4. Feedback in Mentoring - How To Make The Relationship Work

This is the fourth session in a five part series on mentoring and how to make the relationship work well. This track can be listened to on its own or as part of the series and will be particularly helpful entrepreneurs and their mentors/mentees. It concerns both parties to the relationship and there are tips, methods, and suggestions throughout for how to make this most important relationship work well. This session focuses on the giving and receiving of feedback in a way that is contstructive!

Transcript

Hi and welcome back to session four.

Today's session is all about feedback.

So far we have covered trust,

Listening and advice and today we're going to turn our attention to another foundational plank of the mentoring relationship and that is the ability to give and to receive feedback.

This session explores how this is done and the elements that are important in building to this and they include noticing language,

Noticing what is triggering,

Helping someone to see their own blind spots and what happens to them when they are triggered.

More importantly it's about genuine encouragement and I mean encouragement in its true sense which is to give somebody heart about themselves,

Trust in themselves,

Insight into their own wisdom and indeed into their own wisdom's limits.

Often knowing our blind spots is actually our gracest source of wisdom.

So for example if you know that you have naivety or a propensity to magical thinking then seeking the counsel of someone who doesn't have those two traits is a much wiser course than hoping that your mindset will change.

It's important to note that often entrepreneurs have naivety as a trait because it is connected to creativity and the ability to move from an idea to something in the physical world like a company.

A hallmark of naivety is not seeing potential obstacles and balancing this with the input of advisors who can see potential obstacles is helpful.

In other words,

Knowing that naivety is a blind spot for you but being able to capture its creative potential whilst also taking steps to balance its potential for creating unintended consequences is wise.

For a mentor to be able to point a mentee to blind spots,

Talents,

Skills and limitations and to find their own ways to navigate them is one of the great gifts of a good mentoring relationship.

Now as we have discussed a mentor will ask good open and closed questions.

Both parties to the relationship will make an effort to know and understand each other and create appropriate boundaries of trust and confidentiality and advice will be sought and given hopefully in ways that build confidence and self-reliance in the mentee.

There will also be times when feedback will need to be given and received so that blind spots,

Talents,

Skills and limitations can be understood and integrated by the mentee without that mentee feeling criticized,

Diminished or judged in any way.

Feedback in a mentoring relationship is given to expand the mentee's self-knowledge and therefore the mentee's power.

We can only change or integrate what we know about.

To quote Donald Rumsfeld,

There are known knowns,

There are things that we know that we know and we also know that there are known unknowns,

That is to say we know that there are some things that we do not know but there are also unknown unknowns,

The ones that we don't know that we don't know and if I were to draw a pie chart of those three categories in myself and with the benefit of five decades of experience,

The known knowns would be maybe six percent on that pie chart,

Known unknowns perhaps four percent and all of the rest would be the stuff that I don't know that I don't know and in ourselves these are known as blind spots.

The most effective antidote to a blind spot is feedback.

If I have spinach on my teeth it remains an unknown unknown to me until somebody points it out.

Equally if I am always edgy with my investors when challenged on my quarterly figures,

I would need somebody to point that out to me kindly and constructively.

About 40 years ago Stephen Karpman developed what is known as the Karpman Drama Triangle and this is a dynamic model of how we interact socially in conflict situations and it's used by the United Nations and other peacekeeping entities.

For mentors and mentees,

An acquaintance with this model is really extremely helpful knowledge and insight that will assist in understanding how feedback can be given and received in a sensitive constructive way.

Briefly the triangle describes how we unconsciously cycle through different roles where there is conflict or the possibility of conflict blame or criticism arising.

The roles are victim,

Persecutor,

Rescuer and deserter.

Now I just want to hit a pause button and be really clear here the roles that I'm describing here are archetypes.

They're roles that we inhabit unconsciously and that we put other people into unconsciously.

I'm not talking here about actual circumstances because obviously there are real victims of sexism,

Racism or abuse in a company.

In this session I'm using these terms as unconscious patterns that we can all fall into and which prevent us from giving or receiving constructive feedback.

So with that in mind the roles can be summarized in terms of their mantras if you like and we can spot these in ourselves and in others often simply just through the language that is being used.

The victim's mantra is poor me and when you're in the role of victim you're tending to look for a rescuer or a savior to solve your problems,

To make decisions for you,

To change the circumstances that you feel powerless over and if someone either fails or refuses to do that for you often in this victim role you will cast them in the role of persecutor and when you're in this victim pattern you'll find it difficult to make decisions,

You may be unable to solve problems and often will find very little pleasure in anything that you do.

