Culture of Feedback by Greg Kunkel, Next Jump’s Co-Founder

Presentation given at Next Jump Leadership Academy on February 10, 2017, with leaders in attendance from the field of education, including The New American Academy.

Highlights:

0:38 – Are you lining up for comforting lies?

1:36 – Wells Fargo: what if they had a better system for asking for help

4:05 The pillars of changing culture: intent, programs, tools

5:00 Programs of Truth-telling

6:40 The two conditions needed to build trust in a culture

7:20 Setting up practice grounds: ability to practice judgement that won’t affect the enterprise

10:33 Safety programs at Next Jump: Talking Partners, Situational Workshops

12:24 Programs built so employees Can’t Hide (opportunity to open yourself up to feedback). Others can’t get the truth if they are totally hiding

13:50 Practice on culture, where have we seen it pay off?

16:10 Separating Candid Feedback from Performance Evaluation process. Insight: decoupling made a big difference

17:30 All the wrong ways we did performance evaluations (lessons learned)

18:54 Three Deliberate choices in the design of the Feedback App: anonymous, transparent, meaningful

21:30 Tips for Getting Started: Share the intent, leaders set the example, meetings a great place to start

23:26 What can you do to control feedback? Example approach to put yourself in line for unpleasant truths lies vs comforting lies. You can control the signals you’re giving out

25:20 Specifics on how we used to do evals

26:40 Key Elements of the Evals App: 1-4 ratings on contributions to revenue, and culture.  Intentional decision: 1-4 (not out of 5 because we found it important to eliminate the middle). Made it transparent

28:30 Benefits of having your performance evaluations being transparent to everyone in the company: magic of putting self-inflaters in front of others, and for those not giving themselves enough credit. Ultimately ends up less games

31:33 Examples of how other companies have started to build a culture of truth: started with situational workshops, feedback app, and practice grounds

33:56 U.S.S. Michael Monsoor – shifting an existing “culture” program of thier own, to a deliberate training for junior leaders

34:56 Tips for overcoming skepticism: share the intentions, set the examples, experiment with rituals