An Interview With Fotis Georgiadis

… Especially in a remote environment, poll employees as to their preferred mode, whether it’s zoom or phone or…other. For maximum impact, let the managers and reports arrive at this together, giving them a shared goal, building trust and infusing the remote process with a measure of autonomy.

I had the pleasure of interviewing Dani Ticktin Koplik.

Dani Ticktin Koplik is the founder of dtkResources, a boutique executive coaching /leadership consultancy in New York City. As a CEO Whisperer, she partners with senior executives to grow their leadership practice, equipping them with the skills and insight to create dynamic, innovative, resilient, regenerative and humane cultures built to withstand uncertainty, ambiguity and crisis.

Deploying a growth mindset and her marketing sensibility, she’s known for her bold, strategic, critical thinking, her ability to see through obstacles and her fearlessness in interrogating legacy assumptions.

A long-time champion of diversity, equity and inclusion, Ms. Koplik — differentiated by her training in the neuroscience of leadership, bias and racism — is a potent and ‘wholistic’ resource, fortifying leaders committed to embedding DEI, not as a program but as a cultural lens.

Ms. Koplik elects to work with leaders of agile and entrepreneurially-minded firms/organizations/associations, boards and mid-stage start-ups resolute about effecting change in real time. As a thought leader, she shares perspectives in posts, articles and her upcoming podcast ‘Against the Grain.’

All engagements and programs, customized to meet the unique needs of each client or organization, are designed for maximum take-away, immediate implementation and sustained impact.

Among industries served: accounting, advertising, banking, data analytics, entertainment, higher education, law, non-profit, pharma, private equity, real estate, venture capital.

Thank you so much for joining us! Our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your ‘backstory’ and how you got started?

I took the ‘scenic route.’ The family business was law and that’s where I was headed. Until it wasn’t. I switched gears, honoring my creative side and ventured into the movie industry, doing advertising, marketing and research. In that business, bad behaviors and bad bosses abound so I turned it into a learning opportunity about business plus the idiosyncrasies of human behavior, what motivates people, what engenders cooperation or conflict, what gets them to ‘yes’… or what shuts them down.

This incubated while I stepped away to raise my children. Fortunately, my curiosity about how to move through those human behaviors led me to what I was meant to do: executive coaching, leadership consulting and professional development. When I left the corporate world, it was partially my bailing out: at that midpoint in my career, I didn’t have the skills to double down and advance. So I poured myself into helping women take control, advance through ranks and assume board assignments. The lane got crowded so I organically expanded my scope, offering the same neuroscience based skill development to other historically marginalized or excluded groups. The 1:1 work was satisfying but my impact increased, as I added public speaking, a more systemic approach and created proprietary professional development programs.

What do you think makes your company stand out? Can you share a story?

A few things. My:

• understanding of the hard science — the neuroscience — of why we act as we do.
• creativity — ‘I don’t even see the box;’
• dot-connecting; gap/obstacle spotting.
• entrepreneurial sensibility.
• business acumen; truth-telling; agile thinking.
• bespoke (not homogenized) work, and…
• growth mindset.

These distinguishing assets are critical in helping clients navigate constant uncertainty, crisis and tectonic change,

Often, this lands me in the future that others don’t yet see. Fifteen or so years ago, large corporations commissioned research to determine how to stop hemorrhaging women mid career. It’s a 10 year saga so, briefly, the researchers initially recommended institutional changes designed to retain women. Because I bailed from my career, I saw it differently: it wasn’t about palliative tweaks — table stakes, really — it was about skill development and executive readiness, which I raised with some corporate sponsors of the research. My thinking was sidestepped so when they gauged progress five years later, the needle hadn’t moved off the meager 17%. Next interval, same results but another new ‘solution.’ No change. Finally, after getting it wrong twice, they came around to the concept of executive presence. Voila!

I suppose there’s validation in my early idea eventually taking root but validation should be beside the point. Better: keep probing what’s missing and why.

Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you started your career?

About eight years ago I was retained by a financial services company, working first with a handful of investment professionals. As the engagement expanded, my aperture widened, giving me different perspective of what was at stake: this was not just about individual coaching but very much about understanding the host context, the culture, the ecosystem. This ‘wholistic’ approach was so effective and so much more comprehensive that it’s now baked into all my engagements. Coaches are taught to bet catalysts, that change is reserved for the client. Not in my experience: every engagement teaches me something, supplementing my tool box and expanding my value.

Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?

Instead of a funny mistake, I can cite one rookie error. I attended an HR association meeting, expecting to prospect for HR clients but found the event filled with other coaches there for the same reason. In those early days, I felt very insecure among potential competition so I shut down. Scarcity mentality at work. Over time, I realized there are infinite slices of pie, growth that impacted personally as well as professionally. I can chuckle now!

