An Interview With Fotis Georgiadis
Make sure you talk to the person, use a video conference if you can, so you can see their face and they can see yours. Though much of our body language is lost working virtually, it is still possible to see how your comments are landing, and better than the phone.
As a part of our series about “How To Give Honest Feedback without Being Hurtful”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Hedda Bird.
Hedda is a human motivation and engagement expert, founder & CEO of 3C Performance Management Consultants and author of The Performance Management Playbook: 15 must-have conversations to motivate & manage your people.
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 hard to classify! I did a first degree in Mathematic and Philosophy, then a Post-grad diploma in theatre directing. I went on to set up a Theatre-in-Education company, which I ran for 5 years. I found I spent more time running the company than doing the creative work. So, I changed my thinking, separated my love of theatre from earning a living and moved into industry. Roll forward several decades and I use theatre techniques to help leaders and colleagues at work understand how to make the most of working together. It’s been quite a journey.
What do you think makes your company stand out? Can you share a story?
It’s unusual for a company in the OD space to have such a deep connection to business and numbers alongside the expected understanding of human motivation. It gives us a credibility with business leaders, not just the HR community. When I meet a CEO or CFO early in our projects, I take a set of their latest available accounts with me. It changes how the business leaders see me, and what our company has to offer. One CEO of a land development company was resisting spending money on engaging all colleagues with performance. I pointed out that with just 600 employees and a balance sheet in the billions, the impact each one of those people might have on the business was enormous compared to most organisations. He said he had never thought of it in that light and became a major support of the project.
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you started your career?
I was a leader in a ‘dot-com’ business in 2001, serving the global pulp and paper industry. The business had quite significant investment, and I was brought into the top team to head up the marketing function. It was my first experience of a VC funded business. For six months the VCs stormed in at regular intervals complaining that I wasn’t spending the money fast enough, that all that mattered was making as much impact as possible. Cash and profits were not a problem. As the company had no sales at that time, I and other senior leaders were slightly surprised at this behaviour. There was a sudden turning point, the VCs decided that cash was a problem, and the instructions to make the money last longer arrived within hours. A few months later the company was gone, all the money spent with zero revenue generated. Turned out profit and cash do matter after all. Still, I look back on that experience with pleasure, and stayed close to many of the others in the team for years afterwards.
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?
Very early on I was asked to look at some accounts for a small business I was working for. There was a line item called ‘drawings’, it seemed a very large sum of money. I looked about the business for signs of people drawing, or ordering drawings from suppliers. I found nothing. I was utterly baffled. I called the external accountant and was mortified to learn that ‘drawings’ is the name given to the money the owner takes out of the business.
What advice would you give to other CEOs and business leaders to help their employees to thrive and avoid burnout?
The biggest single thing you can do for colleagues is to give them some attention. Listen, engage and respond. That’s what attention means. When you pay people attention you will have a much better chance of reducing their stress and enabling them to thrive.
How do you define “Leadership”? Can you explain what you mean or give an example?
Leadership is about setting direction, determining a tone, creating a culture. Leadership is often very local. I can be working with a hospital trust, and the tone, atmosphere and experience on one ward can be very different to the ward next door. The differences nearly always come down to leadership. Sometimes it’s how the ward manager leads, but it can also be massively influenced by how much leadership other colleagues exhibit. Some employees generate a positive working atmosphere wherever they go, and others don’t.
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?
Over a long career I have learned to trust myself to do well, providing I have prepared properly. If occasionally things go wrong, I don’t beat myself up about it, none of us are perfect.
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’ve managed dozens of teams over my career. The trickiest are those where you are responsible but you have limited authority. For example, as chair of the trustees for a charity run 100% by volunteers, I occasionally needed to give some challenging feedback about individual behaviour. I had to remember that people were giving their time free, they were not under an employment contract, yet we still needed everyone to maintain respect for each other. In my professional life I have often led teams that include experts from outside my organisation. It can be hard to give feedback to people in these circumstances as they may not consider anyone outside their organisation has the right to comment on their performance in any way. I have always been most successful giving feedback when I have a good relationship with the individual in the first place, we don’t have to be mates, just have good professional respect.
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?