The rescuer is the codependent enabler to the victim and their mantra is let me help you,

Let me sort that out and rescuers need victims to help and often they won't allow the victim to move out of that role.

When you're in the rescuer pattern you'll tend to find that you're overworked,

Exhausted and feel taken for granted often with a lot of resentment underneath all of that.

The persecutor's mantra is it's all your fault and when you're in this pattern you will feel afraid and the fear is of becoming a victim yourself and so you won't be able to be flexible,

Vulnerable or criticized in any way.

Persecutors take up a lot of space but they don't actually solve many problems.

And finally the deserter's mantra is this is way too difficult and they tend to blame each of the other roles in the drama triangle for problems that arise but refuse to attach themselves to any form of responsibility either for those problems creation or for the impact of their own desertion.

Deserters tend to like the idea of things but not necessarily the work that's required to manifest them.

And so these are the extreme versions of these roles but much milder aspects of these patterns will be visible in you and around you absolutely every day.

When we aren't aware of this transactional dynamic that occurs in human societies whether that's a family,

A nation or a company we tend to cycle endlessly and unconsciously through these roles.

The world of the startup can magnify these patterns in co-founder teams and in relationships between teams and investors and this triangle can be successfully navigated in a startup but it requires great self-awareness from the entrepreneur and from the founding team and any successful navigation has to be done through humility,

Through feedback and through accountability.

Now we all have a natural tendency to one of these archetypes or roles in a social setting and again I include a company in the definition of a social setting.

Mine for example is rescuer that is where I find myself resting most often but I'm quite capable of all of the others too.

So the key understanding here is self-knowledge.

We can get off the Kopman drama triangle in the context of the mentoring relationship by firstly feeling in a space of trust and support so that the mentee can request feedback and then can be open enough to wonder if they may have blind spots and then for the mentor to be able to point to areas for consideration.

The recounting by the mentor of stories of failure or mistake can be really helpful to move conversations off the Kopman drama triangle.

So to give an example I'm pretty familiar with how I show up when I'm in one of those four patterns or archetypes and I can say that feeling the need to rescue as I've mentioned already has created many issues and it was a blind spot for me for many years.

So sharing a story about that is often really helpful for my mentees and it allows them to step back see their own patterns and then invite feedback about them.

Another really helpful way to move off the triangle is to take an action or to refrain from an action that releases you from the pattern.

So the persecutor could give up the right to be right about everything.

The deserter perhaps could stay in the game.

The victim could take one act of power and the rescuer could empower somebody else.

It's a gift to get feedback and learning to request it regularly is a wonderful practice to develop in the context of the mentoring relationship.

To finish today's session let's just have a look at the general feedback principles that apply if you're asked to give feedback and if you're receiving feedback in this relationship.

First for a mentor being asked to give feedback.

Number one always bring yourself into the moment before you begin.

Giving feedback can be inappropriate if it's the result of a chain of mechanical thinking.

You cast your mind back to session two and the exploration of active listening.

You want to make sure that you are present to what is being asked and that you aren't responding from a chain of mechanical thinking.

In session five we're going to touch on a very short exercise for bringing yourself and your mentee into the moment.

Number two always make it about your experience or observations.

Don't be tempted to use hearsay.

Something like well you were probably just feeling a bit off your game that day is unskillful feedback.

Whereas I've noticed that you don't really see yourself how are you feeling is skillful.

Number three avoid being critical or judgmental and have an action or a goal for the mentee to work towards in terms of the area that you're giving feedback on.

Number four always make sure that you understand each other.

Ask the mentee that you're giving feedback to to tell you what they have heard and understood from the conversation.

And now moving to the mentee when you've received feedback.

Number one make sure that you've paused to be in the moment and that you've broken any chains of mechanical thinking.

Number two take time to consider what is being said to you.

Active listening is really important here too.

Make sure that you're fully focused on what is being said and then take the time to reflect upon it.

Number three as part of that reflection time make sure that you give yourself space to take in what is useful even or perhaps especially if it's uncomfortable.

Number four if you feel that something really doesn't resonate this is also an opportunity to trust your own judgment and to disregard it.

Obviously there is a balance to be struck between receiving feedback that is uncomfortable and receiving feedback that really is not useful or doesn't resonate.

And that balance can be struck with time,

With experience,

With time,

With experience,

With active listening and with deepening your connection to your own insights and your own wisdom.

And so feedback is a really useful way for us to gauge how we're doing with that.

In our next session we are going to be looking at the art of decision making and we'll cover also a technique for quickly centering,

Focusing and bringing both the mentor and the mentee into the present moment to better enable ease of communication.