An Interview With Fotis Georgiadis
Don’t give negative feedback in front of others. Wait until you can schedule a time to talk with that person one-on-one. I’ve seen people cry when negative feedback was delivered in front of their teammates. They quit shortly after that. This advice applies both to in-person and virtual feedback, especially when you have a large group meeting on Zoom or Meetings.
As a part of our series about “How To Give Honest Feedback without Being Hurtful”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Dr. Janelle Barlow.
Janelle Barlow, Ph.D., is the founder of A Complaint Is a Gift. She is a bestselling author and global speaker. Her ideas have been adopted as the complaint-handling mindset by hundreds of organizations using her service recovery map. To learn more, visit AcomplaintIsAGift.com.
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’m passionate about education, especially adult education. I began speaking in contests at age 6 and continued through high school and college debate. I wanted to continue working with motivated groups but didn’t know how to pursue that. So, I dabbled in corporate education, working for training departments. After setting up several entrepreneurial ventures, I began working with a European international training organization and spoke worldwide. I then set up my US-based organization, primarily in customer service, culture change, result performance, and complaint handling. Now I’m entirely focused on complaint handling.
What do you think makes your company stand out? Can you share a story?
One of our biggest and most successful clients has been Viking, both Rivers and Oceans. I set up a team that conducted a two-day service culture program that I developed. Viking moved to the top of the ratings with the launch of their first ship. It was an exciting, rewarding, learning experience. Viking is still at the top of their game. They licensed my program in-house, continuing to use the concepts we covered. I see them as a great entertainment and hospitality company, and I’m proud to have worked with them!
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you started your career?
The pandemic has shaped me more than any other event over the past 30 years. I’m fully committed to working virtually at this point with online Complaint Is a Gift training and trainer certification programs.
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?
Twice in my career I got food poisoning, which showed up just as I was ready to begin a program. What can I say… I’ve learned to be careful about eating mushrooms from local vendors! I’m not so sure this was the funniest mistake I’ve made, but I laugh now that I look back on it! While in it, I was so sick, I couldn’t continue. I had some assistants who took over, but that was sheer luck. They aren’t always around! I learned that being in front of a group is a total body experience!
What advice would you give to other CEOs and business leaders to help their employees to thrive and avoid burnout?
People need to be engaged to continue loving their work. You can see engagement on people’s faces and body language when they walk into work. And, believe me, if you see disengagement, then, guess what, so do your customers.
How do you define “leadership”? Can you explain what you mean or give an example?
There are a lot of components to being an effective leader. Indeed, one of them is displayed behavior and how you empower people around you. Honesty matters, though I think transparency may be overrated. There’s information about any business that shouldn’t always be shared.
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?
Whenever I get on stage to speak to a group (or in front of a video camera), I make contact with my love for my audience. They are giving me their time, and I want to respect that gift and where they are in their life’s journey.
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?
I admit that I have sometimes blown it when giving feedback. I remember an incident when I observed one of my trainers teaching one of my programs. I think she didn’t understand the impact she was having or the content she was delivering. She assured me she knew the materials like the back of her hand. It turns out she didn’t. I told her in no uncertain terms what I thought of her delivery. I felt responsible about all the other times she delivered this same material and probably did an equally lousy job. I think I did damage to her self-esteem with my over-the-top feedback. As bad as she was as a trainer that day, I think I was even worse as her manager.
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?
It’s like complaint handling. Honest and direct feedback from customers is extremely valuable for your company. You can’t learn from your customers if they don’t tell you what’s happening or what they don’t like. If, as a manager, you don’t tell your staff what’s bothering you, they’ll continue to engage in the same behaviors, producing the same results. When you don’t speak out, you’re rewarding behavior that can do genuine damage to your business if it’s not changed.
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.
1. Don’t give negative feedback in front of others. Wait until you can schedule a time to talk with that person one-on-one. I’ve seen people cry when negative feedback was delivered in front of their teammates. They quit shortly after that. This advice applies both to in-person and virtual feedback, especially when you have a large group meeting on Zoom or Meetings.
2. Check your mindset and emotions. Make sure you have the right mindset and emotions when providing feedback. If you’re angry, even if you planned every word, your comments probably will sound aggressive. Your mindset should be “How can I help this person change so I can create a better relationship with them?” or “How can I add value with my feedback?” and not “How can I make them feel bad?” The example I provided above about how I gave feedback to someone was about me wanting to make her feel bad. Honestly, I have to say that was my mindset. It’s not good. Don’t do it.
