Posts Tagged ‘management skills’
Rypple’s Nick Stein, on How to Deliver Better Feedback February 2 2012 7 responses
Rypple is a web-based social performance management platform that helps companies improve performance through social goals, continuous feedback and meaningful recognition. I recently spoke with Rypple’s Nick Stein to learn more about the company and get his tips for giving – and getting – effective feedback. Here’s an edited version of our conversation.
Scott: Is it fair to say a quick description of Rypple would be Facebook for feedback?
Nick: I think that feedback is certainly a very important part of it. But I’d say that the feedback should be focused around aligning people within the organization so that they feel empowered and that people who lead your organization feel confident that everybody is moving in the same direction. So it’s feedback, but it’s feedback that leads directly to business results.
When it comes to feedback, how much is enough?
When most of us think traditionally of feedback within an organization, we think of the performance review, which a lot of companies still use and they do them once a year. And they’re backward-looking and have really morphed into this thing that’s much more about compliance than it is about performance.
When we look at feedback, we hear from our customers and tons of research that’s been done out there that employees are craving feedback, and as much of it as they can get. And I think that’s particularly true for the Millennials, who really have grown up around the idea of getting constant feedback that they can then use to get better at what they do.
What are your top tips for making the feedback useful? For somebody who wants to be really effective in providing feedback, what are two or three things they should always keep in mind?
3 Bad Habits of Fake Leaders — and How to Avoid Them January 26 2012 15 responses
There was an interesting movie that came out last year called “The Adjustment Bureau” starring Matt Damon and Emily Blunt. In it, Damon plays a rising young congressman named David Norris. He’s headed for a big victory in a campaign for the U.S. Senate until a picture comes out of him mooning his fraternity brothers at a college reunion. He loses big and starts giving his supporters the big, inspirational, we’ll-be-back concession speech. He says things like, “Where I grew up, it wasn’t that you got knocked down, it was about what you did when you got back up.”
The crowd initially cheers loudly, but then settles down when Norris tells them what he just said was total BS. They didn’t say that in his neighborhood. His pollsters told him it would play well. Same thing with the striped tie he was wearing and even the amount of scuffing he had on his dress shoes. He pulled back the curtain on how the game was played. It was about learning how to fake being real.
As we enter the height of the political season in the U.S., that speech comes to mind. All of the candidate debates and speeches seem to offer a symposium in how to fake being real. Here are three common habits I’ve noticed so far:
- Put your game face mask on. When you enter the debate arena or step up to make that big speech, never let them see you sweat. Get that alpha dog body language going and smile so they see all your teeth. Above all else, don’t show any vulnerability.
- Stick to the poll research. Touch all the bases that appeal to the base. Cover so many things that nothing means anything.
- Follow the formula. There’s an accepted and expected formula for giving the big speech, so stick to it. At this point, you’ve done it so many times you could do it in your sleep. Of course, there’s a pretty good chance that your audience is asleep with their eyes open. If you’re lucky.
Needless to say, I’m not seriously advocating those techniques. I do, however, see a lot of them showing up in leadership settings outside of politics. Here are three ways to avoid showing up as a leader who’s only pretending to be real:
Scott Eblin is an executive coach, speaker and author of 
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