In this episode, Chip speaks with Ken Jacobs, principal of Jacobs Consulting and Executive Coaching, about providing constructive feedback to team members.

They discuss the importance of leadership coaching in the PR and communication space and the challenges of becoming a good leader without formal training. Ken emphasizes the necessity of providing constructive feedback that builds trust and respect, as well as the importance of listening and asking open-ended questions.

Chip and Ken also highlight the continuous process of coaching and the significance of maintaining open communication with team members to encourage their growth and success.

Ken Jacobs, PCC, CPC, ELI-MP, an experienced consultant and certified coach, is the principal of Jacobs Consulting & Executive Coaching, which serves agencies, companies, senior leaders, executives and managers in the public relations, corporate communications, integrated communications, advertising, and marketing space.

Since 2007, he has helped agencies grow and manage business, improve client service and relationships, and enhance staff performance, communications, and leadership skills, while empowering communications CEOs, presidents, leaders, and senior managers to achieve and surpass their goals.

Jacobs holds Professional Certified Coach (PCC) credentials from the International Coach Federation (ICF), and is accredited as a Certified Professional Coach (CPC), Energy Leadership Index (ELI) Master Practitioner and a COR.E Leadership Dynamics Specialist by the Institute for Professional Excellence in Coaching (iPEC).

The following is a computer-generated transcript. Please listen to the audio to confirm accuracy.

Chip Griffin: Hello and welcome to another episode of the Chats with Chip podcast. I’m your host, Chip Griffin, the founder of SAGA, the Small Agency Growth Alliance, and I’m delighted to have with me one of my most regular guests, Ken Jacobs. Welcome to the show, Ken.

Ken Jacobs: It is so nice to be back. Thank you for having me, Chip.

Chip Griffin: It is nice to have you. We have a very important topic on tap. We’re gonna be talking about providing constructive feedback to team members. But before we do that, before we dive into that topic, why don’t you share a little bit about yourself with anyone who might be listening who hasn’t heard you on one of my shows previously.

Ken Jacobs: Sure. There might be a few. So, I’m Ken Jacobs. I am the principal of Jacobs Consulting and Executive Coaching. So from that you can guess some of the things we do. We offer leadership coaching as well as consulting in a few areas, primarily to those in the PR and communication space. Primarily but not limited to those on the agency side, but we, we have some clients that fit, you know, outside of that.

So coaching, consulting, and training. Every year there is more coaching, which is great because it’s very fulfilling. And I like to say we help leaders who are willing to do the heavy lifting to be more effective, inspired, and inspiring leaders to achieve their organizational goals, personal goals, career goals, and to become the leaders of their dreams and, and that their followers and their peers and their partners and their bosses and their clients need them to be.

Chip Griffin: That’s great. And, and the work that you do is so important because so many folks in the the agency world, they end up in leadership positions, but without any formal leadership or management or executive training really of any kind. And this is true for owners as well as employees. And so getting that foundational knowledge, getting that guidance and mentorship that folks like you can provide, I think really is, is important and it’s, it’s key to what we’re gonna be discussing today because, in order to be a good leader or manager, you have to be able to interact with your team to help them get the most out of themselves and therefore the most for the organization.

Ken Jacobs: Yeah, I, I agree. You know, we do… You know, I, and I was a PR agency veteran for many years before launching this business. And I will tell you that in agency business, but in a lot of fields and a lot of areas, we promote people into people leadership because they’re, they’re good at the thing, right? They go from being student to practitioner, to even supervisor, maybe to manager.

 And then we promote them into leadership. Maybe they’re great with biz dev, growing new business, which is important. Maybe they’re great with clients. But that doesn’t mean that they’re gonna have inspired followers who make the choice to follow them. And, and leadership is a two part choice. Your conscious decision to lead. And their conscious decision to follow you. And just because you see people you know on an org chart in your office or on Zoom, it doesn’t mean they’re following you. So that’s, that’s a very different kind of choice that both of you need to make.

