Simone:
00:02
We need, feedback in our environment in order to improve and in order to live a better life.
Helen:
00:11
Hi. I'm Helen Tupper, the host of HSBC's Power Up Podcast, a podcast that is all about helping people to perform at their best. We're talking to lots of different people to get their perspectives on performance. We're gonna get some insights and ideas and practical things you can try out and apply to your day to day. In the first episode, we talked to Octavius Black about 6 areas to focus on to help you nail your performance at work.
Helen:
00:38
And today, I'm gonna be talking to Simone Heng, whose work is all about human connection at work. We're gonna focus on feedback, a really tricky but important topic for our performance at work. Simone, welcome to the PowerUp podcast. Thank you. I'm fascinated by your work in human connection.
Helen:
00:57
I'd love to just learn a little bit more about what that means that you do on an average day, and also how how you got into it.
Simone:
01:05
Yes. So I had been, working for big broadcasting brands for the first 15 years of my career. So I had a strong foundation in being able to communicate. But I worked out really quickly that communication does not mean connection. So the media taught me to communicate, but I wasn't feeling, connected to my interview subjects or the people I was meeting.
Simone:
01:25
At the same time as this was happening, this existential career crisis, my mother has a very rare degenerative disease, and so she was having cognitive issues, not just connecting with her own memories, but also connecting with other people. So everywhere I looked, this is around 2019, connection seemed to be an issue. So I started researching and that snowballed, obviously, we had a global pandemic and then it became the most requested topic for expertise on the planet, human connection, overnight. And that snowballed now post pandemic to flying all over the world, speaking for organizations, and authoring books on on this topic that I'm so passionate about.
Helen:
02:04
And so it's a real meeting, a sort of personal meaning, and then kind of professional opportunity to make a difference. Absolutely.
Simone:
02:11
And I'm also a huge extrovert, so it has it's perfect. It's perfect for me. Amazing.
Helen:
02:15
So let's get first into feedback. When when we're talking about feedback, I think people have got so many different perceptions about what feedback is. So let's just start from your perspective. When we talk about feedback, what what does it mean to you? So I think what
Simone:
02:29
it means to me, is that it's like, firstly, an integral part of any human being's growth to have some sort of idea of what others think of them versus what they think others think of them. Okay. And then we can expand that and also apply that to certain projects. Right? You you can have a feedback that's not about the individual, but also about work that maybe the individual has created or a team has created.
Simone:
02:52
But we need feedback in our environment in order to improve and in order to live a better life. Of course, we do, you know, otherwise we I'll give you an example. It's actually done studies of people in solitary confinement, who are without feedback, feedback coming from human connection. And these people have lost, a certain marker on reality. So there's a lot of studies around how loneliness means that lonely people have a a different sense of reality because you're not having that feedback, those markers to kinda guide you as to what's appropriate behavior.
Simone:
03:31
So we need feedback for
Helen:
03:34
our own emotional intelligence. I think maybe thinking about the theme of the podcast that if the information that someone has given you can help you to improve your performance, then it's potentially valid, even if it's hard to hear. But if that is shared with you in a way that doesn't has no there's no intent there to help you to improve your performance, then maybe it's not the kind of feedback that's right for people to to sort of receive or process.
Simone:
03:58
What's going on beneath the surface there? And I think whenever you're about to give feedback, you should ask, how can I make this better versus how can I highlight and point out the mistakes or errors? And I think sometimes when we get stressed within an organization having worked in really big broadcasting brands before where the stakes the stakes in old media as it started to diminish and die were just never been higher and more stressed out and scarcity, and I think that it was, you know, you would get this kind of feedback sometimes that wasn't done with how can I make this better? It was more I'm emotional, and I just wanna let people know how I feel about their work. So always with that filter, how can I make this project or employee or teammate better versus how can I just point out the flaws?
Simone:
04:48
And that will flip the entire way the conversation is communicated as well.
Helen:
04:53
And so you've mentioned, like, the emotional charge. And I think feedback can it can feel difficult for people. We've got perceptions about what someone thinks about us and what this means for us. So what have you learned through your work about, like, the psychology of Phoeba? Why why do we find this hard, and how can we maybe be a bit less fearful about it?
Simone:
05:13
I think we can look at how we evolved, in tribes as early homo sapiens and that need to belong. Obviously, you didn't want to have yourself cast out for that from that tribe or be alone for any means necessary. You would have died. So safety in numbers, and then feedback and criticism in some way, can make an individual feel singled out. So it can signal feelings of social rejection that go back to that psychology of I wanna be connected.
Simone:
05:41
I wanna have my head down and be on the same level as my teammates, not ever singled out for a negative reason because being singled out for a negative reason could mean being thrown out of the tribe. So that for me would be the evolutionary psychology of why it's so triggering. And then, of course, we add all the self esteem issues to it. Nobody wants to I mean, for me particularly, I received feedback when I was a broadcaster and then when I was in the media industry that was it was you're just very either very ruthless or about things you couldn't change. We didn't have all the diversity and inclusion, all these kind of safety nets that we have now.
Simone:
06:21
And so I always think of feedback now with that in mind as an organization's way of saying we care about you, we value you, we wanna invest in you. Because from my experience, feedback was, you didn't really get any. You do a season of a TV show. And if it didn't go well, you wouldn't get any feedback. You just wouldn't get another season.