What advice would you give to other CEOs and business leaders to help their employees to thrive and avoid burnout?

We’re still in the time of Covid which requires CEOs, business leaders and employees to pivot rapidly, often in unexpected ways. The changes, combined with rampant uncertainty are experienced in the brain as depleting threat. To allay threat and avoid burnout, leaders must supply what employees have most missed: autonomy, social connection, clarity, transparency and compassion. In order re-engage employees so they thrive-not-just-survive, employers must ensure physical and psychological safety; prioritize employee experience; embed a growth mindset; provide time and space for reflection and mitigate bias and micro aggressions to create a diverse, equitable and inclusive culture. While crises might subside, the human issues still gather speed so to succeed, leaders have no choice but to evolve their leadership practice. So much is new but it’s still lonely at the top. Get support, it’s out there.

How do you define “Leadership”? Can you explain what you mean or give an example?

Leadership, formerly strictly about commanding and controlling employees to accomplish objectives, had to respond to changing needs and younger generations. In recent years, the model has softened and expanded, allowing leaders to create more human and humane workplaces. Leaders who build great, complementary teams no longer need subject matter expertise or to rule with an iron fist; in fact, today’s successful leaders understand, incorporate and deploy a vital set of social skills, including EQ, vulnerability and compassion. We’re still living through crises that continue to impact all so remaining transactional and failing to respond to the needs of their most valuable asset — their people — will result in poorer collaboration, innovation and performance as well as setting them back in the war for talent. Employees are savvy consumers who vet potential employers based on leadership behavior, corporate missions and social responsibility.

In my work, I often talk about how to release and relieve stress. As a busy leader, what do you do to prepare your mind and body before a stressful or high stakes meeting, talk, or decision? Can you share a story or some examples?

This is about regulating emotions and metabolism to enable perspective-taking. Breathing — slow, measured and deep — is an on-the-spot, grounding option. If there’s room and/or privacy, folks can siphon off nervous energy by actively shaking out their limbs. I former client always panicked prior to presenting, even when the stakes were low. The psychological causes are above my pay grade but attending to the physical and metabolic restored his composure: once the nervous system cools, emotions reset and a sense of cognitive control returns. Another strategy is an ‘if-then’ plan: if they challenge this assertion, then I will counter with… If I start to lose my audience, then I can walk around, I can pause, I can reboot, rethink and most importantly, gain perspective.

Another strategy is to reframe the negative self-talk; for example, I was booked to address a women’s economic conference about confidence. My perspective was unorthodox and I was confident this would open eyes. Except, just prior to my talk, a world-renowned poet did her kick-off thing and what happened to me? Ironically, confidence pooled at my feet. Momentary panic: how can I ever follow that? After her, I got nothing. I took a breath, slowed my heart rate and reframed: she had expertise in poetry so brava. I, on the other hand, possessed a different expertise. She owned hers and I could own mine. Result: this real experience of two minutes ago became my intro, modeling the lesson with vulnerability (often thought to be the antithesis of confidence) and authenticity.

Ok, let’s jump to the core of our interview. Can you briefly tell our readers about your experience with managing a team and giving feedback?

Back when, I was a new director with responsibility for a small team. I seriously knew nothing from nothing and likely had poor management skills, including how to give feedback. I did my best but always felt lacking. Eventually, I shifted gears and set out to understand and acquire the skills I lacked; teaching and coaching around them became the core of my practice.

Since I had been the lab rat, the learning was personal…and very sticky. Now, not as a manager but as an advisor to managers, execs and leaders, I teach feedback skills and offer best practices for both the giver and the receiver.

This might seem intuitive but it will be constructive to spell it out. Can you share with us a few reasons why giving honest and direct feedback is essential to being an effective leader?

Simply, all leaders — those responsible for successful outcomes and difficult decisions- have blindspots and so, must depend on reliable, direct feedback not just from metrics but from trusted advisors. Successful leaders solicit feedback early and often for additional perspective and as a hedge against their own blindspots. The key, though, is that if leaders depend on direct and honest — not sycophantic — feedback they must create the space for others to offer it without fear of retribution.

To expand, the same applies

for example, instrument panels are feedback, the mirror is feedback, the scale is feedback. We may not like what we hear or see but, in these cases, the feedback is without judgment: human brains use shortcuts to assess friend or foe, making givers vulnerable to snap or unfair judgments and receivers prone to shutting down.

But to open the discussion:

The traditional feedback practice is so often loathed by giver and getter alike. But the truth is, it’s essential in everything we do.

For leaders, honest and direct feedback is essential both for their decision making and in developing a productive and engaged workforce. Still, feedback can be honest and direct…yet ineffective.

