A short while ago, staff at Authority Magazine posed this question to me – How can you give employees honest feedback without being hurtful? While that was the initial question, the interview posed several more questions, some about me, and several on other timely leadership and workplace issues. As a result, Penny Bauder from Authority Magazine published this article last week that not only shared my advice about how to give honest feedback, but also turned into a little bit of a profile on me! I am so honored and excited to be featured in this prominent publication!
Here are all the questions I tried to answer
Here are the questions I was asked. As you can see, it went beyond just “How do you give honest feedback?”
- Our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your ‘backstory’ and how you got started?
- What do you think makes your company stand out?
- Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you started your career?
- Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
- What advice would you give to other CEOs and business leaders to help their employees to thrive and avoid burnout?
- How do you define “Leadership”?
- As a busy leader, what do you do to prepare your mind and body before a stressful or high stakes meeting, talk, or decision?
- Can you briefly tell our readers about your experience with managing a team and giving feedback?
- This might seem intuitive but it will be constructive to spell it out. Can you share with us a few reasons why giving honest and direct feedback is essential to being an effective leader?
- One of the trickiest parts of managing a team is giving honest feedback, in a way that doesn’t come across as too harsh. Can you please share with us five suggestions about how to best give constructive criticism to a remote employee?
- Can you address how to give constructive feedback over email? How do you prevent the email from sounding too critical or harsh?
- In your experience, is there a best time to give feedback or critique?
- How would you define what it is to “be a great boss”?
- You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be
- Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
What do you think?
So needless to say, I am thrilled to bits about this interview. But let’s forget about me for a moment 😊 and focus on the content. Did my answers and advice about how to give honest feedback resonate with you? Are these things you are already doing? What else are you doing that has worked? Or not? Please share your thoughts by commenting below.