Helen:
06:42
It's quite direct
Simone:
06:43
feedback. It's quite very direct feedback and no second chances. Whereas what I love now, because I work with so many 14 500 organizations, is that there are all these processes in place, which really, if we wanna reframe how triggering feedback can be or how scary it can be, we should reframe it as the organization really values you. That's why they want to have this difficult conversation with you. And
Helen:
07:04
I'm just thinking about the psychology of feedback and where feedback is coming from. And so does it feel more difficult, for example, to get feedback from my manager, who is more senior than me and who has influence over my career in the company, versus my peers? Do we know anything about psychology and the direction of the feedback?
Simone:
07:24
I, I definitely think power power dynamics in any difficult conversation is at play. And to be and it's the responsibility of the person who it may be higher in the hierarchy to be cognizant of that and for not just the the employee is definitely already feeling when they're called in for that conversation. The heart's already going. The nervous system is already, you know, aroused. But sometimes, you know, managers might have to give multiple bits of feedback at review time, or they might be really stressed about something from above that the employee doesn't know about.
Simone:
07:58
And it's really important for the manager to take that moment to do that box breathing to center and ground so that the feedback can land and come out the right bet way. You know, we're responsible not just for what we say, but how it lands. And sometimes when we're really busy and stressed, it's hard for that to happen. So that would be my my thinking around the power dynamics, is just being cognizant that there is a power dynamic going on.
Helen:
08:24
I think for someone to recognize that if you find it's hard, you're human. Like, the the all these things that are going on, the power dynamics, and the fact that this feels scary, and I've got some thing from years years ago in evolution about belonging going on in my brain. Yes. This is very normal for somebody to find a bit difficult to do at work.
Simone:
08:42
Absolutely. I find it so I find feedback very triggering for me. The truth is, if you wanna be an entrepreneur or a leader yourself, receiving feedback is a wonderful way to learn how to give feedback. And so it's just a part of the ecosystem of life. So there has to also be a level of acceptance about it.
Simone:
09:00
Right?
Helen:
09:01
So I really want to help people with this tension between, you know, one side of sort of the feedback equation. You've got feedback helps me to improve my performance at work. Amazing. Want some of that. And on the other side, you've got feedback feels really, really scary because I don't wanna be judged by my manager or thought less of by my peers.
Helen:
09:19
And so I'm thinking that in the middle, if we can give people some practical tips about asking and giving and receiving feedback, then we can maybe reduce some of this tension that people are probably feeling at work. So let's imagine, it's an average day at work. I know I'm gonna have a feedback conversation with my manager. And Simone has designed this so that it's that this is, like, this is the ideal feedback conversation. And there's a few different messages, some things I do well, some things I could improve on.
Helen:
09:47
How does that conversation start so it works for both people in it?
Simone:
09:51
I would definitely begin both parties with calming yourselves. This means breathing. What you don't want to do is run from other high stakes or stressful meetings directly into the virtual conversation of some really tough feedback. You want to make the person receiving that feedback as the manager feel that you care, that it's important that it lands the right way. And if we're in any sort of fight or flight, we don't communicate at our best.
Simone:
10:18
We're not mindful, and we need to be mindful in our words, when delivering feedback to valued employees. That's for sure. So then, if the person the person understands that they're about to enter into this particular meeting, the modality is important. Okay? So is it virtual or is it in person?
Simone:
10:39
There is now a trend in workplaces to step away from doing these difficult conversations in the kind of fluorescent light, no windows cue, like Spotlight thing. Just bigger than a cubicle room, where you can just let those heavy words hang in the air. A lot of people think you can have really great authentic conversations in the green corridors of workplaces, walk and walk and talk even. So think about that. If you have the option to be creative, HSBC is such a huge global organization, so many different ways to do it.
Simone:
11:10
But if you are doing it on virtual, make sure you give all those virtual cues that we learned through the pandemic, eye contact down the camera, those sorts of things. So then what do we open with? We're both aware that a calendar invite has gone in, and this conversation's gonna happen. So there's no avoiding the elephant in the room. I think beginning with a little bit of rapport building, of course, ask the other party how they are.
Simone:
11:31
This makes a big difference to, how that conversation's gonna go. If someone says, oh, you know, my dog just died, maybe reschedule. This is the first filter here. The how are you? Then build rapport using non triggering subject matter.
Simone:
11:48
I like to look at Maslow's hierarchy of needs and the bottom part of the pyramid of the physiological needs. These are non triggering, non controversial, universal topics for all human beings, food, water, shelter, clothing, air. So what did, you know, did you take your lunch is very common in Asia. It's even in Mandarin. It's at the beginning, greeting, have you eaten?
Simone:
12:12
Is very, very common. So that is in place almost of how are you? So that's a food conversation. Right? So just set that groundwork.
Simone:
12:23
And after that, if we know that the person receiving the feedback is very nervous, if you're a compassionate leader, I would begin by sharing, if it's a very junior employee, a bit of vulnerability. Vulnerability completely disarms a spicy conversation. So it could be something along the lines of, you know, when I am had my first job, I had this incredible mentor, and they gave me this little bit of feedback that really changed the trajectory of my career. And then say what the feedback was. It could be from 30 years ago, so it's not gonna dent your reputational brand as a leader now.
Simone:
13:01
And you will marvel of how that changes the emotional charge between 2 people. So yes. And then we would go into the feedback. Now that simple sandwich methodology
Helen:
13:12
Yeah.