Chip Griffin: Absolutely. And, and I think part of the challenge too is that, that because our bosses often didn’t get this kind of training and support, we are modeling the behavior typically of those, you know, who oversaw us, but it may not be the right behavior that we’re modeling. And so, you know, sometimes you need to have those, those gentle nudges, those course corrections. And so folks who are open to receiving that kind of advice, and, and that kind of coaching from someone like you can be very helpful. And I, and I think this particular piece that we’re gonna focus on today is, is one of the most challenging for a lot of folks, particularly for high performers, trying to get additional performance out of their team.

When you start thinking about providing constructive feedback. It can be really frustrating for the high performers who, as you say, they get promoted not because they have management skills, but because they were good at what they did. They simply tend to expect that other people can perform as well as fast as they do, and so finding a way to be constructive in your feedback to help them get to that same level or close to it is very difficult.

Ken Jacobs: Well, it can be. I think that, you know, part of the challenge is knowing everybody’s on a different journey. Everybody with a different speed and what, you know, your leader led you. They didn’t just manage you, they led you, right? And so the tools and techniques that leader might have used review and all that…

Well, my, my boss didn’t have to manage me at all. Well, it’s like, let me talk to your boss Because I’m sure they led you and it was by design and they were very good at it. And if you didn’t realize it so much, the better. Right? But, but what you needed from your boss might be quite different from what your people need from you.

And if you’re leading three people, what person A needs might be different than what person B needs and might be different than what person C needs. Now you’re, you’re gonna show up with your core leadership style, but truly effective leaders are willing to customize or modify that style, whether I’m leading Chip or Gini or, or someone else.

Chip Griffin: And, and I think that tailoring is vital. Even more so today than maybe it was 30 or 40 years ago, I think it was still important then, but I, but I think the, the culture has become such that employees and team members are much more willing to be vocal about their desire to be managed differently and to learn differently.

And so it, it behooves us as leaders, as managers to help tailor each program based on, on what will be most effective for that individual. Because otherwise we might be tailoring it for what, what would’ve worked for us when we were in that same spot. But we all are different. I mean, some of us, you know, can, can learn by watching. Some of us learn through formal training.

Some of us, you know, do better when you’re just blunt with us and just say, this is what you need to do differently. Other people need to, to think it was their own idea. There’s all sorts of different permutations here that you need to, to explore and, and really get to understand with all of your team members.

Ken Jacobs: And I, I think this, this leads something you just said to, to one of the definitions of, of I think really effective leaders. Really effective leaders are humble, so they understand that what worked for them is irrelevant. And they understand that it takes work to lead effectively and, and you know, anyone who watches the podcast or or sees me speak or sees what I write, you know, they know that I’m a big believer in servant leadership. That you get to a point where you say, it’s no longer about just my success.

That’s what got me where I am. But what’s gonna get me where I need to go and get the organization where it needs to go is how do I lead each person into their greatest success? Success they didn’t even know they could achieve. That to me is today is all one of the hallmarks of great leadership.

Chip Griffin: So let’s assume someone’s listening to this and, and they accept the premise that we’ve now established because, because if not, you might as well tune out. Because I’m not sure the rest of it’s gonna be all that effective for you. Yeah, yeah. But, assuming that you’ve listened this far and, and can agree with the premise. If, if you’ve got team members where you want to provide them feedback, how should you be in general thinking about it?

Understanding it needs to be tailored for each individual. Yeah. But, but what are some general pieces of advice that you would offer folks in order to be constructive in their feedback?

Ken Jacobs: Yeah. Well, I’m glad you used that term because so many people think about it as constructive critique or constructive criticism.

And in my experience and in talking to leaders and in those who, who they give feedback to, unfortunately the leaders go so quickly from constructive to critique. And that’s kind of where they live and that’s where they stay. And I always say to them, well, what does that do to your person’s desire, your follower’s desire to stay in the room, to listen to what you have to say and start to either change their work output or their behavior.

And if you are feeling critiqued… You know, you’re, you’re, you’re not gonna be listening. You’ve shut them down. What’s the point of that? So that’s why I encourage them. And I, and again, I’m glad you used this term to think about constructive feedback, because to me there’s a big difference between constructive critique.

