solve. Absolutely.

What does the future hold for business? Can someone please invent a crystal ball? Until then, over 40,000 businesses have future-proofed their business with NetSuite by Oracle, the number one cloud ERP, bringing accounting, financial management, inventory, and HR into one platform. With real-time insights and forecasting, you're able to peer into the future and seize new opportunities. Download the CFO's Guide to AI and Machine Learning for free at netsuite.com slash women at work. That's netsuite.com slash women at work. Thank you. Business School professor, Madhupe Akanola. The show features TED Talks about everything from setting smart goals to the latest on DEI in business, followed up with a mini lesson from

Madhupe on how to apply these lessons in your own life. Listen to TED Business wherever you get your podcasts. I want to ask about that list of 11 things that Jessica's talking about. And you had said, Teresa, that you want to focus on something that they can make progress on. So you're not doing the easiest thing and the hardest things. But when do you give the feedback about those other 10 things, including the hard ones and the easy ones? That's a good question. I would say if there's a big issue, right, a really complicated issue or an issue that you think is deeply intrinsic to that person's personality. I once worked with a professor who was very shy and it was getting in the way of

his teaching. And the first time I gave him feedback, we didn't start with his shyness because I thought that was going to be overwhelming to him. In the second or third conversation, I brought up, I noticed that you sometimes seem reluctant to make eye contact with students. Was that just that one day that I happened to be in the classroom or have you noticed that before? And he shrunk down a little bit. He said, oh, no, this is a real challenge for me.

And I was like, oh, let's brainstorm together. What would be a workable solution for you? Do you really think it's getting in your way? By the end of the conversation, he was so grateful that I brought it up. He was so embarrassed about it that it felt unmanageable. But we were able to make the unmentionable mentionable, which really empowers people. So I'd suggest moving to those bigger issues after you've had that sense of progress and some successful wins and built up that trust

that you're on that person's side, that would be the time to start bringing up the challenging issues. And you might even be able to, depending on your relationship with the teacher, to make it a joke. I do this with my husband where I'll say something to the effect of, I have bigger feedback. Is this the time to bring it up or not? And he'll be still, he can come back and say, definitely not. Or he can say, yeah, I guess. And then we can get into the harder issues. But definitely, you want to get to those bigger issues, but get something in the bank first. Get some easy wins behind you. Yeah. Therese, I'm wondering, how does trust build into that? As Amy said, when do you get to that bigger list of laundry, those harder conversations?

Where does trust come in? Because I have the privilege of having nine years with my staff. So we've established some fabulous rapport and they can trust me as a leader. But as a new leader or a new manager coming to our organization, does trust matter, I guess, is my question. I would say yes, trust matters, but trust can feel like something like you've said you build over the course of nine years and you want to be able to give feedback in your first year of being a principal, right? You don't want to have to wait till year nine or even year four before you start giving feedback. So in my book, Let's Talk, I did an interesting research study that identified there are some

much simpler things you can do to improve how someone hears feedback that's unwelcome. And I surveyed people around what would have made a bad feedback conversation better. And it was really interesting because one of the options that they had was, I wish I had trusted the person giving me feedback more. And that was actually ranked number 10. I expected it to be ranked number one or number two. It was ranked number 10. The top five responses were basically different variations on, I wish the other person had listened to me. I wish they had asked from my perspective. That would have made a hard feedback conversation go so much better. Interesting.

And that's a way that you can build trust. I mean, basically, you're building trust by listening first, getting their side of the story, giving them a chance to say, well, here's what I would do exactly the same way the next time, and here's what I would do differently. That's a great question to ask is, if you find yourself in the same situation again, what would you do the same way and what might you experiment with? Yeah, you know, when I think about how uncomfortable many managers feel with giving feedback,

a lot of it is, I just have to get this out, right? I have to finally say this. I've spent so much time ruminating or preparing, I'm just gonna say it. So it becomes a monologue rather than a dialogue. Therese, could you talk a little bit about the role of questions in giving feedback? I'm so glad you brought this up, Amy, because you're so right, especially if you're someone who's a bit conflict avoidant like I am. You'll spend a lot of time in your head deciding, do I need to bring this up? Is this a big enough problem? Maybe that only happened that

one time. Okay, even if it only happened once, it can never happen again. And you spend way more time, you might spend three hours thinking about the problem and only 20 minutes talking with that teacher, right? So what's happened in that situation, I like to call it you've sided with the problem. And what you really want to do is side with the person, not the problem. And that doesn't mean that you're saying the problem isn't important. That doesn't mean you're letting that person off the hook. It means you can imagine swiveling over to their side of the desk and the problem's over there. And we're looking at it from the same perspective. What do we need to do? What would make a difference? What would you be willing to try? That's a question I often ask people is, what would you be willing to try? And what's off

