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The Heart & Science of Leadership
The Heart & Science of Leadership" podcast, co-hosted by Dr. Paulie and A.J. Rinaldi, combines their diverse backgrounds in leadership to offer a comprehensive view on what it takes to lead effectively, no matter your position—be it executive, teacher, manager, principal, supervisor, or coach. Together, they explore the balance between the human side of leadership and evidence-based practices, providing listeners with practical tools, real-life stories, and actionable strategies. Whether you're a seasoned leader or just starting your journey, this podcast delivers valuable insights that blend heart and science for impactful leadership in any setting.
The Heart & Science of Leadership
The Science of Effective Feedback
Imagine leadership without feedback. It's like trying to navigate a ship without instruments or stars – virtually impossible. In this episode of The Heart & Science of Leadership Podcast, Dr. Paulie Gavoni and A.J. Rinaldi dive deep into one of the most misunderstood tools in a leader’s toolbox—feedback.
📢 Feedback isn't just a way to correct mistakes—it's a powerful lever for shaping culture, improving performance, and building trust. But too often, it's delivered haphazardly, inconsistently, or with the wrong intent.
They explore:
- Why most leaders get feedback wrong
- The behavior science behind effective feedback loops
- Common myths that sabotage team performance
- Practical, actionable strategies to give (and get) feedback that actually works
Whether you're leading a team, managing a classroom, or coaching others to succeed, this episode breaks down how to use feedback not as a tool for control—but as a catalyst for growth.
🧠 It’s not just about saying something—it’s about shaping something.
Remember, leadership isn't about intent, it's about impact.
Pick up a copy of the #1 bestseller: Adaptive Intelligence: The Evolution of Emotional Intelligence Through the Proven Power of Behavior Science
The Behavioral Toolbox equips those charged with supporting behavior change in schools with practical applications of the science of human behavior for making a positive difference in the workplace. In this case, the classroom and school!
Be sure to subscribe to Dr. Paulie's Heart & Science YouTube channel for a variety of content related to behavior science and bringing out the best in yourself and others.
Welcome to the Heart and Science of Leadership, where evidence meets empathy. Co-hosted by Dr Paul Gavone, a Wall Street Journal and USA Today bestselling author, and AJ Rinaldi, a John Maxwell Team certified leadership coach, this podcast blends the human side of leadership with evidence-based practices, demonstrating that leadership isn't about title or intent. It's about impact. And now here are your hosts, pauly and AJ.
Speaker 2:Okay, welcome back to the Heart and Science of Leadership podcast. Aj, good to see you, man, how you been.
Speaker 3:Oh, I'm doing well, brother, doing well. Busy, but blessed. How are you?
Speaker 2:Yeah, man, same thing. Man Busy working on all sorts of projects, man doing a little bit of traveling. I know you and I are both out there doing public speaking and we love to do that on this topic. So we've both got some exciting things coming up and I'm excited. One of the things that I'm excited about is this topic on feedback, because I'm actually writing a book on it.
Speaker 3:So you know I'm loving to hear some of the questions you got to ask me. Oh man, so feedback is a very misunderstood topic. Today's show is all about feedback, which is a crucial part of our leadership game, paulie. What is feedback really from a behavioral science point of view? How does it, how does it help shape and mold human behavior?
Speaker 2:Well, I do. I want to double down on what you just said and say that feedback is the most important tool in a leader's toolbox, man, because it can do so many things. You can start behavior, stop it, sustain it, it can shape it. There's all sorts of stuff that we can do with behavior and there's a lot of books out there that cover and good books, you know, they cover feedback, but a lot of it that they share is really like the art of giving feedback, and there's definitely an art to doing it, you know. But there's a science to it as well, because in the end, right as we know in our show, it's not about intent, it's about impact and we want to make sure that our feedback is having the desired result. So, in short, in keeping it simple as I like to do, feedback is behavior that changes behavior, right? So from a behavior analytic point of view, it's either an antecedent. Antecedent is just something that comes before behavior and intended to get behavior going, comes before behavior and intend to get behavior going, or it's a consequence that influences the likelihood of a future behavior. So when you're really, when you're talking about talking, it's not really about just talking to somebody, right, it's about doing something deliberately when, if you are the deliverer of feedback and you're trying to shape performance, that either increases or decreases performance over time.
Speaker 2:So there are different ways that we can give feedback right. We can do it vocally spoken comments, question, praise. We can give it in written form. We can use email, sticky notes, formal evaluations, which I'm never a big fan of. We can do gestural, right. Somebody gives you a thumbs up, they nod, they just make eye contact with you. Sometimes somebody gives you the stink eye right, that could be one. Or they tip their eyebrow up a little bit man, that's a good job. That could be powerful. They can model for you.