Constructive feedback is feedback that constructs, that builds. What does it build? It builds trust. It builds respect, it builds the relationship, and it builds their desire to stay in the room. Listen to your wisdom. Let’s hope and improve. So the number one thought is give up constructive critique. Don’t call it that.

Don’t think about that, but call it constructive feedback. And look at the session and many sessions, not just as a chance to discuss the work output or behavior, but a chance to build something. That is much bigger and much deeper and it requires you to get better at it. So that, that’s, that’s one thought.

Another is to acknowledge that your mindset is contagious. Your mindset is contagious. Your energy is contagious. So if where you are living when the session’s about to start are, all the things Chip does wrong, just stop there. That’s setting the wrong tone for the discussion. Because you’re dealing with an entire person.

So if Chip, and I’m gonna call on Chip, not Gini… beat beat beat because I just made her laugh if she’s listening. But we’re, we’re gonna use you as the test case. But, but you know, you bring an entire person to the workplace. If I’m only focused on that release wasn’t written well, or God, he just doesn’t get the, the, you know, active voice versus passive voice or, my God, Chip just never gets that critical third client message in there.

That’s not where I want to live. I want to be thinking about Chip in the totality and then start to think about now there are some things where I can help him succeed more. And one of them might be writing, okay, that’s what today’s session is gonna be about. But, but my entire mindset, my entire energy is I’m fortunate to have Chip on the team.

And he’s doing well in many areas. Now, let now let’s work on a few others. I think you can sense that that shift is gonna have Chip or anyone much more open to what we might discuss. So that’s sort of number one.

Number two, consistently communicate respect. Consistently communicate respect. People must feel respected to listen to your wisdom, your feedback, whatever you want to call it.

And I think it can be challenging to communicate respect when we feel, oh my God, I told Chip this three times already. Yeah, well maybe the problem is how you presented it, but you know, or Wow, what he said at that client meeting was so inappropriate. When the work is really not where it should be and when the behavior is egregious, you know, that’s when you really must consistently communicate respect.So that Chip will stay in the room with me.

Third point I’ll make here, and then we’ll maybe shift it back to you, is that we think these discussions should be me talking 90% and the person’s gonna be listening and no. Change that ratio. You need to under, I need to understand where is Chip coming from.

Does he understand he got it wrong? Does he understand he keeps repeating the same? I mean, I, I need to know where Chip is and how can I know that if I’m talking, I can’t. So focus on listening. Have a ratio of maybe 40 talking, 60 listening. Ask a lot of questions. Because when I tell Chip something, I’m not learning anything.

So this change in listening style: to question, listen deeply, question again, listen deeply and then decide what you want to share. But I, we need to encourage response from the people we’re sharing this feedback with.

Chip Griffin: Yeah, I mean, I think that that last point is perhaps the most important. It will help you in a lot of different elements of what you’re doing, not just in providing feedback to team members, but the more listening that you do, the more effective you’ll be, frankly, in even things like business development.

But you know, one of the things, high performers have a tendency to like to talk. Maybe not as much as I like to talk. But they still like to talk. And, and so, you know, and there is this, this impulse to dump out everything that, you know, when you’re trying to, in your mind, help someone to up their game or change their behavior or what have you.

But the reality is that you need to be willing to sit back and listen. But more importantly, I, I think it’s to try to invite the individual to share their perspectives because you might not be entirely correct in the feedback. Yeah. That, that you want to give. Now, there are some, there are times where it is egregious and blatant and you, and, and obviously it needs to be handled, but sometimes there may be differing opinions and, and you want to hear from that team member both what they think worked and didn’t in a particular situation or a particular piece of content or what have you.

And I always like to, to ask individuals, how would you do it differently next time, given the opportunity? Because my experience is a lot of times, they already know what needs to be done. And so I don’t need to sit there and keep talking and beat them over the head with it. Because they know. Yeah, and, and if you allow them to do that, it improves their confidence, but it also means that they’re then buying into the solution as opposed to being force fed something in their mind, even if they would’ve gotten to the same place on their own.