We all learn from feedback, indeed in the world of work it is sometimes the only way we can learn. If you don’t give colleagues feedback you are denying them the chance to grow and develop. Feedback should mean a strong focus on what is going well, not just the occasional comment about problems. Giving good feedback about success so your team understands specifically what they are getting right is a great confidence booster and leads to more of the right actions. The more you hand out positive feedback, the more likely your colleagues will engage when what you have to say is more challenging to them. Remember, if you don’t say anything you are still ‘giving feedback’, only now your colleague has to guess what your silence means. They might interpret your silence as a disaster for them, or they might think it means they are doing a good job. Either perspective could be wrong, others will make whatever interpretation of your silence they want, which maybe the complete opposite of the message you want to give
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.
- Make sure you talk to the person, use a video conference if you can, so you can see their face and they can see yours. Though much of our body language is lost working virtually, it is still possible to see how your comments are landing, and better than the phone.
- Before you contact someone, think through the possible outcomes of the call. What’s the best that could happen? Perhaps they accept the feedback, respond appropriately and everything is fine. What is the worst that could happen? Perhaps they become angry, blame you, blame everyone else. Write down all the possible outcomes, and think through what is likely, and what you can do to get the outcome you most want.
- When you contact someone to give them feedback, first check that they are in a position to listen to you. If they are at home are there other people around, do they need to find some privacy? If you are on the phone, you have no idea where they are or even how well they can hear you.
- Once you have given your feedback be silent and allow them to be silent too. Reassure them that they don’t have to respond at once. Do not rush this moment. You may want to change the subject or simply stop the call because you are struggling with your feelings. Learn to accept your feelings at this point, they are not important. What matters is that the person who you are giving feedback to has heard and engaged with what you said. Their feelings may then show up in different ways. That’s fine. Stay calm.
- Act early. There is a tendency when working remotely to avoid giving difficult feedback. A client of mine had to deal with a catastrophe of compensation claims and employment tribunals in one team. Looking into it, I discovered that the real problem was a minor issue of someone regularly coming in late to work had been ignored until the lateness was entrenched. When the manager finally dealt with it, the employee complained of being victimised because over months no-one had said a word.
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?
I would avoid this as far as possible. You cannot see the impact of your words, your email may be forwarded on to others in a completely inappropriate context, and you have no idea what frame of mind the individual is in when your email is read. If you can’t talk to the person, try to arrange for someone else to have the conversation. I don’t think I have ever seen good quality challenging feedback given by email without causing some upset or damage. Even people who ask for feedback by email often end up feeling hurt at what comes back.
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?
In general, try to give feedback as close as possible to the relevant moment. However, make sure you have allowed your colleague time to recover from the moment. If they gave a big presentation, they probably want to get a drink and have a much more general talk about how it went, before you get into more meaningful feedback. Or if the incident has triggered an emotion such as distress or anger, allow time for all concerned to calm down. Anyone feeling emotional won’t be taking onboard your feedback anyway.
There is also a case for organisations to plan regular slots for more general feedback about colleagues’ progress and development. Maybe an annual conversation about their career options, or a monthly check-in on how well current work is being delivered. There is a place for feedback at multiple levels.
How would you define what it is to “be a great boss”? Can you share a story?
A great boss is someone who enables and empowers their team to do their best work most of the time. If you are a good boss, your team will be having more ‘good days at work’ than if you weren’t. When I was working in a start-up that ran into trouble, the two leaders who founded the business maintained good working relationships with everyone, even though many people were losing their jobs. It was a testament to them both that right up to the end, a lot of colleagues were working incredibly hard to save the business, even though most of them could have quickly found work elsewhere.
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. 🙂
I would throw in my lot with some aspect of preventing further climate change. Millions of people are already suffering the effects of global warming, we all need to act.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
Live your passion, work your career’, which means that the endless call to ‘follow your passions’ is deeply misleading for most of us. I am passionate about theatre and the performing arts, but it is a terrible career for most people in the profession. I changed career, found a job I was good at and enjoyed, and lived my passion for theatre in different ways. I think I’ve had the best of both worlds, a sustainable interesting work life, and plenty of opportunity to follow my passions without worrying about money.
How can our readers further follow your work online?
You can follow me on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/hedda/ or go to my website and sign up for the monthly newsletter, check out the webinars and download some great free resources https://www.3cperform.co.uk
Thank you for these great insights! We really appreciate the time you spent with this.
Hedda Bird Of 3C Performance Management: 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.