For greater efficacy, consider the following:

1. delivering feedback is a skill that can and should be taught (it’s a function of great communication.) When delivery is unskilled, it can and does backfire.
2. There’s an outsized focus on error over improvement. As Marshall Goldsmith suggests: why focus on the past…especially a failed past. Instead, focus forward on development and improvement. This doesn’t mean neglecting lessons of the past or sugar coating realities, it just means errors or transgressions should be framed so the recipient understands the feedback as constructive, as in their best interest rather than punitive.
3. To optimize the feedback process, it’s critical for managers to gut check their own and the system’s unconscious biases. It’s also important to understand perception lags behind reality: the recipient may have already made some changes but because we see what we expect, reviewers may be assessing from old information.
4. Everyone benefits when feedback is valued as a cultural norm rather than a once-a-year horror. Eight years ago, I developed Dynamic Inquiry, an alternative to the annual review and designed to make feedback less threatening but more useful and timely. Ideally, feedback conversations should be baked into the day-to- day. Some of the benefits: issues are surfaced in real time, citing recent, not year-old, examples; the threat level for both parties remains low, so productivity is improved not impaired; the frequent exchanges build trust, increase engagement and motivation, assist in retention and most importantly, result in smaller, immediate course corrections, again, benefiting everyone.

In short, it behooves leaders to professionally develop their teams by offering candid and direct feedback. Of course, there are caveats because unskilled feedback can backfire, throwing an employee into a threat state and causing the leader anxiety: the truth is that feedback, as typically delivered, is anxiety-provoking for both the recipient and the giver. In the end, this is counterproductive, often negatively impacting the trust, allegiance, motivation, engagement and performance of an employee and the authority/popularity of the leader. It’s a truism that employees often leave companies because of a ‘bad boss,’ who is tantamount to a poor leader. This is particularly significant as we try to lead through the double whammy of the great resignation and the war for talent.

Historically, the process of feedback has been top-down but that has necessarily shifted: now, offering just-in-time feedback through employee surveys, polls, town halls has become an essential tool in the push for, among other things, corporate diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives. Measuring progress along the DEI front can be elusive and will take time to play out so companies are using these feedback processes to take the pulse, to get a directional idea of what might or might not be working.

More generally, upward feedback — objected to strongly by some — is a topic for a whole other article. I just like that it’s being used diagnostically for matters of real importance.

One of the trickiest parts of managing a team is giving honest feedback, in a way that doesn’t come across as too harsh. Can you please share with us five suggestions about how to best give constructive criticism to a remote employee? Kindly share a story or example for each.

Regrettably, preparation for delivering quality feedback is given short shrift. In fact, giving feedback is more often thought of as a chore, a ‘comes-with-the-territory’ than as a skill. But it it’s absolutely a skill and a critical component of effective and conscious communication. Above all else, keep feedback succinct, specific and generous.

Some suggestions:

1. Treat feedback as the skill it is, both emphasizing that it’s a critical component of effective and conscious communication and respecting its power. With great power comes great responsibility. One quick anecdote from the annual review chronicles: I had to talk two investment executives off the ledge when raw verbatim feedback was forwarded to them in error. Aside from that being a feedback no-no, the subjects, struck in the solar plexus by pointed, gratuitous remarks, were unable to process anything constructive and were left with resentment, hostility and desire for retribution. Words are powerful.
2. Have the person with day-to-day responsibility for an employee deliver the feedback. When more senior executives get involved, both employee and executive are at a supreme disadvantage: the employee goes in already in a self-conscious threat state and the more senior executive delivers feedback without benefit of context, complexity, personality. There needs to be a connection — rapport as well as trust — for any feedback to be meaningful. As an example, I worked with a professional service firm where the partners delivered feedback across levels, including to the most junior positions. Always lots of complaints from below: they don’t know me, they don’t see my work, they don’t see how I interact with colleagues or whether I show team leadership, etc — all of which is deemed less useful and ‘unfair.’ They have a point, especially in a remote environment where bridging distance is both a matter of place and connection. The closer the connection delivering the feedback, the more natural the intimacy and the more candid the conversation.
3. Especially in a remote environment, poll employees as to their preferred mode, whether it’s zoom or phone or…other. For maximum impact, let the managers and reports arrive at this together, giving them a shared goal, building trust and infusing the remote process with a measure of autonomy.
4. Always operate from a growth mindset which importantly focuses on progress as much as performance (critical in times of crisis and emotional stress.) Nothing succeeds like positive reinforcement so it’s best to acknowledge improvement, discuss what the employee could be doing more of and set achievable benchmarks. I might then ask the employee, given what they should do more of, which of their habits or practices might be impeding their forward momentum. The best learning happens when the subject makes the suggestion themselves. In the event that something egregious is committed or there is a major error, great leaders and managers deal with it on the spot.
5. Ditch the traditional annual performance review which belongs in the trash heap of bad ideas. When feedback is given in real time rather than at 6 or 12 month intervals, it results in enhanced trust, more truth-telling, more vivid examples, much smaller, more effective course corrections and more immediate benefit for the individual, the team and enterprise.

