Tip No. 7 An Olympian Habit

03/10/08 09:56 Filed in: Coaching Tips
Take yourself back just a few weeks to the GB men's coxless four winning Olympic Gold yet again at Beijing - an amazing performance! Those of us that watched it will remember those last 250 meters for a long time.

I had the privilege the other day of meeting one of that team, Steve Williams, who was adding a second gold to the one he won in Athens in 2004.. He was alongside executive coach and colleague Simon Scott, as they gave a presentation on Steve's story and how this relates to coaching for tough times.

I was totally unaware of the challenges that this team had to overcome to win gold again... they had started to lose races after three years of winning easily and amongst other problems, each rower had back injuries in the preceding twelve months.

Clearly, there were may lessons to be learned for high performing teams and the leadership of those teams - their coach Jurgen Grobler has been coaching Olympic teams since 1972 and has never NOT had a Gold medal winning team! Of the many lessons presented one resounded with me as it is something close to my heart - that is the power of feedback...

The GB rowing team practise what they call 'positive critical feedback', i.e. for positive results they give critical feedback to the others in their reviews or 'wash-ups' as they call them. This is easier said than done. In asking many groups "how many people are really good at giving feedback in a positive constructive manner?" the answer is invariably 'very few'.

This fits in well with my last email coaching tip about 'contracting'. These team members really know each other and are all intensely committed to achieving the same goal. I would guess that they have certain permissions between each other - that they can talk to each other in ways that outsiders can't. They have contracts in place that allow this positive critical feedback to work.

It is NOT having a contract in place that makes giving and receiving feedback so difficult. Very few of us appreciate getting unsolicited feedback unless we have a well established relationship with the giver or we've wholeheartedly given them permission to give us feedback.

However, there is a simple habit we can adopt that can give us the benefit of feedback without the up front contracting - and that is when we do the asking, we give the others permission. We just have to be careful what we ask for!

I recommend a very simple phrase "What could I do to make it (even) better next time?"
or for a team "What could we do to make it (even) better next time?".

This question is simple, direct and unambiguous and gives permission, within a narrow band, to the person you're asking for feedback. You're asking them to tell you what you want to know - what could you do to make it better - not what you did wrong (which is, for some reason, what some people really want to tell you!)

Some people just want to be encouraging so just say it was great - that's why I put (even) in front of 'better'. Just because we're good at something , or better than our peers, it doesn't mean that we don't want to keep on improving.

I'm asked "how often should you use this?" I'm tempted to say "As often as you can" but that's not always appropriate. Myself and a colleague use this structure after the end of every section of out workshops, even the ones we've been running for months.

There are opportunities for feedback everywhere, practically every time you act - try it.

"What is that I could do to make it (even) better next time?"