What, Not Why
The Amplified Impact Podcast
August 19th, 2023
In today’s episode, I want to get real about managing people and being a leader…not my strong suits.
I’ve struggled with it, especially because I tend to avoid confrontation and tough conversations.
I’ve noticed I tend to either be too soft or too blunt in feedback.
And a big reason behind this is my personal relationship with criticism.
For me, I want direct feedback. But I’ve learned not everyone is like that.
In fact, my partner and I at Escape Climbing realized this the hard way when we scaled our team.
Our directness hurt a lot of feelings, and it was clear we needed to refine our leadership approach.
When providing feedback, ask…”What were you thinking?” instead of “Why did you do this?”
Starting with “why” often puts people on the defensive and hinders open communication.
Remember, systems fail, not people.
Our aim is to refine those systems by learning from mistakes.
So, the next time you’re faced with delivering feedback, try focusing on the process and the thought behind the actions.
TWEETABLE QUOTE:
“When you ask, it’s more about the what? It’s more about reviewing the thought process and the actions. And I found that people, their shields go down, suddenly they’re able to approach the situation from a much more objective place.”- Anthony Vicino
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Episode Transcript:
Anthony Vicino:
So one of the things that I’ve had to learn and develop the skill of over the years is that of managing people. Full disclosure, I am not a great manager of people. I am not a good leader. I don’t believe I’m a great leader. I like being, I like teaching, but I don’t like managing to expectations. And that’s something that I’ve had to really work on. A lot of it stems from the fact that I’m very conflict, avoidant. I hate having any kind of confrontation, any kind of conversation that could maybe carry some criticism or feedback for the other person that might make them feel bad.
Anthony Vicino:
I just have always have a really hard time delivering those things. And so being in a position of leadership or management, I’ve always really struggled with that because I either come in on one of two spectrums. I either come in way too soft, I dance too much around the bush trying to shield feelings and emotions and all these things, or I come in like a rhinoceros and I’m just very stupid and logical and cold and I end up hurting people’s feelings. And I think the one is the reaction to the other. That is, I think I beat around the bush a lot because I know, left to my own devices, I come in really, really hard, mainly because I don’t personally view feedback as a negative thing. And so I very much appreciate people who are just straight shooters will tell me exactly what I’m doing well, what they like, what they don’t like, and my ego, my emotions don’t really get tied up into that. My self identity doesn’t really get tied up into any kind of feedback that they have. However, that is not the case for everybody.
Anthony Vicino:
I’m a weirdo in that way. That doesn’t really bother me at all. But a lot of people it does bother. And my partner Ryan and I at Escape Climbing, we learned this the hard way because him and I are very, very similar in that it’s like, hey, just tell me exactly, give me the exact feedback that I need in this moment. I don’t need you to sugarcoat it. Just give it to me quickly, give it to me directly so we can course correct and move forward. And so him and I, we had a great working relationship because I could just tell him, like, hey, you were a dick in that meeting. You didn’t convey this thing very well or blah, blah, blah.
Anthony Vicino:
And he would take it and he was like, cool, I’ll do that better next time. And that was great for us, but it was very problematic. Then when we started hiring and growing and five turned into ten into 15, into 20 employees, and suddenly it was like we were hurting a lot of people’s feelings and not knowing how to deliver impactful messages that would get us closer to our goals and build team morale and we were terrible. We were terrible at this. And there was a lot of learning that we had to do. And so in today’s episode, what I really want to share with you is one of the questions that I found to be very, very helpful as I was growing as a leader and a manager of people, to figure out how can I separate the individual from the action? The goal that maybe wasn’t in alignment with what we were hoping for. Because a lot of times it’s not about the person executing the thing. It’s about the system and the process, the result.
Anthony Vicino:
And as much as we can separate individual feelings from that process, the better. But it can be very hard to get to that and give that feedback without our emotions getting into the picture. And so what I like to do with this question is frame the feedback or frame the information gathering process as what were you thinking? Not Why did you do this? And here’s the reason why. When you’re sitting down, you’re saying you’re doing a performance review or you’re doing some kind of process analysis or post mortem on some kind of event, and you’re like, why did you do it this way? Why did you do this? Why did you ship this out when it obviously wasn’t ready? When you start with the question as a why, we immediately feel that personal. Like we take that personal. It’s an immediate indictment of you as the individual. And so what ends up happening is the person who’s getting that question, they immediately go on the defensive. They immediately think, oh, I need to defend my ego, myself, my role in this thing.
Anthony Vicino:
And that takes you further away from getting to the objective core of what went well, what went wrong on this thing. And that’s really, as managers, that’s what you care about more so than the person screwing up. That is inevitable. You just need to be able to move on and refine the systems. Because one of the things that we believe is that people don’t fail, systems fail. And so if the thing didn’t go how we wanted to go, it’s not the person, the process. It was the process that let down the person. Right? Our goal is to create systems that you could take an idiot off the street who had no idea what we do as a business, put them on the manufacturing line with 30 minutes of training, and they’d be able to produce the product or the result that we’re looking for.
Anthony Vicino:
That was our ultimate goal. As a manufacturing environment which is very high, you’re never really going to get to that place. But that was what we’re striving for. And so through that lens, when you’re sitting down with the individual to try and figure out what went wrong, what could we do better? You need to approach it in a way where that person doesn’t feel personally indicted. And that why question, why did you do this? Immediately puts people on the back foot and makes them go into defensive mode. And so better, from what I found, is to ask, what were you thinking? Not like, what were you thinking, you freaking idiot. Not like that. More like, hey, what were you thinking? Walk me through the process.
Anthony Vicino:
Like the decision process or what was happening at that moment, what was going on? And when you ask, it more about the what? It’s more about reviewing the thought process and the actions. And I found that people, their shields go down, suddenly they’re able to approach the situation from a much more objective place. And then at the end of it, we had more quality feedback to move forward with, to be able to improve that system in the future. So that’s just a lesson that I’ve had to learn over the years the very, very hard way, because I asked a whole lot of why questions pissed off a lot of employees, a lot of team members. And it took a long time to figure out that if I just ask, what were you thinking? Walk me through the process from that perspective, rather than, why were you doing this? Then you will get two better answers. So, hope this brings you guys a little bit of value. As always, appreciate you being here. We’ll catch you in the next episode.
Anthony Vicino:
Until then, stay hyper focused, my friends.
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