Simone:
13:13
It's kind of become quite outdated because people now know it, so they know what their managers are doing. And it if anything now would betray trust because people know you're giving me this format. So what I would, suggest with this whole global, direction towards authenticity is firstly to sincerely highlight, what's what has been going well, and then use the, even better if model. So you could be doing even better if this. If it's around a specific incident or something went wrong, you know, once I was on a radio station and I left the I didn't put the radio station into automation.
Simone:
13:55
I was so stressed about my mother's illness, and it just couldn't have been a less important thing to me at that time. And I was driving down the road, and I heard the radio station go dead on air. And my manager had to obviously reprimand me about this, and she did it in such an incredible way because she knew it's like the criminal sin for radio broadcasters. So she would have known I already was beating myself up about it, and and we had to address what happened in this incident. We couldn't pretend it didn't happen.
Simone:
14:26
The radio station went off air. And she just she said to me, look, Simone, you know, this has happened. The engineers managed to get in remotely, put the station on air, but this just cannot happen again. She didn't get personal. She didn't say you.
Simone:
14:41
She didn't say she just said it can't happen again. And sometimes that feedback has to be given, k? Without positivity in the front of it. Something went wrong that needs to be acknowledged within an organization. And then, of course, you have to acknowledge what the weaknesses are and then make constructive recommendation for what can be done, better in the future.
Helen:
15:06
Yeah. And there's so much good stuff in what you just said there. I think the structure's really, really helpful. So you kind of, you know, assess the the mindset. Is is the person in the right space?
Helen:
15:14
Particularly, because we often
Simone:
15:15
go from meeting to meeting,
Helen:
15:16
don't we? That's a really good point. Like, a bit of space before these conversations. The mode, like, where are we having it? How are we having it?
Helen:
15:23
And then the the the showing the vulnerability as a kinda gateway into that. Yeah. As a connector. Exactly that. And then the point that I really, really loved is, you know, the whole clear is kinds?
Helen:
15:33
There will be difficult messages that someone has to deliver. And rather than do the praise sandwich where that will get entirely lost and feel a bit manipulative, sometimes you have to say the hard thing. And that isn't every feedback conversation, but it will be some feedback conversations. And it sounds like she, you know, she
Simone:
15:49
did it really clearly. You had. Beautifully.
Helen:
15:52
Yeah. It's a really important way of doing it. Thank you. Thank you for giving us that structure.
Simone:
15:55
That was my vulnerability of my horrible I mean, my horrible story of, yes.
Helen:
16:01
Well, we can all learn from it. So it's it's gone somewhere and helped people. So what if I have had some really hard to hear feedback? So I'm I'm in the moment. You have given me some feedback.
Helen:
16:12
Maybe I wasn't expecting it or maybe oh, I know this in myself, but it's just been hard to hear it come from you. You're my manager. And my emotions are going all over the place. What what do I do in that situation?
Simone:
16:25
A lot of the relationship experts, not just for at work, really, advise for a circuit breaker. So if you are in such a state of high hyperarousal, like, you are so fight or flight you cannot think all you have is being flooded by feelings, it is actually not in the manager's interest for you to continue to sit there because you're not absorbing anything they're saying. And I think you can advocate for yourself and just say, I'm feeling a lot of emotional charge right now. Would you mind if I take some time to process what's just been said? I'm not dismissing what's been said, but I just need a moment because there will be tough feedback.
Simone:
17:10
There of course, there's gonna be tough feedback in in life, not just at work. And the body has this response. It's in everyone's best interest that the information is absorbed. So absorption before just sitting through it and gritting the teeth through it, and it's it's just gonna be either thrown out the window. What's gonna happen?
Simone:
17:32
You're gonna hold on to the couple of negative things that you heard before you went into full on fight or flight mode. You'll internalize it, and then you'll just be disengaged, and you'll probably end up just leaving the organization. So I think taking a break is a really great idea.
Helen:
17:48
Sort of wish I'd known that before I'd had some of those conversations in my career where I probably got really defensive or just really upset visibly in front of somebody and probably stopped listening. I like that. You know, advocate for yourself and say, I loved your point there as well about, I'm not dismissing what you've got to say. I'm just finding it a bit hard to process at the moment. Like, that what a powerful statement for people to take away in inevitable hard feedback moments that will happen.
Simone:
18:13
Yes.
Helen:
18:13
I'm thinking about when feedback happens at work, sometimes it's gonna happen in person because we happen to be in the office together. And then and and you can Yeah. And and I would imagine for lots of people listening, a lot of the time, this is gonna be virtual. So is this a is this a camera on always situation so we can have the mirror neurons? Or actually, sometimes for connection, is it is it okay to have a camera off conversation about feedback?
Simone:
18:36
So what we know from a study that came out just after the pandemic and the mass adoption of, video conferencing, the the respondents in the survey in this said that, actually, the old school phone call was less stressful for them than having to be tethered to, and this is not specifically for feedback, this is for communication general, was less stressful, less arousing for them than having to be seated and locked into sitting at the desk. So with what we know about the green spaces as well, if you're receiving that and you opt for it as a phone call, you can actually be walking in nature while receiving this, which I think would be very helpful provided it's a quiet park and not like a busy street where cars are coming at you. I think one thing that we can really do on video to help if you're giving video on feedback, of course, we all know about the eye contact. Right? When you're delivering that feedback, the eyes to the camera simulate what we would have in person as the eye contact to the recipient.
Simone:
19:38
So if you're giving hard feedback to someone, please look into your camera even though it feels really odd so you can see your eyes. One thing that diminishes trust in these situations is having your virtual communication cut too tight with your arms out. So, yeah, this is fascinating. You should do. Yeah.