Speaker 2:But here's something that's a little bit different and that is feedback can come from the environment, right, and so it's naturally occurring consequences, like, let's say you're an employee and a customer smiles at you right, that's feedback. Um. Let's say you do some process and things speed up, that's feedback. Um. Or you're getting some sort of uh, you know, improve team output, right, so it's that naturally occurring stuff that's really, really powerful. I mean, even in everyday life. Let's say like you try to open up a jar or something like that and it won't budge, that's feedback right. So you engage in behavior that's twisting the lid. The environment responded there's resistance and that consequence helps you to shape your next move, like maybe you got to give a towel, maybe you got to tap the lid, you know what I mean. Or like my wife, she'll come ask me and it's so much pressure, brother, I don't know about for you, but like if the wife brings me something that she can't open, now I feel like I got to open it, man, you know.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I like to give it a good college try and then when she opens it two minutes later, I'll just say I loosened it up for you. You said something there that I really like, because you said you can model things. So modeling behavior is very, very important, I think, as a leader, just being very specific about the values or the behaviors that you want to see more of from your followers, even after you've modeled them, being able to specifically go to people and say, hey, I like what you did right there. I really appreciate you getting this document to me on time, really appreciate your diligence on this. What's the in terms of trying to develop our followers? What do you match with modeling? To just take it to the next level? Is it that specificity and being very specific about what you're seeing from folks?
Speaker 2:Well, you don't want to just praise man. If I come out and tell somebody they did a great job with something that's awesome, the person might feel good, right. But as we're talking about feedback here, we're really talking about performance feedback, right, and so we're trying to really intentionally deliver some stimuli, right, that's going to shake work-related behavior. So we want to make sure, if something's good, what is good about it, and we want to connect what they're doing to some change in the environment. Because ultimately, as I was just mentioning about, like, the naturally occurring reinforcer of like you know you've got the lid open. You know what I mean. That happened. We want people to perform because of the outcomes that it's producing.
Speaker 2:And you and I talked a lot, you know we were always talking about leadership, right, and getting people in touch with naturally occurring positive reinforcement. They see, by doing this, that happens and that's a good thing. That's happened, right, that's aligned with some sort of performance goal I'm doing, or I like, I like that consumer smile. It makes me feel good to help people in my job and also, I think, with, especially, leaders. The best leaders create more leaders around them, right. So we've got to model leadership and this is the essence of leadership is feedback.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I love that. Great leaders don't create more followers, they create more leaders. I've seen in my experience and you said earlier, we got to do more than just tell folks good job and that's like a pet peeve of mine and I see people do it with kids too, or students in classrooms and different things Like good job at doing what you know what I mean. Like if you really want to try to develop people, you really got to get specific about what they did, the impact we always talk about impact right, the impact their behavior had on the environment, the mission, the individuals and coworkers around them. I feel like Paulie in my travels and in my work I see a lot of leaders who are resistant to feedback or maybe they don't enjoy giving you know, giving it. What would you say to those folks who may be struggling and feeling like, oh well, you know, that's not that important.
Speaker 2:Well, bro, that is such a great question that you're asking, man, because it's very real. Now there's a reason, a behavioral reason, why people don't like feedback, and it's as simple as this because it's usually been paired with something aversive. Right, if you think about people, usually think feedback's about correcting behavior, and we really want to make feedback about shaping behavior. You know, not correcting, and of course we do have to correct behavior. But when you establish yourself as a positive reinforcer for people, they know you're there to support them, you care about them, you're helping them to, you know produce, you know value, aligned results they're going to accept your feedback. You know, you and I have both been coaches, and when we give feedback that helps our players play better, you know they're grateful for it, you know, and so that's really important. But when we pair feedback with something aversive like we're correcting behavior more than we're helping people with it, people don't like it and they're going to pair you, if you're the deliverer of that type of feedback, with something aversive. So all of a sudden, they don't want to be around you and you sensing that they're not doing what they need to do or they're getting annoyed with you or all the other things that come with that makes you not want to deliver it.
Speaker 2:So it creates this really coercive feedback loop here that either delays feedback or even punishes it. It makes it so people don't only want to do it, and there's a big problem with that. Man, by not giving people feedback, they're opening themselves up and you're opening yourself up as a leader to them, getting in touch with reinforcement for the wrong behavior. In the absence of feedback, people will just do things and sometimes, like not getting feedback, people are going to just assume that the leader doesn't feel like they're doing a good job, man, or doesn't care, and so it's our job to help people, to give people feedback, but make it so they're seeking you out for it that when they see you, they feel good, because you're going to be incrementally reinforcing their behavior. Right, looking at it in their performance, looking at it in very small chunks, and so it's really about our history and the history of others. Right, because feedback is usually paired with something aversive.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and I like to say the absence of feedback is the carbon monoxide of leadership. It's hard to detect, it's silent, but it kills. It's not. It's not just a lack of giving positive feedback or constructive feedback, but just not giving feedback at all. That's not good either, because, as a leader, you're not driving culture and you're not driving outcomes you talk about. You know feedback not being received well when it's paired with something aversive. Another thing you know I've heard you say many times, is linking feedback to outcomes. Right, and so if you're a football coach, telling that linebacker how your seven tackles in the fourth quarter helped us win the game, if you're a leader, telling that direct report how them being POC and leading that project well helped us meet the outcomes we need, what would you say, paul, to giving our listeners something practical of how we can always be looking to link those outcomes to the feedback that we're given?