3. Ask questions. Once you have their agreement to talk about the issue, then ask questions. We often go directly to what we want to get off our chest instead of asking the other person first what they feel or think. Maybe that person will tell you exactly what was on your mind. They may know what they did was wrong, or they’ll provide information you didn’t know that explains their behavior. For example, instead of saying, “I think it was rude of you to interrupt me in front of my clients. It made me feel put down,” ask, “How do you think the meeting went?” or “How did you like the way the conversation went? What about your behavior? I honestly thought you interrupted me quite a bit. How did you feel? How do you think others felt when they watched you interrupt me?”
4. Steer clear of giving mixed messages. Despite how often the “sandwich technique” is taught in management seminars, I don’t advise using it. This old technique says you must start your feedback with something positive. Then sandwich in the negative things you have to say, and finally, close with a positive statement. Instead, praise someone when you need to, and deliver negative feedback constructively when you have to, but don’t unnecessarily mix the two. Finishing with a positive comment after the negative is useless as it takes power away from what you just said and what the person needs to work on. Be straight and direct. Mostly I’ve seen that the sandwich technique results in people not hearing the criticism, or not hearing the positive comments. Use one or the other.
5. Utilize leading questions to show the impact of poor behavior. In the case of negative feedback, if the person doesn’t see the effect of their behavior, ask leading questions, such as “Can you see why I get annoyed when you interrupt me in front of others?” I’ve watched people finally grasp the feedback they’re given when prompted by a leading question. I’ve been asked leading questions from time to time when receiving negative feedback, and it opened my eyes to the impact of my behavior.
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?
This is tough because oftentimes the only opportunity to give feedback is by email or voice mail. I recommend saying that you would rather deliver this feedback in person, but it isn’t possible today, and you don’t want to let too much time go by without saying something. You want the person to fully understand your feedback’s importance. Be sure to state that you have confidence that when they review the incident, they’ll understand why you are giving the feedback you are and that this person will make a concerted effort to change. Tell them you are looking forward to discussing the issue in person.
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?
It’s always better to give feedback close to the incident at hand. Otherwise, your staff member may think, “Why didn’t they say something earlier?” Stories change over time, and neither of you may be positive about what happened. Sometimes it’s impossible to communicate immediately after an incident, but you can lay down a marker that you want to talk about what happened. Explain this isn’t a good time, but you want them to know this incident needs to be discussed. Perhaps phrase the incident as a question — that you want to know what they thought when something happened. Is it better to give feedback shortly after the incident? Yes. But that isn’t always possible, so go for Plan B when Plan A isn’t available.
How would you define what it is to be a “great boss?” Can you share a story?
A great boss encourages, pushes, and supports. The main task is to demonstrate to the person that you believe in them, have their back, and see their potential. As a leader, you offer opportunities for people to stretch themselves. But you must understand (or ask) when someone isn’t ready. It’s a tricky business because there are times when someone thinks they aren’t prepared to explore what they can do when that’s precisely when they need to be pushed. Experience and intuition help when making decisions like this because you don’t want the person to fail.
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. 🙂
At this point, I would get people to change their mindsets about complaint handling. I heard a great metaphor that you can’t get an elephant to take medicines (which I assume tastes awful to an elephant) unless you wrap it in food they like, such as a banana, for example. Then they’ll eat it with pleasure. A Complaint Is a Gift is a metaphor that wraps difficult-to-handle situations into a mindset that lets you “eat” unpleasant customer feedback so you can get to the gift that the complaint offers.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson” quote? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
After writing several books on complaint handling, I’ve learned how to change my go-to responses of simply getting angry when someone criticizes me and substitute a better behavior. I must say, I used to think, “Well, what about you!” when hearing negative feedback. I’ve stopped doing that. Whatever anyone thinks about me is irrelevant. What matters is whether we can work through issues we face without taking their criticism or attacks personally. That’s such a valuable life lesson. And it’s not easy to achieve!
How can our readers further follow your work online?
My website: www.acomplaintisagift.com
LinkedIn: janellebarlow-cspphd
Thank you for these great insights! We really appreciate the time you spent with this.
I appreciate your very worthwhile questions!
Janelle Barlow: 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.