Can you address how to give constructive feedback over email? If someone is in front of you much of the nuance can be picked up in facial expressions and body language. But not when someone is remote. How do you prevent the email from sounding too critical or harsh?

It’s not really answering the question but relying on email to deliver developmental feedback is a supremely dangerous and damaging proposition. Email is an imperfect, often errant, means of communication, as it — yes — misses visual cues but also carries no tone and or inflection, making it so easy to misunderstand and misinterpret intent. And don’t even try humor which tanks more often than it hits. Bottom line, If the goal of feedback is to interrupt a negative action or effect positive change, email is a poor, detached and often cowardly vehicle. It’s ok for a quick congratulatory note but if there’s more serious feedback to be shared, at the very least, pick up the phone. Better still, would be zoom.

In your experience, is there a best time to give feedback or critique? Should it be immediately after an incident? Should it be at a different time? Should it be at set intervals? Can you explain what you mean?

Let’s start with the worst times to give feedback: just before a weekend, just before a vacation or if something is very raw. Especially over the last 2+ years, employees are threatened by tremendous uncertainty and the loss of autonomy. It’s just not humane to give difficult feedback or a critique at a time when an employee should be restoring and replenishing. Besides, there’s nothing to be done until work resumes.

If the issue is sensitive and raw, best for everyone to take a breath and agree to discuss at a later date. That said, I argue strenuously for eliminating anything that looks like annual feedback which has distinct liabilities and the potential to negatively impact employee, leader and enterprise. Of course, just the idea of an annual review weighs heavily on all — on the feedback receiver who has to hear and process a year’s worth of (negative) stuff in one gulp and on the giver who has to: 1. recall potent examples that may be in the distant past and 2. devote a ton of time to re-creating and commenting on a year’s worth of performance.

So, while this can cause discomfort for both parties and often serve to demotivate rather than motivate, the enterprise suffers too: think of all the lost time between the transgression and the conversation and then the conversation and the remediation.

But the Dynamic Inquiry I referenced takes a different tack, making frequent and timely feedback part of daily culture. When feedback is routinely offered — or requested -in real time, the issue is fresh, with current examples but more importantly, it provides for smaller course corrections right away. Everyone wins — the employee sees feedback not as something to be feared but as something to welcome, the boss benefits from a less arduous task and increased trust and the enterprise benefits by increased productivity and engagement. Defensiveness fades away as feedback is normalized and becomes part of the daily practice. In developmental terms, it’s almost impossible to measure change in a day so I recommend complementing the daily practice with in-depth quarterly conversations to track progress on articulated goals.

How would you define what it is to “be a great boss”? Can you share a story?

What it takes to be a great boss has been shifting under our feet even before our recent crises…but the crises accelerated the change. Now, in the biggest shift, great bosses must start by knowing themselves, tolerating discomfort and uncertainty, owning their fallibility and vulnerability, modeling behavior, communicating early and often and so importantly, transparently communicating fairness and genuine compassion. All this plus maintaining vision (in today’s parlance, the purpose) and company ethos.

Sadly, it’s probably easier to rattle off a list of poor or un-evolved bosses but I do think crisis and adversity made space for very courageous bosses to rise like cream to the top. A recent example is my colleague, Janet M. Stovall, Global Head of DEI at Neuroleadership Institute. Always a ‘diversity pragmatist,’ a radical inclusionist, a TED talker and a truth-teller, she saw an opportunity — in the wake of the murder of George Floyd — to set the record straight, leading the way (publicly and within the organization) on this defining issue. She’s smart, a fabulous communicator, straightforward, fearless and compassionate with a deep understanding that for us to approach equity, we must both accommodate and celebrate difference.

You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. 🙂

The movement would not be one of action — actions come and go -but rather one of rest, reflection and release. We’re all trying to cope with and prevail over so many challenges — personal, political, professional — that we can’t be our best as a person, a leader or an influencer if we don’t step back, recharge and get right with ourselves.

Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?

My favorite quote is very potent and remarks so simply on our shared humanity: ‘No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.’ — Eleanor Roosevelt. Drop mic.

How can our readers further follow your work online?

I share my often provocative thinking on LinkedIn, on my website [email protected], on my upcoming blog and podcast ‘Against the Grain’ and in my occasional newsletter ‘Covid Bites.’ Readers can also reach me at [email protected]. Conversation is always welcome

Thank you for these great insights! We really appreciate the time you spent with this.

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Dani Ticktin Koplik Of dtkResources: Giving Feedback; How To Be Honest Without Being Hurtful was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.