Speaker 2:Well, all learning requires feedback, right? So I love the analogy you make to carbon monoxide in the absence of feedback, because I have an opposite analogy, so we can work together on that, and that is feedback is oxygen. It's oxygen for performance, right. We got to keep it going. We need that behavior to breathe right. We need to live the right behaviors, though, and so, when you gave the example of helping the player that's getting the tackles win the game, right.
Speaker 2:What I would want to do is mine in more deeply on that right, I'd want to make it performance related. Because you did this thing, it allowed you to get more tackles, and now I'm going to link that to a greater outcome, and because you got more tackles, you contributed to us winning the game, so we really want to pair it with a very specific thing that we were able to. You contributed to us winning the game, so we really want to pair it with the very specific thing that we want people to do and help them align that with short-term outcomes I can tackle more and long-term outcomes. When I tackle more, it increases the likelihood that we're going to win the game, and all those are positive reinforcers of their valued outcomes for people, they're going to be more likely to do it, so we just kind of have to connect their performance which is just, you know, behavior and results to meaningful outcomes.
Speaker 3:I guess you could also, paulie. Obviously it's helpful to always pair it back to the team mission, the team goal, but we could also pair it with something very individualized for that individual, for that individual. So like in the, in the analogy of the. You know the linebacker making the tackles, hey, I could see you making all County or the all-star team. If you keep playing like this, if it's our direct report, you know, hey, you know, I know you and I have talked about you know, succession planning or whatnot. I think this you leading this well is exactly what you'll need at the next level of leadership, and really making it individualized for for those folks is, is that something that's really practical? Our listeners could think, could you know? They could consider as well.
Speaker 2:Brother. It just shows that you don't have to be a behavior scientist to understand leadership at the deepest essence. Man, I respect you so much because you just get it at very deep levels, man. Yeah, man, we want to tie this stuff into as many valued outcomes as possible, and you know. So. That means we have to tap into the values of our performers, what is important to them and how, by engaging, these behaviors now are going to help you to move to those important outcomes.
Speaker 2:And along the way, here's what's going to happen immediately. Here's going to be some short-term outcomes, but eventually you're going to get to this thing, you know, and it's leaders are able to sustain performance over time. The best leaders get people to not mind engaging in like menial tasks or even engaging in very dangerous things in service of a longer-term valued outcome. I mean, think about man like John F Kennedy got people to leave their jobs to go to the Peace Corps. Martin Luther King got people to go out and put their lives at risk for civil rights, and leaders are able to inspire people to engage in these behaviors for some sort of meaningful, valued outcome. Right, people have a vision that aligns with their own values, and it's powerful stuff, man.
Speaker 3:Yeah, we all kind of have that radio station playing in our head, wifm, which is what's in it for me, right? So tapping into those belief systems of your followers is crucial, I love that man.
Speaker 3:You know, pauly, let's, let's ship in, let's really get into the science of this. I'm dying to ask you this question. Let's talk about timing, because I know a lot of leaders. They might, they might, you know send feedback and they might have that email and a draft queued up and it might, it might just sit there for a while. They might have a constructive conversation that needs to take place and it's, I'll get to it, I'll get to it, I'll get to it. What, from a human, behavioral science component, does timing play a factor in the production of feedback?
Speaker 2:Here's the thing, man when it comes to reinforcement, size of the reinforcement is king and immediacy is queen, right? So what we're trying to do is get behavior in touch with reinforcement. To go back to the linebacker example right, and let's say they do something but they don't connect it to that result, right? Or the coach gives them feedback a week later, two weeks later, what's going to happen to the performance of the whole during the week or those two weeks? Right? We need to help to connect their behavior with outcomes, and this is so. If you delay feedback, it becomes a challenge and people will tend to engage in their current habits. They're not going to change their behavior. So our goal is to get people in touch with reinforcement right through feedback as quickly as possible.
Speaker 2:Now here's the problem. Here's the elephant in the room we can't be everywhere all the time, right. Problem here's the elephant in the room. We can't be everywhere all the time, right, and so what we can do is get people to recruit their own feedback to the best they can, right, and we can set them up by taking a look at doing self-monitoring, taking a look at their behavior and the impact of their behavior on the environment. When I do this what happens? Right, and setting them up by saying say, here's something to look for. And then when we see them because maybe we can't directly observe let's say the coach was out sick, right, or the leader's out sick. I can't directly observe what they're doing. If that's the case, right, although I could potentially go back and watch a video if you have it, but that's available a lot in sports, but not in your average business. But I can ask somebody to tell me what they were doing. Right, tell me towards a goal. So tell me, I know you were working on this goal this week, right, tell me what you did. And then ask for precision in what they did. Right. And then say, okay, what happened as a result of what you did? Ask for precision in what happened. And what you're looking for as a leader is, first of all, they've got to go back and look at their own behaviors and lines of some rule that you established, right. It's like having a rubric and comparing your behavior to whatever the expectation is, and then, of course, the outcome. But when we get people to reflect on it and they report out to us, it puts us in the position to assess them, to, most importantly, positively reinforce something right, give them feedback on.
