Our last shift for today’s session is shift number three and we’re going to be talking about feedback. For lots of postdocs, they procrastinate because they are concerned about the feedback they’re going to get. I’ve had postdocs that talk to me about the blinking cursor syndrome, because of perfection, like, ‘I can’t write the perfect sentence. It just blinks at me for hours.’

I’ve had people talk about the feedback that they get from their supervisors is longer than the thing they’ve written and it is really detrimental to their emotional states and their ability to handle that feedback long-term. The nature of the game in academia is that we actually tear things apart because we’re trying to make them better, but it often feels like a personal attack.

I want you to think about this for yourself, first of all. What situations result in you feeling criticised personally? Where do you feel these personal attacks coming…? Whether that’s in the past or right now, what kinds of situations? Dump them in chat box for me. What impact does it have on you when you feel criticised? How does it make you feel inside? Andrew is saying, ‘Referee reports and complaining emails.’ What’s the impact on you? What happens? What happens inside? What happens to your motivation? What happens to you when you get criticised? Do you go into the overwhelming spiral of thoughts and you can’t think clearly because you’re catastrophising in your own head? What happens?

I’m just talking about myself now. Let’s have a look at this. For the interest of time because we’ve been very good at sharing today. Just some reflections for you but we’re not going to spend so much time on it. Think about what situations might have postdocs feeling criticised. Is it the blunt email? Is it…? Do you notice that they respond funny when you give them feedback on their papers or their grant applications? What is it? When they’re giving presentations and then you ask them questions, what do you notice in them? What impact does that have? Do you notice that, then, you don’t get anything for another two weeks when, really, you were expecting something two days later? What actually happens with this feedback?

In criticism, I always like to go back to the etymology of words to find out, what did it mean originally before we made it mean something else? This comes from the 1600s. When I looked at it, I was like, is that real? It’s, ‘The art of judging and defining the qualities or the merits of a thing.’ First instituted by Aristotle, ‘A standard of judging well. The chiefest part of which is to observe excellencies.’ Criticism wasn’t really about tearing things about apart. It was finding the quality in something and saying, ‘There’s quality here. How can we make this even better?’

I think we need a shift in seeing criticism for the gift that it really is. We’re going to have a look at shifting into communication as a leader with this feedback, how to go from that feeling of sub-standard to that rapid-growth learning tool. Where we’ve got these boundaries that are non-existent clearly communicated and respected and that confidence from feeling criticised to actually feeling empowered. When you look at the reports about millennials in the workplace – and most of your postdocs now are probably falling into the millennial category and, if not, in the next five years’ time 85 per cent of the workforce will be millennials – there are six major shifts that are happening in the workplace.

You’ll notice that millennials may be different in the workplace. In the past, it may have been as standard that people will just drive themselves into the ground. In the millennial mindset, it’s no longer acceptable to be in a workplace like that. They’re thinking it’s not just about the money for millennials, it’s about their purpose in life, the impact they want to create. This may be the same for you if you’re not a millennial. You may be driven purely by purpose and money is a by-product. These are the big shifts.

Also, it’s not just about job satisfaction. It’s about personal growth and development in a role as well. It’s not that I see my supervisor as my boss. I want to see my supervisor as my coach, someone that’s going to help me, week on week, improve and get better and coach me through that, coaching/mentoring. My annual review isn’t what they’re looking for anymore. We don’t want a yearly report. We actually want ongoing conversations. That’s where the coaching comes in.

Ongoing coaching conversations about how things are going, how I could improve. They want more of that. Instead of focussing on weaknesses, we’re making the big shift to actually focus on where are my strengths and where can I create the leadership pathway for my strengths, my natural talents and capabilities and let someone else, who’s good at the other stuff, do that stuff. Let’s focus where we’re good at and create mitigation strategies for blind spots. Get mastery level at the things that we’re really talented for.