Simone:
19:55
This is really fascinating. So the first thing we do when we meet a stranger, and it happens subconsciously, we don't even notice it, is we don't look at their eyes or their mouth or their face. We glance at their hands. Because when we're evolving, if we had met somebody, a stranger from another tribe, their hands could have had something that could have killed us. So you cropping your arms out of a virtual conference, like, out of your frame, is the digital body language equivalent of doing a whole keynote with your arms behind your back?
Simone:
20:24
So you we wanna be giving as much trust in difficult conversations as possible. So they would be my tips for using virtual to deliver this kind of stuff. Tips.
Helen:
20:33
I think there there are things that and I suppose that's the point here, isn't there? So much that we miss that can affect how this communication of information is is is relayed. So I would imagine a scenario for lots of people listening and myself is that at a point in time in their career, they've had some hard feedback from somebody. And that could have been quite a few years ago, but that feedback still stays it stays with them today, and it is affecting how they show up in certain situations or how they contribute to conversations or what they're doing in their career, and they can't they can't let it go. For that person who's struggling to draw a line between feedback in the past and what they're doing in the present, what would your advice be?
Simone:
21:17
I firstly would love them to think, was it feedback or was it criticism? Ask the question, why why has this wounded me? Why is this still staying with me? Now if you're below 25, which is 25 is when the prefrontal cortex really kind of locks in, there's a lot of feedback we get in those early stages earlier stages of our career that can really wound us. But if you are older than that and that it's kind of festering and you're changing your identity based on that piece of feedback, this is really where the human connection piece comes in.
Simone:
21:50
So I think what really helps is if people look around them at what I call their intimate connections. This is a group of 5 people, that you can truly be vulnerable with, and you can call them in a crisis, and they love you warts and all. These are the people which you could go to to confide about this wounding piece of feedback. We need these people. 1 in 3 Americans say they don't have people they can confide in, so we're in a bit of a crisis.
Simone:
22:18
But it's normally one of these 5 human connections or a multiple of them that you could go to with a secret like this because, for example, in Asia, a very wounding bit of negative feedback would be sometimes considered a secret because it's a loss of face to disclose to people. So go please go to people that you trust. Tell them about what happened. See what they think. They may may rec make recommendations for you to go to a career counselor or even if you're in therapy and talk about it.
Simone:
22:48
Because if it's a piece of feedback that maybe wasn't you thought was it was framed to you as feedback, but actually it was really negative or toxic criticism, and you've been changing your identity to not be this thing, to avoid being this thing that was said to you, you're actually changing how you interact with everyone. You're putting yourself out of alignment, essentially, because of one thing that was said to you, and that can change your life in a not so great way. So I definitely think if it's something you're harboring for a long time, please talk to someone that you trust.
Helen:
23:25
Uh-huh. And that's really important advice for people to hear. So we've covered so much, I think, in this conversation that will be helpful for people from the psychology of feedback and actually why it might feel hard and some tips and tools for how we can ask and give and then be more open to receive it in a way that helps us to learn. If we were to pull all that together into 3 top tips to help people use their feedback to power
Simone:
23:49
up their performance, what would those tips be? So number 1, ask yourself before giving feedback if you're the right person to give that feedback. Sometimes things get emotionally charged in the office. You wanna jump you wanna tell people what you think. Just take a deep breath and a back seat.
Simone:
24:07
Am I the best or most appropriate person to give this specific person this bit of feedback? The second thing is always, before you open your mouth, think, I'm aiming to make this personal project better versus pointing out just what's wrong. And that would change your wording and how you frame the conversation. And the third thing is be a human. Like, remember that before you are any of these labels that we get from working in an organisation or that the world puts on us, we're a human being, and so is the other person.
Simone:
24:44
So try and connect on that deeply human level, Bring yourself closer together, and the conversation will go much better.
Helen:
24:51
Thank you, Simone. I think there's such a lot of empathy that you shared in the context of something that can be very hard to give and receive and process. And so I I I really like your approach. It feels like, oh, this is something that can help me, which is exactly, I think, exactly what we want this feedback to be. So one thing that we do before we let our guests go is we ask them for their insights and advice on our next topic for our episodes.
Helen:
25:12
So the next episode is going to be on goals. Would love to know from you what what's a goal that you've achieved that you're really proud of? And was there anything that you learned in the process of achieving that goal that could be useful for our listeners to hear?
Simone:
25:27
Yes. I have to say it's that from Singapore, I was able to get this international book deal because I self published this book. And then I just had this thought, like, wouldn't it be fun if this book was discovered? And it's already been written, and then I'd have to write it again, and it gets then it gets global distribution, and it and it happened, but then I discovered after that that, wow, the publishing industry is just like banking or speaking, and and now I've entered this new world where there's all these new rules and new bureaucracy, and, and so the lesson there is that any goal you have before you achieve it looks so differently from once you've achieved it. And the human condition is that we never sit at the table of success for too long anyway, so never beat yourself up about thinking, oh, now I want the next goal because we're actually wired the science shows to be like that.
Helen:
26:17
Okay. Okay. Got it. So don't don't you beat yourself up like goals.
Simone:
26:19
So many people do that like, oh, will I ever be happy? And I keep chasing them. It's like, honey, that's part of the wiring. Don't beat yourself up. It's part of it.
Helen:
26:27
Well, we'll go deeper on goals in our next episode, but I just wanna say thank you so much for sharing all your insights with us today.