Speaker 2:That was great. You did A, b and C. Maybe ask a question right. Another question you know why do you think it was important to do A, b and C? Because we want to strengthen not just their performance but they need to know how to better assess, problem solve, make decisions and engage in the behavior right, the action in your absence. So having them report out very specifically allows you to do that, but it also allows you to assess where there might be a place to shape up more.
Speaker 2:Hey, come back and tell me about that thing a little bit more. You said that let's say it's somebody else. You're teaching somebody else to give feedback. You told me you gave feedback at the end of the week. Okay, tell me why you wait to end of the week. You know, and you know why that might be a problem and you know how we might be able to expedite that a little bit more, something along those lines. So question man gets people to reflect but also get, put you in a position to reinforce and, you know, help people to be even a little bit better tomorrow than they were today.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think one of the things too for our listeners in terms of really making all of this practical, especially if you're somebody who struggles, you know giving feedback is building good feedback habits. Schedule it on your calendar. You know, if you you set up a one on one with your, your direct reports or the players on your athletic team. Know, if you you set up a one-on-one with your, your direct reports or the players on your athletic team, make it be intentional. Hey, I'm going to give you know two or three points of feedback during this, during this meeting. Put it on your Outlook calendar. Hey, I'm going to walk around the office.
Speaker 3:Today's Feedback, friday. I'm walking around the office and I'm I'm intentionally and deliberately giving feedback. Today is Thankful. Thursday I'm going to be really strength-based as I walk around and make sure I add value to at least four people on my team. Just build that in there, pauly. Talking about feedback, it's one thing when you're the leader and you're giving feedback downward to your direct reports, the players on your team or whatever. Let's talk a little bit about peer-to-peer feedback, which I think doesn't occur, probably half as much as it should be occurring, but I also think if it can occur, really well. I think that's the hallmark of positive culture on an athletic team and on a business management team. What have you? Can you share a little bit of your thoughts about peer-to-peer feedback?
Speaker 2:Oh man, this is the most powerful thing you can do to accelerate performance in your environment, because a lot of times, you know the leader is not present, they can't see everything of times, you know the leader's not present, they can't see everything, and you know we're talking about there's fourth level leaders, third level, second level leaders. You know first level leaders, and we've we've defined leadership in other podcasts. I don't need to do that here. Right, but peers are often present and so if only the leader is giving feedback, it can really create dependency on them. Ultimately, we want the performer to want to produce some sort of valued outcomes right, and again, this is a talk for another time. But good leaders inspire people to want to take action because it's going to produce those outcomes right.
Speaker 2:But it takes time sometimes to produce the ultimate cause of the behavior, right, the ultimate thing they want, and so we got to keep behavior going in the meantime.
Speaker 2:And great cultures, peers coach each other, right, they support each other and you start to behave because you know the part of it is that they're helping you.
Speaker 2:But it also becomes a norm, it becomes the way that we do things around here and you don't want to let your team down, right, there becomes an expectation of this culture, because culture is just shared behavior.
Speaker 2:And so when your people got you right, when they're helping you perform better and you know that they're to support you and they're using the same feedback techniques that we're teaching here, right, we're not using feedback to punish people, to break them down. They know that you're well-meaning. They're using, say, four to ones, right, they're recognizing your growth and they're being specific about it and helping you see the outcomes of their behavior and they might give you a resource if you're struggling with it, you know like, hey, you might want to try this or something like that. So when it's normalized, when it's just the way we do things, right, it becomes so powerful because it's a culture of feedback and it needs to be systematized. Right, it just needs to be the way we do things around here. It needs to be rich environment. But if you guys in any organization are using feedback primarily to punish, it's going to do exactly the opposite, right?
Speaker 3:Yeah, and I think, in terms of culture, I saw something it said on it was mostly referring to sports, but it's definitely relevant to any team. Bad teams no one leads. Good teams, coaches lead, great teams, players lead, and so like that, what you just described. I mean, if we have a culture on our teams where everyone's giving feedback, everyone's trying to model the values that our team finds valuable, that's just going to go so much further, as you kind of illustrated, than just the leader being the one who gives feedback, and then that establishes the right culture, and the right culture it can hide a multitude of false. You know, the right culture is going to correct the wrong behavior and the right culture is going to curate the right behavior and get us more of those actions that we truly want.
Speaker 3:And you know the Peter Drucker quote culture eats strategy for breakfast. The real question is culture eats everything for breakfast. You know, culture will come for your production, culture will come for your morale, culture will come for the relationships that you have on your team. So that is just a really crucial point as far as culture and how feedback can help cultivate the culture we want. Leaders, if you're not doing those things that Paulie said if you're not being a curator of that culture and helping to give feedback yourself, please don't expect your followers to do it as the leader you're going to be the driver of that. Paulie, let's get real for a second. What are the most common mistakes leaders make when giving feedback?