the table? And it's really fascinating because people will often have things where they say, I absolutely won't do X. And I'm like, well, maybe I'd do X prime. I don't know, back it up, just stop it. So asking questions is important because if you're the only one talking, that's called broadcasting. Two people talking, that's a conversation. So you want this to be a feedback conversation, not feedback broadcasting. So questions are the way to get the other person's perspective. There are a variety of questions that I love to ask. The first thing you want to do is you want to find out how well they self-assess. So for instance, if someone's made a mistake, you want to find out, do they see it as a problem, right?

It's going to be so much easier to work with them if they agree that was a tricky situation. So let's say you get a complaint about a parent-teacher conference. You have a parent call in, contact you, or send you an email saying that a parent-teacher conference didn't go well. I would start that kind of conversation by saying something like, you know, how do you think parent-teacher conferences went? Did you have any that were particularly tricky? And then you find out, oh, you know what? The one that was really hard was blank, right? And now you can move so much easier into that conversation saying, well, you know what?

Actually, I heard from, you know, Mrs. McCormick. She called me. And then, you know, the teacher can roll her eyes and say, yeah, I'm not surprised. But now you're brainstorming together on what happened. Why might that parent have that perception? If you can figure out questions for self-assessment, is this person aware of the problem? If they articulate it first, you're in really good shape. Therese, what if the person doesn't see that there is a problem?

How can you use questions to help them develop their awareness about what needs to be worked on? It's a great question, Amy. And so you won't be able to only rely on questions. At some point, you're probably going to need to point out the problem. But let's take an example here. So let's say that you heard that a call to the London office didn't go well, right? And you weren't on that call, so you're just hearing this secondhand, but you're concerned about it because this is an important collaboration that you have with the London office.

So you might say to the person, okay, so Amy, how did the call with the London office go this week? And Amy, you say, you know, how well it went, all these fabulous decisions that were made and negotiations that happened. And Amy, you're not bringing up the problem. So then I moved to, well, I'm asking because actually the perception was that there wasn't enough research done on your end to be prepared for the call. And why do you think they might have thought that? Or even before that, I might ask, so how do you see it, Amy? So I say they were concerned that perhaps you weren't as prepared as you normally are for these kind of calls. How do you see it? And then Amy,

you can now tell me like, oh, you know what? I wasn't as prepared as usual because I thought the call was on Friday and it was actually on Thursday. Or you could say, no, I was prepared. I have no idea what they're saying, right? But I'm asking how you see it. And then I might move to, okay, well, so there was that perception. Let's say you tell me I was prepared and I can say, okay, well, there was a perception that you weren't prepared. Where do you think that perception might be coming from? So we're really trying to figure out, was it a real problem or was it just a perception problem? Either way, it's something that we need to address.

But let's at least come to agreement whether that really was a problem or it was the perception. But the perception is still an issue. We don't want to run into that again. You are going to at some point probably need to say, here's what I heard or here's what I saw. Here's what I noticed. But then immediately move back to, so how do you see it? Why do you think people had that impression? And then other

questions that you can ask. Some questions that I really like to say are things like, you know, Amy, it's really uncharacteristic of you to be unprepared for a call or for people to even think that you're unprepared. Help me understand what happened, right? That gives you the affirmation that like, I know this isn't you. This isn't typical. Is there a way that I can help you? Is there a way I can support you? And the other thing that I also like, another question I like to ask is, I'm guessing that you faced a trade-off. So what factors were you weighing? Because there might've been some trade-off where you're like, I can either prepare for the London call or I can prepare for this presentation that I'm giving to the VPs this

afternoon. So then it gives you a chance, Amy, to say like, well, here's the dilemma that I faced. What would you have done? And then the two of you can say, actually, you made the right choice, right? So that would be another question that I might ask. I love the reframing story in particular, right? That this is not how I typically see you, right? I see you as someone who's very prepared. What happened in this case? Because I think a lot of times, again, if I think about some of the constructive feedback I've received, you know, my identity gets really threatened, right? And I'm someone who doesn't make mistakes. I'm someone who's always prepared for meetings. I'm someone who, you know, keeps my clients happy. So hearing that I haven't done that starts to make me question my own identity. And I think what you've done there is you allow the person to retain their vision of who they are while still addressing the behavior or the situation. You're so right, because we have professional identities and they can easily be threatened, which is not what the behavior or the situation. You're so right, because we have professional identities and they can easily be threatened, which is not what the principal or the manager is trying to do

when they raise this problem with you, but that's what gets triggered. And you're reacting to that. And then you can't, you're not a good problem solver under those circumstances. You're under high threat. So simply saying like, that's, you know, that's not how I usually see you. And I love your language. So what happened in this case? Because it really makes it an isolated incident because what you're trying to do is you're trying to make sure it's not a repeated incident, that it indeed was an isolated time and it's not going to happen again. Yeah.

