For years Peter McLaughlin has taken his business clients to sports practices -- not to watch the teams. but to watch, listen, and learn from the coaches giving feedback to their players. As Peter says in the book:
"There's energy in the air and every bit is freighted with feedback. Feedback is constant and continuous, Feedback is the norm. Feedback is the environment."
That's just one of the many important messages in Peter Mclaughlin's Feedback Revolution. Peter draws upon real-world examples of effective feedback: sports, the habits of great leaders, and, surprisingly, Reality TV. (If you think about it, the best reality TV shows are built on platforms of performance followed by feedback. Ratings go through the roof -- and everyone but businesses and organizations are paying attention.)
Changing that lack of attention to feedback into an enthusiasm for effective, candid, timely, positive feedback is why Peter has written this book.
With more than twenty years of consulting and giving keynote speeches to every kind of company from Apple to Polo/Ralph Lauren, from IBM and Deloitte Consulting to Insurance and Financial Services firms, Peter knows first-hand that feedback up and down the management chain is the "Elephant in the room" of corporate culture.
The revolution of the title is the change of mindset about feedback from negative, narrow and fearful to positive, broadening and motivating; from anxiety and stress to anticipation and optimism.
Drawing upon business experience, as well as deep study in fields including neuroscience and Positive Psychology, generational and media studies and more, Peter has created a thorough handbook for revolutionizing your approach to giving and receiving feedback, and dramatically energizing your business teams as you do.
Among the book's topics:
• A Feedback Self-Assessment -- how well do you do when it comes to giving and receiving feedback?
• Hundreds of practical, hands-on and ready-to-be-used pieces of advice: every chapter includes a section called Tips, Tools, & Tactics which are exactly what they sound like.
• How to make feedback a constant presence, because unlike fine wine, feedback doesn't age well. Lessons in how to give and receive "feedback on the fly" as well as in more formal feedback and performance review sessions.
• A breakthrough chapter examining the differences in how feedback is given and received by different generations: crucial knowledge for today's multi-generational workplace.
• As the chapter on how to ask for feedback shows, "How'm I doing?" may be the most important question a manager can ask!
• The role of technology: how giving feedback by email needs a different approach than feedback delivered in person or by phone. ("The Gettysburg Address made a great speech, but would have been a lousy email.")
• Lessons in how to ensure that the giver of feedback is in a positive emotional state even when the feedback includes negatives. "Always put on your own oxygen mask first." (Get into the right emotional state before trying to help others.)
• The role of environment in feedback -- from feng shui to blood sugar levels, Feedback Revolution shows you how to achieve maximum impact with your feedback.
• Overcoming feedback anxiety: how transforming your approach to feedback will also transform annual performance reviews from anxiety-producing obligations into lively and welcomed examinations of where your business and your team are headed, as well as where you have been.
As Tom Peters says "feedback is not for amateurs...it is a skill to be studied, practiced and mastered."
Feedback Revolution is the essential guide to the most necessary, and the most overlooked or avoided, aspect of business communications today.