Speaker 2:Yeah, and if you hear some of these, because I have a number of them, right, but I'll keep it kind of short because there's lots of mistakes, right, that people could make. Right, because, remember, in the end it's not about intention, it's about impact. Some of it is like, not just what you say, it's how you say it. That's a very common one, right? That's very important. Um, you know what's your tone of voice. You know what's your eye contact with it. You know what's how you're, how are your uh, you know, uh, eyebrow shaped? You know, or you know, you're like a transmitter man. We're always communicating something. And what are we communicating when we're giving feedback? Are you giving too much feedback at once? If everything is important, nothing's important, man, this is a huge one. Focus on just one or two behaviors at a time when you're trying to shape things. Don't be vague. We've talked about that. Right, we want to have specificity because we want to. Our goal is to align behavior with valued outcomes. Right, if you're only giving feedback when there's a problem?
Speaker 3:that's a big problem.
Speaker 2:That is a big problem, man, you know, because you are going to establish yourself as somebody who's aversive. So you really want to shape right, because you end up using it as, like punishment, you know, like you know, we're going to correct it and like nobody's going to want you around and it's going to squash morale. It's going to create a toxic culture and culture, shared behavior Again, it's all going to come back to that and I think that you know. I said it's about the way you. It's not just what you say, it's about how you say it. Right, but you can't ignore the emotional context in both cases, right. So you have to be. I call it adaptive intelligence, right, we can call it emotionally intelligence, but we have to respond to our performer in a way that's going to work for them.
Speaker 2:So, finding out how people like their feedback, right, their positive feedback and also the corrective feedback. So, for example, let's say, aj, that you don't like to be praised in front of peers and some people don't, right, a leader might be very well-meaning saying you know, hey, everybody give AJ a round of applause. He did such a good job with blah, blah, blah. And you're in mind like, oh, I'm embarrassed. Now I'm humiliated. I really didn't want that to happen, even though the leader's well-meaning. It's not about their intention's, about their impact, right. So we really got to find out how people like their feedback.
Speaker 2:Uh, they do things like saying you did a good job, but, but is the great eraser man? Or they try to make themselves feel better by sandwiching it. You know, say you did a good job, but. And they say, but do this, that and the other, you're best off when possible. I don't have a problem with that.
Speaker 2:If you've already established yourself as a positive reinforcer, you can say whatever and people are going to accept it. Right. If you can separate your positive comments from your corrective comments, right. As long as you are giving lots of positive comments for shaping, you know you're recognizing incremental growth towards a goal. If you correct something, it's fine, right. And if you can, don't, if somebody has made a mistake in the past, use feedback as pre-correction. In other words, if they're about to go, do that thing, don't wait for them to do it wrong and then correct them, pre-correct them. Say hey, today don't forget to do A, b and C, because now that puts you in a position to positively reinforce them and ultimately get them in touch with naturally occurring positive reinforcement, as they see that it produced, it worked, it produced a valued outcome.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and I like what you said earlier. You talked about making sure we're using four to ones or whatnot, and the way we are going to establish ourselves as a positive, a walking talking, positive reinforcer, is to be a strength-based leader. Right and recognizing that incremental growth. And for any educators who are listening, or athletic coaches, I mean you apply this to your classroom, apply this to that little league team. If you're ever not getting the results that you want, you might want to check and see how often what's the ratio of my positive feedback compared to my constructive feedback there.
Speaker 3:And, paula, I have this little thing I kind of go through in my head whenever I'm trying to lead people and there's maybe some performance issues what's the level of reinforcement Meaning? What's the level of positive feedback or constructive feedback that I've been giving this person? What's the level of refinement, meaning, have I taught the skills, modeled the values? Have I actually given the lesson? Do they understand the task of what I'm giving? And the third R is what's the level of relationship? And so, is there any barriers interfering with me and this person, me and this kid, me and this individual being able to get the performance out of them and stay in there for a second. So, pauly, could our relationship actually impact our followers ability to actually perform well? I mean, even if we give positive feedback every now and then, if that relationship is damaged, severed like, is that going to impact that human behavior or production that we want?
Speaker 2:If I'm going to just reach back from old saying it's hell, to the yes, yes, oh, yeah, I mean, look, there's something called bias confirmation, right? You guys, you know like where we tend to look for things in the environment that confirm our existing belief about something. And there's a phenomena that's grounded in bias confirmation called the halo effect and the horns effect, and that is that person that can do no wrong. You know what I mean. So everything they do is oh yeah, that's just him. They're doing a great job. You're only looking at the good things that they're doing.
Speaker 2:If you don't have a relationship with somebody and you've established yourself, right, because you've conditioned yourself as somebody who's a punisher, right, your presence becomes aversive. You can do no right? People are going to find missteps with you or they're going to attribute your intention to not being something good, right? Even though I say we say it's about you know, it's not about intention, it's about impact, I still want to know. If I know AJ which I do know that you're very well-intended I'm going to give you a pass on things if you make a mistake, but if I think your intentions are malicious, you get no pass. I think your intentions are malicious, you get no pass, brother. You know what I'm saying. Like I'm going to be like no, aj's doing this, he's hurting people again where you might have been really trying to help people, like that leader that you know. If I said you know, aj, you did a great job in front of peers, you know, but it, you know, it puts you down in your mind If you don't like me, if I've not established a relationship with you, you like there, there he goes again. You know, making me feel bad in front of other people where it that wasn't my intention at all, you know.
