- We're going to answer the important question,
what is feedback in communication?
We'll explain it, but more importantly,
I wanna talk about how you can use feedback
to accelerate your professional development.
So let's get into the details.
(enthusiastic music)
My main point today is that as a professional,
you should take advantage of the feedback
that you receive personally.
It can help you improve your communication
and leadership skills really quickly.
So stick around to the end
because we're gonna talk about how you can use feedback
as a secret weapon for your professional development.
And be sure to check out any of my online classes
at the Communication Coach Academy.
I'll put a link to that in the description below.
A quick definition is that feedback describes the response
a listener communicates to a speaker's message.
We have a sender, message and receiver,
and once the receiver absorbs that message,
he or she typically responds in some way.
To use a tennis metaphor, I serve the ball,
and the other player returns it.
That return is the listener's feedback.
Feedback helps a speaker estimate
or gauge how their message is being received.
And the speaker can then adjust their message.
So if you're in a conversation, feedback signals to you
that you can either keep moving forward in the conversation,
or that you may need to modify your message.
I was just listening to an interview
with the comedian Jerry Seinfeld.
And he says the only feedback
that really matters for a stand-up comic
is the audience's reaction.
So you can tell if the audience laughs at a joke
or doesn't laugh, and then how big is that laugh
that you get for the joke?
And that feedback then helps Seinfeld
and other comics work on their jokes a little more,
so that the next time they do the joke
in front of a new audience,
ideally the laugh has improved,
and it gets bigger each time.
In daily conversation, we don't repeat the same thing
over and over again, but the principles are similar.
Feedback can be verbal and or non-verbal.
Verbal feedback is when a listener
might make a brief statement like, "That makes sense to me,"
or, "Oh, I get it now."
Sometimes these aren't even complete words.
The person might say, "Uh huh," or "Ah."
That feedback tells you
that the listener is tracking with you.
We also get verbal feedback
when the other person takes their own full talking turn.
I was on a walk with my wife a while back
when the leaves were changing,
and I pointed at the trees, and I said,
"I love the colors in the Fall."
And she said, "Oh yeah, let me take a photo."
And she pulled out her phone.
She responded coherently, and that signaled
that we were on the same page.
This was positive verbal feedback that showed me
that we understood each other,
that we shared meaning,
and the conversation could keep moving forward.
Verbal feedback could be negative, too.
And this doesn't necessarily mean
that the other person is criticizing you.
I'm using the word negative in more of a technical sense.
Negative feedback signals
that your message isn't getting through
in a way that syncs up with your listener
and means you have to adjust your message
in some way to connect.
A listener might ask a question for clarification.
They might say, "I'm not sure I'm following you."
So positive feedback signals that you are sharing meaning
and you can keep moving forward.
But negative feedback signals
that you are not sharing meaning, and you need to adjust
to get the conversation back on track.
We also receive feedback through non-verbal messages.
Paul Watzlawick wrote that "We cannot not communicate."
And that means that we are always sending messages.
One way that we are constantly
giving off non-verbal signals is how we react to things
without realizing it.
So positive examples would be good eye contact,
a supportive, engaged facial expression, nodding, smiling.
Negative non-verbal feedback might be confused faces
or a blank expression.
When I'm teaching class or presenting to a client audience,
I look for non-verbal feedback
that tells me if I can keep going
or that I need to change something.
So far we've talked about verbal and non-verbal feedback
that can be either positive or negative.
Now, as I mentioned, let's talk
about how you can use feedback as your secret weapon
to accelerate your professional development
and leadership skills.
So here's the key, ask for feedback regularly at work.
This takes guts, but is super helpful.
I'm currently a supervisor.
I'm the chair of my department.
And I regularly ask faculty who teach in my department
for their feedback.
Not long ago, I was in a one-on-one meeting
with one of our faculty, and I asked,
"How's it going for you in the department?"
I even asked another professor,
"Is there anything I can do to be a more effective chair?"
Now, the faculty know in advance
that I'm going to ask for feedback.
And when doing this, I never put them on the spot.
But these two faculty members gave me really honest feedback
about how things were going and how I might improve.
And it helped me improve much more quickly as a supervisor.
I can be more effective more rapidly
because of their feedback.
It helped me identify the things
that I needed to work on the most.
If you have a meeting or a presentation coming up,
for example, ask somebody you trust for feedback.
I try to ask in advance, like I said,
but sometimes I ask after the fact.
I was in a meeting several months ago
that was a little weird.
So afterward, I asked somebody who I trust,
I just asked them really simply, "How do you think it went
"in that meeting there today?"
And then we had a conversation,
a really helpful conversation about how it went.
So feedback is more than just a concept.
You can use it as a secret weapon
to speed up your development as a leader.
Question of the day, what feedback have you received
about how you come across and how has it helped?
I look forward to reading your comments
in that section below the video.
And as mentioned, feel free to take a look
at my online classes at the Communication Coach Academy.
God bless, and I'll see you in the next video.