Ken Jacobs: Well, here’s the thing, you know, we start these conversations generally with so much talking. And you want to first find out, as I said, where they are. If I sit down with Chip, let’s talk about the last release. And Chip says, I know it wasn’t in the active voice, that the, the quote was too over the top. I used the phrase, I’m excited to, you know, the client’s excited to launch, which we don’t want to say I buried the lead, or whatever it is.

It’s like, oh, they, they, they know what they got wrong. Great. So what are you going to, what’s your plan for next time? And they say, well, I’m gonna have someone else proof it. I’m gonna have a checklist of things that I know are my watch outs to get it right. Da da da. I’m gonna go through and count. Did I include all three client men?

You know, your people can course correct and by them saying it, you can say very little. They may re, they may surprise you with how much they know they got wrong and more importantly, their plan to get it right the next time. Now, you might, they might be aware of what they got wrong, but when you say, what’s your plan to improve?

They go, I don’t know. I keep hitting a wall. I, okay, what are some of your options? Which kind of segues into the next section and maybe it should have been the first. I don’t know.

Chip Griffin: So before we do that though, I want to build, I want to build on that one particular area. Yeah. Because I, I think, you know, the other thing that we need to do is we need to accept that we may have had some responsibility in the outcome ourselves.

And so, you know, one of the things that, that I will frequently ask is, what could I have done differently? Not what you could have done differently. Mm-hmm. But, you know, mm-hmm. Because sometimes it’s, I didn’t give you enough time to do it. I didn’t give you the resources that you needed. I didn’t give you enough guidance about what the client was looking for or what my expectations were.

So we need to understand that, that when our employees don’t succeed to our expectations, sometimes, not always, but sometimes it has to do with something that we did as a precursor to it. And, and the more we accept that. And invite that into the conversation, the more we typically can help.

Ken Jacobs: Well, there’s that humility we talked about.

There’s that servant leadership. And I tell leaders, what do you do if you’re not getting the outcomes you want? Like, what’s the best tool? And my answer is a mirror. Look at yourself. How could I, and not even, what should I have done last time? I’m not a big believer in beating ourselves up over what we did wrong.

Because I always say all my clients, all my associates, all my influencers, if you will, the people who recommend me, they’re very smart people, I’m fortunate to say. But the one thing you know, they’re not time travelers. They can’t go back in time, either. The person can’t go back in time, you can’t go back in time.

So I encourage people just to focus on the what do I do next time? Yep. Because it takes that sort of self-loathing.

That’s right. That’s right. Learn from the past, but don’t relive it.

outta it. Right? Yeah. Yep. But, but, but a very important point related to the ratio of, of speaking versus listening is, is the power of an open-ended question.

If I tell Chip, Chip, you know, here’s something you really ought to do, Chip might write it down. He might be nodding his head and that’s great and I feel like I’m getting buy-in, but do I really? Possibly or probably not because. I haven’t lit up the part of the brain, which is the front, you know, that’s the part of the brain where things like passion, executive function, creativity, action, collaboration, and memory live. Okay, the front of the brain. Passion, action, creativity, executive function. Collaboration. Did I say passion and memory? That was seven. That time my, my memory’s working so well. So obviously I want to light that up if I want Chip to embrace change. Telling him does not light up that part of the brain. It is only by asking open-ended, empowering questions to which there it’s not a yes or a no answer. That’s how we light up that part of the brain. And now Chip is really using his brain power to figure out what he wants to do next. So, you know, ask, don’t tell is so powerful.

It shouldn’t come in my view. If you want change. It doesn’t come from your brain and your mouth. You’ve gotta figure out how do I get it to come from the other person’s brain and mouth? And in that open-ended, empowering questions are your best friend. And this has been backed up with MRI studies. MRI studies looking at the activity in the front of the brain when, so we, you know, we put Chip in the MRI, I’m the MRI technician.