Speaker 2:So relationships are fundamental, man, we, we have to focus on building relationships with people. We do that by giving them voice and choice. Ultimately, right, people want to do well. Right, they want to feel valued and they want to produce valued outcome. And the leader is the ranger of that environment. I, we, our behavior is the most critical part of the environment of others. Right, we can help to arrange the environment to keep them going, just like environment selects, uh, our species, right, uh, and that's how a species evolved in it, because it was the adaptation that environment can't change. But we, as leaders, can adapt the environment for others to keep the behaviors we want going right and we are a part of that environment.
Speaker 3:So that's really important and that's just science letting our people see us as a walking, talking, positive reinforcer. It doesn't mean we're ignoring the negative behavior or the behavior that needs corrected. But would you ever, paulie, say that's not a heel I'm worth dying on? I see some leaders. They can't maintain that 4-1 because they're majoring in the minors. They're focusing on all these little things that don't even matter to the big mission, the big production of the team, and they're nitpicking and correcting the most small things, and that has an impact, I think, on followers too. What's your thought on that? As leaders, like should we be looking to correct every little thing?
Speaker 2:Listen, I think if we do our due diligence up front, right, we give people voice and choice. We involve them in goal setting right. They understand why it's important. Right, we've asked them questions. They see how it's leading to the bigger picture. Um, we set accomplishments and sub goals and goals right. So accomplishments are in service of goals, right. They're the daily things that we can do, or hourly things or even minute things we can do.
Speaker 2:Right, we make sure that people have the knowledge and skills and the process to be successful. We make sure that we're giving good sources of feedback, right, that are focused more on positive reinforcement. We should be able to correct behavior under those conditions, right. But that doesn't mean we got to correct every little thing unless it's going to hurt the person. Right. If you're nitpicking or micromanaging, you know I don't want to let bad performance go if it's going to lead in the wrong direction. Let's say I'm present and people are performing poorly. That could be like condoning it, right, but I'm not going to focus. There's lots of things. I can go in anywhere and see lots of bad things going. We need to stick to those one or two behaviors, right. We'll get to those other behaviors later on. But we find the behaviors that are going to be easiest for people to engage in and going to have the largest and most valued impact right.
Speaker 2:In our science we have something called behavioral cusp or pivotal behaviors. A behavioral cusp is like walking right Really important right. It helps you move. It's important behavior because it helps you get in touch with all sorts of other positive reinforcement. Reading is a pivotal behavior. When you learn to read, you can access all sorts of other things. It's fundamental to those different things. Feedback is a pivotal behavior for leaders, right. When you understand how to give feedback, it opens up the doors.
Speaker 2:So when I work with an employee, depending on what their job responsibility is, I want to make sure they have those fundamental things in place right. Once I have those, we can begin evolving that right and shaping up some other things. But it's not just about performance. It's the performance that you're focused on, right, and what's going to happen. So it's scaffolding In boxing, you know, and you'll have something for football. I'm going to work focus on footwork first, right and posture right. Maybe it's boring things, but once they get that right, then the rest of the things start to come, turning their hips naturally right, flowing naturally when they throw punches right. I just need them in position. I don't even care about the combinations. A lot of people start with the combinations but they're starting backwards. I need those fundamentals in place and that stuff is.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think that many podcasts, lots of content creators.
Speaker 3:When we talk about feedback, it's almost always from the leader to the follower, right, and every once in a while you might hear that peer to peer kind of concept that we talked about earlier. What you rarely hear, which I really want to get into right now, is feedback from the follower vertically to the leader, and you know, I think this is absolutely critical. I try to do this as much as I can. I try to reinforce my leaders as much as I possibly can, because you have some followers, pauly, who they're always pointing out problems. They're always dumping a lot of things in the leader's lap, and this is not to avoid accountability. As leaders, we should be trying to fix problems and make things better for our people and improve processes. But you do have some followers who are just always bringing that negative feedback and very they're bringing problems without solutions and they're not being mindful, pauly, of the ratio that they're doing that. Could a follower just alienate themselves from a leader or become aversive to that leader by doing that?
Speaker 2:Well, listen in the end and this is the tagline of the show and I can't keep coming back I'm going to keep coming back to it it's not about our intention, it's about our impact. Feedback should be bi-directional. We cannot just be giving feedback downwards all the time. Right, Because if we're going to measure impact, right, If we're going to measure the outcome of our intention, we have to measure impact, and that means that we have to be checking in with our stakeholders to see how we're feeling about things. So if they're not, we you know. I just said you know.
Speaker 2:Hey, AJ, you know great job and I gave you a shout out of the peers. If I don't know how you feel about that, because I'm not checking in with you regularly to find out, I don't have a informal process, but also a formal process, right, Like a 360 degree feedback, I am going to continue to do something that's ultimately harming performance. So I got to make sure that I give people voice and choice, and this is where we got to check in on them. Even if we don't which you should if you don't have that as part of your leadership routine, you're shooting yourself in your foot. If you, AJ, or if I like, let's say, you're my leader and I'm not performing to a standard. Just the fact that I'm not performing to a standard is feedback for you. My performance is a measure of your leadership. And so if you're not getting the best out of me, if I'm not doing something right, you got to think about what am I going to do, more or less, or differently? That's going to increase the likelihood that you're going to do it, and a lot of people fall back onto punishment right, and that works temporarily, but it has all sorts of negative impacts. So you come out and reprimand me, told me I do an A, B and C and you haven't developed a relationship with me, you haven't been using the four to ones, you haven't given me a voice and choice and all these things.
