Respond to Two (2) W5D1 Wald

If delivered effectively, feedback centers on specific recommendations for future improvement and growth. If delivered ineffectively, it focuses only on what was done wrong, with no specific path provided toward a better outcome. Goldsmith (2002) provides an alternative approach labeled “feedforward.” It shares a future orientation with effective feedback but differs from feedback in that the coachee identifies the areas for improvement and asks for ideas from others about how to change the behavior.

In this Discussion, you will initiate your own feedforward experience with your peers and practice providing specific recommendations based on their feedforward requests.

To prepare for this Discussion:

· Reflect upon your own professional life, in particular, how you relate to and/or manage others in professional contexts.

· Identify one or more behaviors you would want to improve as you work with and manage others.

· In preparation for responding to your colleagues, consider how feedforward can help you and others improve their management practices.

· What feedback looks like – see pdf

· 13 ways to justify feedback – see pdf

· To coach Junior Employees – See pdf

Assignment:

Respond to two or more colleagues, preferably ones that have yet to receive a response, in the following way:

· Propose two suggestions on something your colleague can do in the future to positively change the behavior they identified.

· Provide a rationale for your suggestions based on your experience and the Learning Resources for the week.

· 3 – 4 paragraphs

· No plagiarism

· APA citing

1st Colleague – Natasha Mills

Natasha Mills 

Feedforward for Growth

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My professional life has often been characterized by a rise through the ranks faster than other people I have worked with. I mostly attribute this aspect to my trait of being highly committed to any tasks and responsibilities I am assigned. Another characteristic that has helped me rise through the ranks and land managerial roles in the organizations I have worked for is my value for human capital and social relationships. As a highly committed person, I am always aware that I need other people to achieve goals. At the same time, I am an individual that people find easy to approach and talk to regarding work and personal issues. The emotional bonds resulting from such social relationships are known to elicit reciprocity of commitments that lead to new opportunities and efficiency (Felício et al., 2014).

Ever since I came to this realization, I have learned to maximize on people’s trust in me in professional contexts, such as accepting my role as the cohesive bond and using such opportunities to foster collaboration during projects. In simple terms, I have learned how to harness the social and human capital that I have built in my professional work into strategies that I use to improve organizational performance. For instance, the social and human capital that I have developed enables me to influence the complicity and social relations of those I lead. According to Felício et al. (2014), this ability triggers initiative and discovers opportunities that significantly impact the performance and competitiveness of an organization, which is a claim that I can attest to.

On the other hand, my commitment to tasks and responsibilities sometimes causes me to be competitive and controlling to those I manage. These are the behaviors that I would want to improve. Leaders have the potential to modify the behaviors of their employees, as well as their self-identity, through leadership traits and self-concept of group membership, and its subsequent emotional attachments (Chen et al, 2015). I have observed this phenomenon among those I lead by how they have become both committed and competitive when completing tasks. My followers’ self-identity is derived from that of the whole team, which derives its behavior from the leader, me. The competitiveness of the team members has its advantages. For instance, the team mostly completes projects before the set deadlines because the commitment and competitiveness of its members makes them very productive.

However, this competitiveness undermines collaboration in some instances. In such cases, each of the team members is always more focused on delivering on tasks that they forget to work together. This has made me realize that my competitiveness has its share of negative implications on the social intelligence of my team. Social intelligence is the ability to achieve the required objectives in a given social setting (Almatrooshi et al., 2016). Therefore, the inability of my team to collaborate in certain situations when collaboration is highly needed causes me to want to improve my competitive behavior. Consequently, my competitiveness makes me controlling at times, leading me to undermine the autonomy of my team members. This always acts as a setback because it obstructs ideas from the team members that could hasten projects and lead to their efficient completion.

Hence, I would want to improve my competitive and controlling behaviors as I work with and manage others. I believe that feedforward can significantly help me improve these behaviors and my overall management practices because it involves the suggestion of ideas about how to change such behavior as opposed to feedback, which only involves the identification of the behavior that needs change. This will be the same case with my colleagues who will also be relying on my feedforward to improve their management practices. The feedforward session will help each one of us get from where we currently are to where we want to be as leaders because these areas that need change as we have identified will contribute to our success, the success of the teams we lead, as well as the success of our organizations (Goldsmith, 2010). Nonetheless, it is important to add that the change we desire from the feedforward will require individual motivation and commitment to achieve.

Almatrooshi, B., Singh, S. K., & Farouk, S. (2016). Determinants of organizational performance: a proposed framework. International Journal of Productivity and Performance Management.

Chen, Z., Zhu, J., & Zhou, M. (2015). How does a servant leader fuel the service fire? A multilevel model of servant leadership, individual self identity, group competition climate, and customer service performance. Journal of applied psychology, 100(2), 511.

Felício, J. A., Couto, E., & Caiado, J. (2014). Human capital, social capital and organizational performance. Management Decision.

Goldsmith, M. (2010). Leadership coaching with feedforward. Leadership coaching: Working with leaders to develope elite performance, 177-187.

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2nd Colleague – N. Strauss 

Nicole Strauss 

RE: Discussion - Week 5

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Week 5 Discussion Post

One behavior that I would like to improve upon as a leader would be my reaction during stressful situations in the office.  At times, I have overwhelmed myself with all the issues surfacing at once and all needing my attention.  I do not raise my voice, but my tone changes and the people around me know that I am annoyed or frustrated.  I always prioritize the issues and handle them appropriately, delegating, when possible, for resolution. 

Overall  I would like to be a resource and leader for my team while remaining calm and intentional in my efforts.  I often feel like a firefighter needing to be reactionary to handle the issues in the heat of the moment.  I know that I must work to resolve this behavior to ensure that it will not be detrimental to my professional reputation. This reactionary behavior will negatively affect my work value as a leader in our organization and deflect from my knowledge and experience.  This behavioral issue could also affect my credibility as a leader of our team. 

My goal is to control my emotions during these stressful situations and be a valuable resource for my team and organization.  I value the point made by Connor (2019), regarding how to influence others by thinking of the issues from that person’s perspective.  If someone is coming to me with a challenge, I must remain calm and open to hearing what the person has to say.  I need to keep quiet and listen and ask open-ended questions to allow the person to come up with a possible solution on their own.  I could ask, “what do you think we should do to resolve this issue?” instead of providing the answer.   I could focus my attention on building their confidence to handle these issues on their own in the future.  I will also work to control my emotional reactions to stressful situations.

Reference:

Connor, J. (2019, September 9). To coach junior employees, start with 4 conversations. Harvard Business Review Digital Articles, 2–6. http://hbr.org

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