What does the future hold for business? Can someone please invent a crystal ball? Until then, over 40,000 businesses have future-proofed their business with NetSuite by Oracle, the number one cloud ERP, bringing accounting, financial management, inventory, and HR into one platform. With real-time insights and forecasting, you're able to peer into the future and seize new opportunities. Download the CFO's Guide to AI and Machine Learning for free at netsuite.com slash womenatwork. That's netsuite.com slash womenatwork. So Jessica, your school district has been virtual for almost a year or I guess over a year now. And you're having to do a lot of this feedback over Zoom, I presume.

Yes, yes. And the way I look at it is I always try never to forget what it's like to be a teacher or any role, right? If I've been in that role. Because I want to come from their perspective. What are they dealing with right now? You have kids who have spotty Wi-Fi. They're on teachers who have spotty Wi-Fi. Okay, so if the students are not engaged, is it because the teacher's Wi-Fi keeps going in and out? Is it because they are getting, you know, shoddy Wi-Fi? And for me, it's what I'm finding challenging with the feedback

right now is how do I give that feedback that is appropriate for the learning environment that we're in right now? Not only that, so let's just say I do have feedback. When do I give it to them? When do I give it to them? Because they're working all day. They're either prepping lessons or they're doing small group instruction or they're holding office hours. And so for me, it would be like at the end of the day when they're exhausted. So now, oh, by the way, you know, meet me at this time because I really want to talk about what I saw. And we're going to get on yet another Zoom, right? Yes.

And I'm, you know, I'm Zoomed out. I'm burned out. So it has been this constant battle that I've been having with myself of how do I let them know they did an amazing job but also to let them know like okay here you know let's think about it from this perspective maybe you want to try this particular strategy that's been challenging for us as educational leaders right now to be able to give effective feedback in it and to be honest with you as a leader sometimes

I feel ineffective right now because things are so out of my control and I just feel like I should be doing so much more, but there's only so much I can do from where I'm leading. Yeah. Therese, Jessica's not alone in this feeling out of control right now, right? Absolutely not. Jessica, you raise an excellent point around how do I make sure I give this feedback soon enough, but not exhaust the person and also perhaps not to catch them off guard. One piece of advice that a lot of managers are finding helpful is to make it transparent ahead of time that let's set up that feedback conversation before I even come to observe your class. So that might be, you know, if you're observing on a Thursday to say, you know, would it be better for you if we set up 10 minutes at the end of the day on Thursday or 10 minutes at the end of the day on Friday, you know, give them

the choice. And then they can say, well, neither is great, but if we're going to do it, let's do 10 minutes on Thursday, right? And that way it's transparent that we're going to do this. And when you come back together, you know, it may just be a virtual high five or it could be, okay, so what would you do the same and what would you change? Here's what I was thinking you might want to try. Would you be open to that? But you're scheduling it ahead of time so that the person doesn't feel that it's going to be punitive or that this is going to be remedial because they made a mistake, but

that they know ahead of time that this is coming. And that gives also them some control because they decide when they want to have that conversation. I don't know if like in the corporate world, if it works this way, but there's the informal and then there's the formal feedback. Absolutely. Yep. Yeah. And so in the education world, when I'm talking about going through informal class visits

on a daily basis, those are not formal evaluations or moral coaching opportunities, appreciation opportunities, right? And so do we always want to give feedback at every time that you visit? So, you know, because I want to try to visit as much as I can, but should we set up a culture where every time I do that, that we should give some feedback? I think the answer is yes, but I'd love to hear what you have to say. Well, there's a great research study by a team at University of Michigan that finds, now they weren't looking at educational context, but they found in industry, the highest performing teams receive 5.6 pieces of praise for every piece of criticism, right? So it's not two pieces of praise for every one piece of criticism or even three, but almost six pieces of praise. And so what I would suggest

is every opportunity that you get, say what they're doing well and be specific about it, right? Why something works, what impact it's having, how it's benefiting learning or how it's saving time or whatever it might be. But in terms of do you need to give coaching every time? No, definitely not. But appreciation, just give it every chance you get. Always. Any chance I get is exactly what I do. I want to ask Teresa about clarity because I'm thinking about a friend who is a manager who I helped prep for a very difficult feedback conversation she needed to have