00:02
We need, feedback in our environment in order to improve and in order to live a better life.
Helen:
00:11
Hi. I'm Helen Tupper, the host of HSBC's Power Up Podcast, a podcast that is all about helping people to perform at their best. We're talking to lots of different people to get their perspectives on performance. We're gonna get some insights and ideas and practical things you can try out and apply to your day to day. In the first episode, we talked to Octavius Black about 6 areas to focus on to help you nail your performance at work.
Helen:
00:38
And today, I'm gonna be talking to Simone Heng, whose work is all about human connection at work. We're gonna focus on feedback, a really tricky but important topic for our performance at work. Simone, welcome to the PowerUp podcast. Thank you. I'm fascinated by your work in human connection.
Helen:
00:57
I'd love to just learn a little bit more about what that means that you do on an average day, and also how how you got into it.
Simone:
01:05
Yes. So I had been, working for big broadcasting brands for the first 15 years of my career. So I had a strong foundation in being able to communicate. But I worked out really quickly that communication does not mean connection. So the media taught me to communicate, but I wasn't feeling, connected to my interview subjects or the people I was meeting.
Simone:
01:25
At the same time as this was happening, this existential career crisis, my mother has a very rare degenerative disease, and so she was having cognitive issues, not just connecting with her own memories, but also connecting with other people. So everywhere I looked, this is around 2019, connection seemed to be an issue. So I started researching and that snowballed, obviously, we had a global pandemic and then it became the most requested topic for expertise on the planet, human connection, overnight. And that snowballed now post pandemic to flying all over the world, speaking for organizations, and authoring books on on this topic that I'm so passionate about.
Helen:
02:04
And so it's a real meeting, a sort of personal meaning, and then kind of professional opportunity to make a difference. Absolutely.
Simone:
02:11
And I'm also a huge extrovert, so it has it's perfect. It's perfect for me. Amazing.
Helen:
02:15
So let's get first into feedback. When when we're talking about feedback, I think people have got so many different perceptions about what feedback is. So let's just start from your perspective. When we talk about feedback, what what does it mean to you? So I think what
Simone:
02:29
it means to me, is that it's like, firstly, an integral part of any human being's growth to have some sort of idea of what others think of them versus what they think others think of them. Okay. And then we can expand that and also apply that to certain projects. Right? You you can have a feedback that's not about the individual, but also about work that maybe the individual has created or a team has created.
Simone:
02:52
But we need feedback in our environment in order to improve and in order to live a better life. Of course, we do, you know, otherwise we I'll give you an example. It's actually done studies of people in solitary confinement, who are without feedback, feedback coming from human connection. And these people have lost, a certain marker on reality. So there's a lot of studies around how loneliness means that lonely people have a a different sense of reality because you're not having that feedback, those markers to kinda guide you as to what's appropriate behavior.
Simone:
03:31
So we need feedback for
Helen:
03:34
our own emotional intelligence. I think maybe thinking about the theme of the podcast that if the information that someone has given you can help you to improve your performance, then it's potentially valid, even if it's hard to hear. But if that is shared with you in a way that doesn't has no there's no intent there to help you to improve your performance, then maybe it's not the kind of feedback that's right for people to to sort of receive or process.
Simone:
03:58
What's going on beneath the surface there? And I think whenever you're about to give feedback, you should ask, how can I make this better versus how can I highlight and point out the mistakes or errors? And I think sometimes when we get stressed within an organization having worked in really big broadcasting brands before where the stakes the stakes in old media as it started to diminish and die were just never been higher and more stressed out and scarcity, and I think that it was, you know, you would get this kind of feedback sometimes that wasn't done with how can I make this better? It was more I'm emotional, and I just wanna let people know how I feel about their work. So always with that filter, how can I make this project or employee or teammate better versus how can I just point out the flaws?
Simone:
04:48
And that will flip the entire way the conversation is communicated as well.
Helen:
04:53
And so you've mentioned, like, the emotional charge. And I think feedback can it can feel difficult for people. We've got perceptions about what someone thinks about us and what this means for us. So what have you learned through your work about, like, the psychology of Phoeba? Why why do we find this hard, and how can we maybe be a bit less fearful about it?
Simone:
05:13
I think we can look at how we evolved, in tribes as early homo sapiens and that need to belong. Obviously, you didn't want to have yourself cast out for that from that tribe or be alone for any means necessary. You would have died. So safety in numbers, and then feedback and criticism in some way, can make an individual feel singled out. So it can signal feelings of social rejection that go back to that psychology of I wanna be connected.
Simone:
05:41
I wanna have my head down and be on the same level as my teammates, not ever singled out for a negative reason because being singled out for a negative reason could mean being thrown out of the tribe. So that for me would be the evolutionary psychology of why it's so triggering. And then, of course, we add all the self esteem issues to it. Nobody wants to I mean, for me particularly, I received feedback when I was a broadcaster and then when I was in the media industry that was it was you're just very either very ruthless or about things you couldn't change. We didn't have all the diversity and inclusion, all these kind of safety nets that we have now.
Simone:
06:21
And so I always think of feedback now with that in mind as an organization's way of saying we care about you, we value you, we wanna invest in you. Because from my experience, feedback was, you didn't really get any. You do a season of a TV show. And if it didn't go well, you wouldn't get any feedback. You just wouldn't get another season.