Chip, here’s three things you gotta do next time. Alright, we’ll get a little bit of activity, but if I say, Chip, what are you, what are you gonna do next time? And we start to get Chip going and we say, Chip, why is this important to you? Oh, we’re gonna see activity. Then Chip, how will it feel if you can get your work to that place?

And it’s uh, I always say misquoting Miss Alicia Keys. This guy’s brain is on fire. And I, I attended a webinar, a coaching webinar by one of the many research scientists who talked about the MRI Studies, showed us the, the, the slides of the MRI and just seeing that visual activity. In front of the listener’s brain.

It’s really powerful. And here’s a little, you can use it in leadership, you can use it in coaching. I mean, the best leaders are coaches, aren’t they?

Chip Griffin: Absolutely. I mean, you know, I often explain to, to new managers that your job is not to assign tasks and hold people accountable and sort of all the classic comic strip management things that, that you see.

But it really is to be a coach, a mentor, an advisor. To your team members, and, and I often equate it to being like, in, in American football being a blocking back, your goal is to clear a path for your team members to have as much success as possible. It’s not to, to, you know, have them serve you in that process.

And I, I think that the open-ended questions and really getting your team members to communicate with you. Is a really effective approach, but I think a precursor to that is you’ve got to have ongoing quality communication with your team members. It can’t be simply when you’re looking to try to, to provide feedback or solve a challenge.

But that’s a, it’s a mistake, particularly in busy agencies that often happens where we don’t make the time to have these conversations with team members on a regular basis like we ought to be doing so that they feel comfortable opening up to you when you ask that open-ended question. Because if they view you as the scary boss and you ask an open-ended question, they’re gonna kind of turtle up and and not want to say anything because they’re not sure how you’re gonna accept it.

Ken Jacobs: Yeah. Well here’s the thing. You know when that happens, silence is your friend. Silence is your friend. And so if you’ve experienced that for any reason and they say, I don’t know. So, well, I think you could figure this out. Let’s just sit for a minute, let that silence work to say, I’m not answering it for you.

I’m gonna fight the urge. And, you know, it builds the leader’s ego a bit to solve the problem. But that’s not really leadership, is it? That’s not really getting people to grow to their greatest potential. So it, you know that this approach of asking, not telling takes discipline. But it’s also easier. It takes the pressure off because you don’t have to have the answers for everything, right?

You just need the questions. So you know, why is that important to you? What’s the worst that can happen? What are you two best choice? I mean, there’s all those que, if you are just intellectually curious, you are gonna have the questions. And so again, we don’t get that ego rush of, I solved it again. But you’re getting something far more powerful, which is helping that other person build their problem solving muscle.

And yes, I get it. The brain is not a muscle. I understand. We don’t have to send letters, but, you know, but, but that to me is one of the gifts of coaching when you help someone figure it out. And if you help them figure it out by coaching, by open-ended questions, you’ve given them this, this just enormous gift.

And that’s why, you know, coaching can be so fulfilling. And that’s why truly effective leading, I think, is so fulfilling because you’re helping people, you know, again, do things they didn’t know they could do that. Kim Sample’s, one of my favorite leadership experts, the head of the PR Council, and her quote is something like, I’ll mangle it a bit, but you know, it’s something like, truly effective leaders help teams and individuals do things they did not know they could do.

Just imagine, you know, how exciting that is. And, and again, it’s less pressure than your having all the answers.

Chip Griffin: So before we wrap up, I, I want to address one of the questions that I sometimes get from clients, which is, okay, Ken. Okay, Chip. You know, I, I buy into every, I buy into the premise that you sold.

I buy into the approach that you’ve suggested. But what happens when I get that, that team member and I get to this point, and they either, I can’t get them to buy in on what, what they need to work on. I can’t get them to buy in into a solution that I think will actually work. I mean, how do I deal with those?

Yeah. Yeah. Those recalcitrant edge cases where the, the, the employees, they’re still good. They, I’m, I’m not sitting here saying that they are not, they’re not worth keeping around. It’s not one of those, but, but they’re not quite seeing the light.