I was a great analytical chemist but I’m so, so, so not talented at it at all. You can learn to be good at these things, you can become competent, but it was so much harder work than someone who had a natural talent for it. Then, there’s my job. It’s no longer just, I go to my work, it’s my job. It’s people’s lives. It’s people’s identities. They really truly care, even though it may look different in the expression of it for millennials. It’s a bit like the company Netflix. If you haven’t read the book ‘Netflix No Rules, Rules’ read it. They’re no longer seeking approval from the boss. They’re seeking to do what’s best for the company, the vision, the organisation as a whole.

Netflix always says to new employees, you’re not going to lose your job if you think about it like betting, like chips on a table. Some chips, you will win, some bets, you will lose and some will still be in play. They say, ‘You don’t lose your job [at Netflix] because a bet didn’t work out. Instead, you lose your job for not using the chips to make big things happen or for showing consistently poor judgement over time.’

Feedback, lots of feedback, helps people make better judgements and makes big things happen. If you want them to get the big result, you need to give more feedback. We also know, a bit like the emperor’s new clothes, where he walks around naked – but it’s only the little boy at the front who goes, ‘Ha-ha, you’ve got no clothes on’ – the higher up you get in an organisation, the less feedback you receive and the more likely you are to come to work naked. It’s not just giving feedback to your postdocs, but it’s encouraging them to give feedback honestly to you too through the framework and we can all learn and grow from that. I like to use the A4 Feedback Guidelines. In this report here that I wrote for Jobs.ac.uk called ‘Powerful Mistakes’ there are three different feedback methods. There’s the sandwich feedback.

There is the feed-forward, feedback, which is used at organisations like GSK. You’ve got lots of different methods but I’m going to share this one with you today. This is direct feedback so it could be construed as the most critical, but I want to teach you a really positive way of doing it. Whenever you are giving feedback to someone, tell them you have feedback for them and ask them, do you want the feedback? If yes, do you want it now or do you want it in a separate meeting? Do you want it written or do you want me to do it orally in the meeting? Get their permission to even share the feedback in the first place. It will go a long way because they will have had a say in whether or not they receive that feedback.

Then, tell them I’m going to take you through the A4 Feedback Guidelines when I’m giving you this feedback. I’ve thought through this. The things I’ve thought through before giving this feedback are ‘assisting’. Did it aim to assist you? Was there a positive intent behind that feedback? You can say, ‘Yes, my aim was to assist you.’ Was it ‘actionable’? Did it focus on what you could do differently? I made sure that my intent was to help you and that I did something and fed back something that was actionable. Then, remembering to ‘appreciate’ the feedback that someone has given you the gift of feedback to help you learn and grow.

Then, tell them ultimately you get to ‘accept or discard’ that feedback in full or in part. It’s your choice what to do with this feedback, so let’s give an example here. I run a weekly, sometimes a bi-weekly newsletter called ‘Coffee and Notes’. Someone once responded to my email with, ‘I don’t like the way that you sign off your emails. I think that this approach would work better because it’s more formal,’ or something like that. This person had actually… I’m appreciating it. This person had taken the time to give me the gift of their feedback. Did it aim to assist me? They did want to assist me. They said, ‘I really like what it is that you write about but I don’t like the way you sign off these emails.’ I think I used to put, ‘Speak soon,’ and then my name. They said, ‘It’s too informal.’ Was it actionable? Yes, it did focus on what I could do differently. Do I choose to change how I sign off my emails? Then, ultimately, I could have accepted or discarded it in part or in full. Having reflected on it, I thought it is a bit ridiculous that someone has sent this feedback to me but when I thought about it, I thought, yes, I am. I’m going to change how I sign it off. I now sign it off, ‘Keep opening up,’ or, ‘Keep working on your time and energy,’ whatever it is but I did actually change it so it was actually a really great piece of feedback.