with one of her direct reports. And it went really well from her perspective. And then nothing changed. And in fact, the next time they spoke, the direct report did not express any understanding or comprehension of what they had talked about before. And I'm curious, how can you make sure that what you're saying is clearly heard by the other person? So some things that I like to do at the end of a feedback conversation, a couple of different questions like, okay, what are your top three takeaways? We've covered a lot of ground here today, Amy. What do you hear me saying? What are your top priorities based on what we've talked about today? A thing that I like to ask is what was most valuable to you out of this conversation? And that's fascinating because

you might find that the thing that they thought was most valuable to you was really obvious, but to them was a light bulb moment. And that can really help you adjust. Oh, okay. Gosh, wow. That wasn't the main takeaway. Let me come back to it. Let me say it one more time. Yeah. So let's assume you've followed all of your advice, Trace. This conversation has gone pretty well or not disastrously. And you leave the conversation. What do you do to follow up? How do you make sure that what you've given the feedback or the coaching about actually is carried through? Well, ideally, when you're having the feedback conversation, if there's a concern that's coming up, I advise people to say, let's touch base in two weeks, right? Or you can give the other person control and say, so Amy, when would you like to circle

back on this? I want you to be able to tell me problem solved or problem more complicated than we realize, right? If you forget to do that, because we're all busy and it's easy to forget things, you can still come back two weeks later and say, hey, Amy, so two weeks ago, you know, we talked about how you were going to make an effort to come in earlier, that you were going to log in on email earlier, let's say, or that you were going to do some different preparations for

the negotiations that you go into. I'm wondering how that's going. What's easier than you thought? What's harder than you thought? And giving them a chance to really let you know the landscape that they've traversed. And they may, you know, maybe that person's going to come back to you and say, I know it's important. These past two weeks have been crazy at home. I haven't been able to do the extra prep that I expected. But then you can say, okay, great. So that happens, right? We all find ourselves there,

I understand. Given that, what do you want to do differently going forward? Maybe, you know, is that situation changing or is it going to be the reality from now on? But I do suggest as a manager, it's very important to circle back and find out what progress people have made. Again, it gets back to what we talked about earlier, the progress principle, helping people see that they've made progress, giving them a chance to articulate the progress they've made. And that might even be the direct question that you ask. What kind of progress have you made? What's been easy and what's been hard? Jessica, do you find you have time for those follow-up conversations? You know, as you were talking, I was thinking to myself, well, that would be ideal, right? To be able to circle back with everybody. Because in my mind, I was thinking, so if you are leading a team of, I don't know, 75 to 100,

I mean, at the high school, you're dealing with employees, up to 150 employees, right? These are just the adults. These are not even the kids, right? But as the adults, and so as you were talking, I thought to myself, how would I ensure to circle back with everyone? And so what I started to envision was I need to put it on my calendar so that ahead of time and say okay put it out two weeks in in in the future and so that I don't forget because if you need to have multiple conversations with multiple people if you're anything like me and the world takes you know life takes over you're gonna forget and but putting I think calendaring it just to remember to come back and circle back. I do that also to say, if someone's going to have an important doctor

appointment or an important, something big in their life, I calendar it like a day or two after that. I make sure I ask them about that because I will forget about that too. But I think that might be a great strategy as you were talking about, I need to do that. I need to do that to make sure that I don't forget it. And it's not something you could do for all 150 employees, right? But you can tick those people who you either think, A, need more encouragement. They want to make sure you see they're making progress, right? And so that's a way you're offering appreciation to them. So it's either the people who need to have that motivating conversation with you or be the problems that you're thinking, whoa, this has got to change. And I'm just going to circle back with them to make sure that change has begun, right?

Those would be the two groups to prioritize. Yes, yes. Therese and Jessica, thank you so much. This has been such a useful conversation. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. That's our show. If you want more about this topic, check out the HBR Guide to Delivering Effective Feedback. This episode is the first in a series where Amy B., Emily, and I are joined by women in fields that are essential to society to talk about key career topics. The way we see it, there's a lot we can all learn from their perspectives and questions. And in the spirit of giving feedback, why don't you tell us what you think of this episode?

We're at womenatworkathbr.org. Our editorial and production team is Amanda Kersey, Maureen Hoke, Adam Buchholz, Tina Tobey-Mack, Erica Truxler, and Rob Eckhart. Robin Moore composed our theme music. I'm Amy Gallo. Thanks for listening.