Ken Jacobs: Yeah. How do I do that? Yeah, so I think it goes back to something we said earlier, which is to look within and say, am I really asking?

Not telling. Am I really giving them the opportunity to engage their brain and figure it out, right? Am I fighting the urge? Because in most cases, I, you know, it starts with a question and they immediately go into, tell. No, don’t do that. You know, trust the process, it works. Stay with it. So that, that’s sort of thought one.

 Thought two is there are times that if they figured it out and you’re not sure it’ll work. You know, look, it’s, it’s, it’s PR, not ER, for the most part, it’s, we’re not doing brain surgery and for most of us, we have the space that let them try it their way. It might actually work, and many of us are not, you know, humble enough to accept that, you know, try it, let them try it their way.

They then come back, they tried it their way. Because you know they have buy-in. If they came up with it, at least they have buy. You know what’s better: trying it their way with buy-in or not quite trying it your way. Because they didn’t really have buy-in, right? So let them try it their way. Ask them what worked, ask them what gaps remain.

Ask them, well how might you figure that out? Shall we brainstorm some other ideas? So you’re still engaging them in that process. Sometimes it takes a second round, but being, I think being true to the process will work. And then, you know, sometimes, very good is good enough. Some people may not have the capacity to get to excellent, but if you can take them from average or they take themselves, let me be true to what I’m saying, if they take themselves from average to consistently very good, from good to consistently very good.

That’s a matter of your perspective of not worrying about the gap between very good and excellent and saying, well, you know, what can we achieve here if all my people were consistently very good? It’s very good. It’s pretty good.

Chip Griffin: That’s right, that’s right. You know, those are all great points, and I love that you describe it as a process because it really is, and, and I would simply add the modifier.

It’s an ongoing process. Oh, yeah. And, and so we, even when we, we provide feedback, we get them to buy into the, you know, what the challenge is and a, and a good solution that they’ve come up with. It’s still gonna take time. These are not overnight things and they will still repeat some similar mistakes in the future.

And, and so we need to accept that and just keep working on it. Keep working on it. Just like we work on ourselves.

Ken Jacobs: Yeah. Well I think it’s the classic three steps forward, one, maybe one step back, five steps forward, two steps back when we are trying to drive change individual or you know, organization wide.

Let’s accept that that process happens and be prepared for it. As a leader and a coach, be prepared. They’re gonna miss the mark a little, and then you get, again, ask a question, get them talking. Let’s talk about your work the last month versus the previous three. What are, what are you, you know, ask people how their performance is.

You might, you might be surprised at the honesty. You know, with which they’ll respond and it is far more effective than you are saying, you know, I think you’re a C. Right? You know, if they say. Well, I think I’m a B minus. Well, what do you want to be? I want to be an A. Okay. Let’s talk about that.

Chip Griffin: Right.

And, and maybe that’s a topic for another show. We can talk about the, the pros and cons of rating employees, which spoiler alert I, I think is ridiculous process. Okay. But, but anyway.

Ken Jacobs: Worth a discussion.

Chip Griffin: For folks who might want to gather more of your insights or talk to you about your expertise and how you might be able to help, where should they go, Ken?

Ken Jacobs: Yeah, two places. I’m on LinkedIn. I’m the only Ken Jacobs as far as I know, with a set of initials after my name, so that will help you find me. Or you can go to the website www.jacobscomm.com or email me [email protected] and tell me that you heard this conversation with Chip.

Chip Griffin: Excellent. And we’ll include all of those things in the show notes. So if you’re listening to us on the treadmill or in the car, no need to fall off or crash or any of those kinds of things. They’ll be, they’ll be right there for you when this is all said and done. And you’ll have nice, convenient access.

So, Ken, I’ve really appreciated this conversation and the time that you’ve taken to spend with me and my listeners, and I’m already looking forward to the next opportunity we have to talk again. So. For now, I’m gonna sign off and thank you all for listening to us and I hope that we’ve given you some useful advice in the constructive feedback that you’ll be providing to your team members in the future.