Speaker 2:You know, one lie can undo a thousand truths. One correction, right Under those kinds of conditions, can undo a thousand positives. All of a sudden you shift to the horns effect, right, and I'm like I don't really like AJ very much. He's not out for me, he's out to get me, you know. And so we got to check in with people to see how they're feeling and not just check in with them. But we need to act on those things, or we need to clarify some things. If they say they've uh, you know, if we can't make a change, maybe they just don't know the why Did I answer that question? Well enough, man, I don't know if I got it, yeah.
Speaker 3:I think so. I just really wanted to, because we're all followers in different positions and we all can be leaders in different positions. And when you're in the position or the role of a follower, I just would like our listeners to be cognizant of that. Like, how much positive reinforcement am I given those in positions of power or authority over me? How much am I reinforcing their positive leadership or their positive practices when I see it, or am I like dumping problems at their feet every time I meet with them? Because that's a negative reinforcer for the leader and you can be making yourself aversive, you know, to the leader in that situation.
Speaker 3:And also it's twofold, because as the leader and I think you touched on this a little bit, Paulie you have to be, you know, building that rapport, those relationships being a positive reinforcement to your people where they feel comfortable bringing you not just a positive feedback but also to construct the feedback in a constructive manner. And as a leader, if you don't have people giving you constructive feedback, that's an issue too, Because as a leader, your circle is your mirror and you need to be able to have people that come to you and tell you when there's holes in your leadership game. Friends. Don't let friends drive drunk, right? You need to be able to gauge that and correct that. I hope that makes sense, Paul. I really want it.
Speaker 2:Oh, it makes perfect sense, man. We have to model and reinforce, right, how to give feedback. Right, that's anything you know, because feedback, as we've laid out in this podcast, is pretty sophisticated. So we have to teach people how to do it. Well, we model it, reinforce it and we can say, like hey to our people, like, can you give me feedback? You know, aj, but here's how I would prefer you give me feedback and you're teaching them right.
Speaker 2:Let me, for me, it's let me know what I'm doing. Well, be very specific about it. Let me know how the impact of it is and if I'm doing something wrong, right, you can say, like hey, to eat, to be even better, because that works for me. You know, I know you're doing this, that and the other. Or maybe you asked me a question about it.
Speaker 2:Hey, pauly, can you tell me a little bit more about this, right? So it gives me an opportunity to explain why I'm doing it, because maybe there's something you don't know, right? So I'm not making a judgment there without all the data. So I really think we need to teach people how to deliver feedback. And, going back to feedback rich culture, we got to make sure they have the knowledge and skills to do it right. We got to equip them that way, that stuff, and then we have to look for that behavior and get in touch with positive reinforcement, meaning we are positively reinforcing it, but we want it to be naturally reinforcing because when they give feedback, they see things are better as a result of it. Very powerful man.
Speaker 3:I want to, I really want to touch on this, this, this concept, Pauly, before we wrap up, because it's something I see very, very frequently. I know you're you're going to get into probably shaping and as a human behavioral scientist you talk about. I hear you talk about fading a lot, a lot. Right, I've seen it where, and I don't care whether it's a team member in a business or it's the best football player on your Pee Wee team, but sometimes I feel like people have a tendency to say the high performer doesn't need feedback, they don't need it anymore, and they kind of put their high performer on autopilot, which I think personally, I think it's a dangerous game to play and for our listeners it's like don't let what's invaluable become invisible. I want to meet with my high performers. I want to tell them how much value they're bringing to the team, the organization. Like cross-reference that poly with fading, which is like a human behavioral science term or whatnot.
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, first of all, we should really think about feedback as like training wheels, at least when it's socially mediated, meaning we are giving them right. We don't want to have to constantly be giving people feedback about a specific behavior. Right, eventually we need to shift, right. We set new performance goals with people. We're going to move on to something else, right, because ultimately we again we want people to better assess, problem solve, make decisions and take actions that are going to produce valued outcomes. Right, really.
Speaker 2:So we got to, we got to fade that stuff out, right, and then you know, we can fade out by asking questions is a powerful one, giving gestures, giving prompts, right, so we're not always telling people. I really want people to. Questions are going to be behavioral. You know, tell me what happened. You know, tell me what you did. Tell me what happened as a result of what you did, right, so I want them to start thinking about themselves in that way.
Speaker 2:So it's really important. That's how we fade out what we're doing and that's how the behavior gets shaped. As they're seeing more and more that their behavior is producing some sort of reinforcement, we've got to think about shaping behavior, like shaping a ball of clay into a statue right. Except for the statue this time is a performance right, a specific skill that we're trying to shape up. So that's really important. Now, in terms of high performing people yes, man, you are so right about that. We tend to take these people for granted right. In fact, sometimes we even like, let's say, it's a teacher man. They're doing very well with behavior challenges. All of a sudden they start to get punished for it, not intentionally but they start getting more of the various students that are challenged for them.