Helen:
06:42
It's quite direct
Simone:
06:43
feedback. It's quite very direct feedback and no second chances. Whereas what I love now, because I work with so many 14 500 organizations, is that there are all these processes in place, which really, if we wanna reframe how triggering feedback can be or how scary it can be, we should reframe it as the organization really values you. That's why they want to have this difficult conversation with you. And
Helen:
07:04
I'm just thinking about the psychology of feedback and where feedback is coming from. And so does it feel more difficult, for example, to get feedback from my manager, who is more senior than me and who has influence over my career in the company, versus my peers? Do we know anything about psychology and the direction of the feedback?
Simone:
07:24
I, I definitely think power power dynamics in any difficult conversation is at play. And to be and it's the responsibility of the person who it may be higher in the hierarchy to be cognizant of that and for not just the the employee is definitely already feeling when they're called in for that conversation. The heart's already going. The nervous system is already, you know, aroused. But sometimes, you know, managers might have to give multiple bits of feedback at review time, or they might be really stressed about something from above that the employee doesn't know about.
Simone:
07:58
And it's really important for the manager to take that moment to do that box breathing to center and ground so that the feedback can land and come out the right bet way. You know, we're responsible not just for what we say, but how it lands. And sometimes when we're really busy and stressed, it's hard for that to happen. So that would be my my thinking around the power dynamics, is just being cognizant that there is a power dynamic going on.
Helen:
08:24
I think for someone to recognize that if you find it's hard, you're human. Like, the the all these things that are going on, the power dynamics, and the fact that this feels scary, and I've got some thing from years years ago in evolution about belonging going on in my brain. Yes. This is very normal for somebody to find a bit difficult to do at work.
Simone:
08:42
Absolutely. I find it so I find feedback very triggering for me. The truth is, if you wanna be an entrepreneur or a leader yourself, receiving feedback is a wonderful way to learn how to give feedback. And so it's just a part of the ecosystem of life. So there has to also be a level of acceptance about it.
Simone:
09:00
Right?
Helen:
09:01
So I really want to help people with this tension between, you know, one side of sort of the feedback equation. You've got feedback helps me to improve my performance at work. Amazing. Want some of that. And on the other side, you've got feedback feels really, really scary because I don't wanna be judged by my manager or thought less of by my peers.
Helen:
09:19
And so I'm thinking that in the middle, if we can give people some practical tips about asking and giving and receiving feedback, then we can maybe reduce some of this tension that people are probably feeling at work. So let's imagine, it's an average day at work. I know I'm gonna have a feedback conversation with my manager. And Simone has designed this so that it's that this is, like, this is the ideal feedback conversation. And there's a few different messages, some things I do well, some things I could improve on.
Helen:
09:47
How does that conversation start so it works for both people in it?
Simone:
09:51
I would definitely begin both parties with calming yourselves. This means breathing. What you don't want to do is run from other high stakes or stressful meetings directly into the virtual conversation of some really tough feedback. You want to make the person receiving that feedback as the manager feel that you care, that it's important that it lands the right way. And if we're in any sort of fight or flight, we don't communicate at our best.
Simone:
10:18
We're not mindful, and we need to be mindful in our words, when delivering feedback to valued employees. That's for sure. So then, if the person the person understands that they're about to enter into this particular meeting, the modality is important. Okay? So is it virtual or is it in person?
Simone:
10:39
There is now a trend in workplaces to step away from doing these difficult conversations in the kind of fluorescent light, no windows cue, like Spotlight thing. Just bigger than a cubicle room, where you can just let those heavy words hang in the air. A lot of people think you can have really great authentic conversations in the green corridors of workplaces, walk and walk and talk even. So think about that. If you have the option to be creative, HSBC is such a huge global organization, so many different ways to do it.
Simone:
11:10
But if you are doing it on virtual, make sure you give all those virtual cues that we learned through the pandemic, eye contact down the camera, those sorts of things. So then what do we open with? We're both aware that a calendar invite has gone in, and this conversation's gonna happen. So there's no avoiding the elephant in the room. I think beginning with a little bit of rapport building, of course, ask the other party how they are.
Simone:
11:31
This makes a big difference to, how that conversation's gonna go. If someone says, oh, you know, my dog just died, maybe reschedule. This is the first filter here. The how are you? Then build rapport using non triggering subject matter.
Simone:
11:48
I like to look at Maslow's hierarchy of needs and the bottom part of the pyramid of the physiological needs. These are non triggering, non controversial, universal topics for all human beings, food, water, shelter, clothing, air. So what did, you know, did you take your lunch is very common in Asia. It's even in Mandarin. It's at the beginning, greeting, have you eaten?
Simone:
12:12
Is very, very common. So that is in place almost of how are you? So that's a food conversation. Right? So just set that groundwork.
Simone:
12:23
And after that, if we know that the person receiving the feedback is very nervous, if you're a compassionate leader, I would begin by sharing, if it's a very junior employee, a bit of vulnerability. Vulnerability completely disarms a spicy conversation. So it could be something along the lines of, you know, when I am had my first job, I had this incredible mentor, and they gave me this little bit of feedback that really changed the trajectory of my career. And then say what the feedback was. It could be from 30 years ago, so it's not gonna dent your reputational brand as a leader now.
Simone:
13:01
And you will marvel of how that changes the emotional charge between 2 people. So yes. And then we would go into the feedback. Now that simple sandwich methodology
Helen:
13:12
Yeah.