That’s just a tiny, weeny, stupid example that this can be used for anything that you’re working on. The key here is to tell them the framework, gain permission and ask for how they want to receive that feedback. Then, ask them to do the same for you. When you get feedback, if you are up for this and you’re still doing in-person things where you actually go to work, pin it on your door and say, ‘This is what feedback I am currently working on.’ Pin it to the door, show how important it is for you to receive feedback, and what you’re working on. That would be the ultimate thing to do with feedback.

My Q and A for you today we only have a few minutes before we finish but I want you to think about, what has been most helpful for you? If you met someone in the corridor now, someone at home, what would you say to them? What would be your top thing? Was it priorities? Was it boundaries? Was it feedback? Drop me one word in the chat box or a phrase to say which was the most helpful part. I’m not going to go into all of the questions, just what was most helpful. I thought I was going to have ages. Anyone wants to follow up with me on anything that we’ve talked about today, you can drop me an email. You can visit my website. I’m mostly on LinkedIn actually, not really Twitter, but you can get me there too. I’d love to connect with you and find out what’s going on. Drop me a message if you need any support after this session.

[?Ceri 0:12:36.4] is saying, ‘Priorities.’ Maria, boundaries for you. Andrew is, ‘Boundaries.’ Excellent. Really well done. If anyone has a quick question for me before I finish, we’ve got two minutes so you can bring yourself off mute. Melissa was, ‘The Hearth and the Realm was a useful exercise. I realise that work and even small work commitments are all in my hearth.’ Yes, so something has to change. Sometimes there’s a moment like mine was a big moment. Sometimes it’s just a realisation that can kick-start that. Well done everyone. I have super enjoyed being here with you. Enjoy the workbook and I hope to see you all very soon, have a great rest of your day. Bye, everybody.

Thank you, everyone. Thank you, Hannah. I’m just putting in the chat a plug for our next session in January on ‘Building Intercultural Competence’ with Sally Walker who will be discussing how intercultural competence can help you and also help your postdocs as well. Full details and the link for that is in the chat. That’s January 12^th. Thank you everybody for coming. That was an absolutely fantastic session.

Bye, everybody. Have a great day.

Carrie, are you talking about the productivity and things? Hannah has run sessions for our postdocs, as well. I’m not too sure how much of what we’ve covered today was covered in your sessions with the postdocs, Hannah.

I did the five pillar areas on how to plan and priorities, how to focus on basic needs. You know that ‘You’ part of the Hearth and the Realm. How to really make sure we’re getting enough food, sleep, water, exercise as a priority to be able to show up resource. We talked about habit stacking, how we can tag on new habits to things we already do in order to get more momentum with those basic needs. We didn’t, so much, talk about boundary setting in that session. They have done something on self-competence with another coach so I’m hoping that that was in that session but someone might be able to confirm.

I think we have done something for the postdocs so I’m hoping it’ll make its way onto the final portal for the postdocs as well.

Yes, yes.

I think the priority setting is your supervisor in your realm or in your hearth and everything. I think that would be really quite useful.

Yes, we didn’t do the Hearth and the Realm exercise. We did a mini five-day challenge so it was just little 15-minute exercises to try and get them kickstarted with their time and energy.

Yes, anything like this is useful for them. I think the problem is they think they don’t have time to come.

I know! I was one of the ones where I’d book onto these things and then not show up because I’m far too busy.

I think the worksheets, there’s nothing in there that wouldn’t be useful for a postdoc to see as to if I say, ‘These are types of things we discussed in this training that could be useful for us together as a team,’ sort of thing.

Yes, maybe it’s something for you to feed back, Andrew, to Prosper in case they want to bring this session into a resource for the postdocs too, to see what we talk about on the other side. That might be helpful.

Sure, I will definitely do that.

Yes.

Melissa says, ‘I feel like my postdocs have loved it and have been coming really regularly as far as I know.’ That’s great to hear Melissa.

That’s good. Thanks, then. Thank you very much.

Thanks, everybody. Bye for now!

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