Speaker 2:Yeah, just because they're good at something does not mean, uh, that they should. Um, you know that they love doing that, you know, uh, so we got to make sure that we're giving feedback. But also, when you get to be really good at something let's say it's running, right, uh, a sprinter, um, making progress. When you're at the elite of the elite, you get down to like milliseconds. Right, if you just started running, you can make gains and shaving off 10, 15, 20, 30 seconds off, you know, whatever you're running, you know, depending on how far you're running, you know. But when you get to elite performance, you can't have the same expectations when they're all the way up there and you can't forget them, Right, because what people will do well, they'll have like stretch goals for people and they push them to maintain that the performance. And also people say, well, they're doing it, so you should do it too.
Speaker 2:When you do that, people will burn out, right, in the absence of feedback. In the absence of feedback, that's reinforcing them, right, knowing that they are performing at this level and there's reinforcement coming in. It's feedback from you, but it's also it's producing more valued outcomes. You know it's like making a win-win the harder you work, the more you're going to get for it right.
Speaker 2:And that's one of the problems, by the way, with salary Salary we end up paying people for the hours that they show up right, not, you know, not their actual performance. It's why sales is like where people make the most money in the world, because the harder you work, the better you are at it, the more money that you get for it. You know, or people that are on a mission and they can see, like you know, helping people. You know, the more they do this, the more people are helped, and it kind of captures you, you know. It makes you want to move in that direction. So you cannot forget about your high performers and you can't dump on them, otherwise they might just drop back to the average because, like, why am I going to keep doing this stuff?
Speaker 3:You know why am? Why am I working incredibly hard to be punished? Essentially right If leaders aren't very you know, just very self-aware of that and I felt like that was a really big point. I wanted to get your comment on that from a human behavioral science lens, because I think some people think that by giving them the challenges, by giving them the big projects, the big assignments that you know, think being told you're valuable is the projects you get those tough kids you mentioned Pauly in the classroom example, and being valued is different than being valuable. Like valuable is gauged by what's asked and what's taken, and I think valued is gauged by what's given and invested, including positive feedback. So one is a pull and I think the other is a push.
Speaker 2:And if you're thinking about, like those high performers everybody thinks about reinforcement as something social, mediated right, I'll tell you, a very powerful reinforcer is autonomy. Giving people autonomy right, instead of telling, well, here's what I need you to do next. You say AJ, so what do you think you're you to do next, you say AJ, so what do you think you're going to do next? Right, and then just taking the cuffs off them. Let them go do their thing. If they've been performing so well, give them autonomy.
Speaker 2:I have a lot of autonomy in my job. I love it, man. You know what I mean. It's such a powerful reinforcer and I love what I'm doing. I'm operating my values all the time. Nobody's got to come tell me to do it. I always go above and beyond because it produces so much immediate reinforcement for me, long-term reinforcement for me, and I don't have anybody like making me feel like, oh gosh, you're watching me, you're doing this, man. Autonomy is a major reinforcer. Let them do it because they'll innovate and you can learn from that, right? And if they innovate, reinforce the crap out of that If they've made something better for the organization. To me, if you're in a position to give something, the processes are more efficient. Right, you're generating more profit. Give people a little piece of something. It's going to make more people want to innovate. Right, and how? You know that spreads like wildfire. We want to reinforce innovation.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think I'm so glad you said that, I'm so glad that you reinforced for our listeners. We need to continue to reinforce and pour value and feedback into even the high performers. There's no human being that's exempt from human conditioning and behavioral science, unless you're an alien. You need that, you need that reinforcement.
Speaker 2:And for our leaders never forget that the human beings you're leading are actual human beings and they respond to things that human beings have responded to for over 100 years that we know. Right, paulie, even if an alien came down, their behavior would still operate under the same principles, man. It's still how we survive, right? Because they also had to evolve right? Same stuff, man, even for aliens, oh man.
Speaker 3:Got to schedule a one-on-one with ET or something. Hey brother, this has been a blast. We could probably be here all day on this subject. We might need to do a part two or part three for our listeners here. Feedback is so crucial to leadership.
Speaker 2:It is, man. I mean, feedback is leadership and it shouldn't just be a checkbox. You alluded to this earlier. It should be a system and it should be a part of the culture. You want to have a culture of feedback because it's a tool for shaping performance right and making sure that we're aligned with values and ultimately becomes you want it to become part of your, your culture, just the way that we do think of feedback. Rich culture, a positively reinforcing feedback culture is really what you want, right, because when it doesn't just change behavior, it can transform individuals, it can transform teams, it can transform organizations. In fact, it can transform the world, man, you know. So listen, just remember that it's just behavior. If me and AJ can do it, you can do it. It's nothing that is not undoable, but you got to be mindful of it. You need to understand these things that we talked about. It's very, very powerful, and just remember, in the end, that it's not about intention, it's about impact. We'll see you guys next time.