Simone:
13:13
It's kind of become quite outdated because people now know it, so they know what their managers are doing. And it if anything now would betray trust because people know you're giving me this format. So what I would, suggest with this whole global, direction towards authenticity is firstly to sincerely highlight, what's what has been going well, and then use the, even better if model. So you could be doing even better if this. If it's around a specific incident or something went wrong, you know, once I was on a radio station and I left the I didn't put the radio station into automation.
Simone:
13:55
I was so stressed about my mother's illness, and it just couldn't have been a less important thing to me at that time. And I was driving down the road, and I heard the radio station go dead on air. And my manager had to obviously reprimand me about this, and she did it in such an incredible way because she knew it's like the criminal sin for radio broadcasters. So she would have known I already was beating myself up about it, and and we had to address what happened in this incident. We couldn't pretend it didn't happen.
Simone:
14:26
The radio station went off air. And she just she said to me, look, Simone, you know, this has happened. The engineers managed to get in remotely, put the station on air, but this just cannot happen again. She didn't get personal. She didn't say you.
Simone:
14:41
She didn't say she just said it can't happen again. And sometimes that feedback has to be given, k? Without positivity in the front of it. Something went wrong that needs to be acknowledged within an organization. And then, of course, you have to acknowledge what the weaknesses are and then make constructive recommendation for what can be done, better in the future.
Helen:
15:06
Yeah. And there's so much good stuff in what you just said there. I think the structure's really, really helpful. So you kind of, you know, assess the the mindset. Is is the person in the right space?
Helen:
15:14
Particularly, because we often
Simone:
15:15
go from meeting to meeting,
Helen:
15:16
don't we? That's a really good point. Like, a bit of space before these conversations. The mode, like, where are we having it? How are we having it?
Helen:
15:23
And then the the the showing the vulnerability as a kinda gateway into that. Yeah. As a connector. Exactly that. And then the point that I really, really loved is, you know, the whole clear is kinds?
Helen:
15:33
There will be difficult messages that someone has to deliver. And rather than do the praise sandwich where that will get entirely lost and feel a bit manipulative, sometimes you have to say the hard thing. And that isn't every feedback conversation, but it will be some feedback conversations. And it sounds like she, you know, she
Simone:
15:49
did it really clearly. You had. Beautifully.
Helen:
15:52
Yeah. It's a really important way of doing it. Thank you. Thank you for giving us that structure.
Simone:
15:55
That was my vulnerability of my horrible I mean, my horrible story of, yes.
Helen:
16:01
Well, we can all learn from it. So it's it's gone somewhere and helped people. So what if I have had some really hard to hear feedback? So I'm I'm in the moment. You have given me some feedback.
Helen:
16:12
Maybe I wasn't expecting it or maybe oh, I know this in myself, but it's just been hard to hear it come from you. You're my manager. And my emotions are going all over the place. What what do I do in that situation?
Simone:
16:25
A lot of the relationship experts, not just for at work, really, advise for a circuit breaker. So if you are in such a state of high hyperarousal, like, you are so fight or flight you cannot think all you have is being flooded by feelings, it is actually not in the manager's interest for you to continue to sit there because you're not absorbing anything they're saying. And I think you can advocate for yourself and just say, I'm feeling a lot of emotional charge right now. Would you mind if I take some time to process what's just been said? I'm not dismissing what's been said, but I just need a moment because there will be tough feedback.
Simone:
17:10
There of course, there's gonna be tough feedback in in life, not just at work. And the body has this response. It's in everyone's best interest that the information is absorbed. So absorption before just sitting through it and gritting the teeth through it, and it's it's just gonna be either thrown out the window. What's gonna happen?
Simone:
17:32
You're gonna hold on to the couple of negative things that you heard before you went into full on fight or flight mode. You'll internalize it, and then you'll just be disengaged, and you'll probably end up just leaving the organization. So I think taking a break is a really great idea.
Helen:
17:48
Sort of wish I'd known that before I'd had some of those conversations in my career where I probably got really defensive or just really upset visibly in front of somebody and probably stopped listening. I like that. You know, advocate for yourself and say, I loved your point there as well about, I'm not dismissing what you've got to say. I'm just finding it a bit hard to process at the moment. Like, that what a powerful statement for people to take away in inevitable hard feedback moments that will happen.
Simone:
18:13
Yes.
Helen:
18:13
I'm thinking about when feedback happens at work, sometimes it's gonna happen in person because we happen to be in the office together. And then and and you can Yeah. And and I would imagine for lots of people listening, a lot of the time, this is gonna be virtual. So is this a is this a camera on always situation so we can have the mirror neurons? Or actually, sometimes for connection, is it is it okay to have a camera off conversation about feedback?
Simone:
18:36
So what we know from a study that came out just after the pandemic and the mass adoption of, video conferencing, the the respondents in the survey in this said that, actually, the old school phone call was less stressful for them than having to be tethered to, and this is not specifically for feedback, this is for communication general, was less stressful, less arousing for them than having to be seated and locked into sitting at the desk. So with what we know about the green spaces as well, if you're receiving that and you opt for it as a phone call, you can actually be walking in nature while receiving this, which I think would be very helpful provided it's a quiet park and not like a busy street where cars are coming at you. I think one thing that we can really do on video to help if you're giving video on feedback, of course, we all know about the eye contact. Right? When you're delivering that feedback, the eyes to the camera simulate what we would have in person as the eye contact to the recipient.
Simone:
19:38
So if you're giving hard feedback to someone, please look into your camera even though it feels really odd so you can see your eyes. One thing that diminishes trust in these situations is having your virtual communication cut too tight with your arms out. So, yeah, this is fascinating. You should do. Yeah.
Simone:
19:55
This is really fascinating. So the first thing we do when we meet a stranger, and it happens subconsciously, we don't even notice it, is we don't look at their eyes or their mouth or their face. We glance at their hands. Because when we're evolving, if we had met somebody, a stranger from another tribe, their hands could have had something that could have killed us. So you cropping your arms out of a virtual conference, like, out of your frame, is the digital body language equivalent of doing a whole keynote with your arms behind your back?
Simone:
20:24
So you we wanna be giving as much trust in difficult conversations as possible. So they would be my tips for using virtual to deliver this kind of stuff. Tips.
Helen:
20:33
I think there there are things that and I suppose that's the point here, isn't there? So much that we miss that can affect how this communication of information is is is relayed. So I would imagine a scenario for lots of people listening and myself is that at a point in time in their career, they've had some hard feedback from somebody. And that could have been quite a few years ago, but that feedback still stays it stays with them today, and it is affecting how they show up in certain situations or how they contribute to conversations or what they're doing in their career, and they can't they can't let it go. For that person who's struggling to draw a line between feedback in the past and what they're doing in the present, what would your advice be?
Simone:
21:17
I firstly would love them to think, was it feedback or was it criticism? Ask the question, why why has this wounded me? Why is this still staying with me? Now if you're below 25, which is 25 is when the prefrontal cortex really kind of locks in, there's a lot of feedback we get in those early stages earlier stages of our career that can really wound us. But if you are older than that and that it's kind of festering and you're changing your identity based on that piece of feedback, this is really where the human connection piece comes in.
Simone:
21:50
So I think what really helps is if people look around them at what I call their intimate connections. This is a group of 5 people, that you can truly be vulnerable with, and you can call them in a crisis, and they love you warts and all. These are the people which you could go to to confide about this wounding piece of feedback. We need these people. 1 in 3 Americans say they don't have people they can confide in, so we're in a bit of a crisis.
Simone:
22:18
But it's normally one of these 5 human connections or a multiple of them that you could go to with a secret like this because, for example, in Asia, a very wounding bit of negative feedback would be sometimes considered a secret because it's a loss of face to disclose to people. So go please go to people that you trust. Tell them about what happened. See what they think. They may may rec make recommendations for you to go to a career counselor or even if you're in therapy and talk about it.
Simone:
22:48
Because if it's a piece of feedback that maybe wasn't you thought was it was framed to you as feedback, but actually it was really negative or toxic criticism, and you've been changing your identity to not be this thing, to avoid being this thing that was said to you, you're actually changing how you interact with everyone. You're putting yourself out of alignment, essentially, because of one thing that was said to you, and that can change your life in a not so great way. So I definitely think if it's something you're harboring for a long time, please talk to someone that you trust.
Helen:
23:25
Uh-huh. And that's really important advice for people to hear. So we've covered so much, I think, in this conversation that will be helpful for people from the psychology of feedback and actually why it might feel hard and some tips and tools for how we can ask and give and then be more open to receive it in a way that helps us to learn. If we were to pull all that together into 3 top tips to help people use their feedback to power
Simone:
23:49
up their performance, what would those tips be? So number 1, ask yourself before giving feedback if you're the right person to give that feedback. Sometimes things get emotionally charged in the office. You wanna jump you wanna tell people what you think. Just take a deep breath and a back seat.
Simone:
24:07
Am I the best or most appropriate person to give this specific person this bit of feedback? The second thing is always, before you open your mouth, think, I'm aiming to make this personal project better versus pointing out just what's wrong. And that would change your wording and how you frame the conversation. And the third thing is be a human. Like, remember that before you are any of these labels that we get from working in an organisation or that the world puts on us, we're a human being, and so is the other person.
Simone:
24:44
So try and connect on that deeply human level, Bring yourself closer together, and the conversation will go much better.
Helen:
24:51
Thank you, Simone. I think there's such a lot of empathy that you shared in the context of something that can be very hard to give and receive and process. And so I I I really like your approach. It feels like, oh, this is something that can help me, which is exactly, I think, exactly what we want this feedback to be. So one thing that we do before we let our guests go is we ask them for their insights and advice on our next topic for our episodes.
Helen:
25:12
So the next episode is going to be on goals. Would love to know from you what what's a goal that you've achieved that you're really proud of? And was there anything that you learned in the process of achieving that goal that could be useful for our listeners to hear?
Simone:
25:27
Yes. I have to say it's that from Singapore, I was able to get this international book deal because I self published this book. And then I just had this thought, like, wouldn't it be fun if this book was discovered? And it's already been written, and then I'd have to write it again, and it gets then it gets global distribution, and it and it happened, but then I discovered after that that, wow, the publishing industry is just like banking or speaking, and and now I've entered this new world where there's all these new rules and new bureaucracy, and, and so the lesson there is that any goal you have before you achieve it looks so differently from once you've achieved it. And the human condition is that we never sit at the table of success for too long anyway, so never beat yourself up about thinking, oh, now I want the next goal because we're actually wired the science shows to be like that.
Helen:
26:17
Okay. Okay. Got it. So don't don't you beat yourself up like goals.
Simone:
26:19
So many people do that like, oh, will I ever be happy? And I keep chasing them. It's like, honey, that's part of the wiring. Don't beat yourself up. It's part of it.
Helen:
26:27
Well, we'll go deeper on goals in our next episode, but I just wanna say thank you so much for sharing all your insights with us today.
