Give Actionable Feedback
4 Weeks
·Cohort-based Course
What if your team members left every conversation inspired to improve their work and grow themselves--and clear on what actions to take?
Give Actionable Feedback
4 Weeks
·Cohort-based Course
What if your team members left every conversation inspired to improve their work and grow themselves--and clear on what actions to take?
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Course overview
Lead Powerful, Inspiring Growth Conversations. Everyday. With Ease.
The Problem
People regularly fall short of your expectations and their potential. It causes friction and frustration.
It's uncomfortable to call out, so you avoid giving feedback, which makes the situation more uncomfortable.
Eventually, you decide to give feedback.
Sometimes it goes okay. Often, you try to move through and out of the conversation as quickly as possible because it feels so awkward.
People say they'll work on it.
Sometimes behavior improves a bit at first, and just when your attention turns elsewhere, the problematic behavior returns. Sometimes, there's never any improvement at all. Or worse, now there's a rift in your relationship that's starting to impact your work.
There's no growth happening.
And you're exasperated.
The Solution (Evidence-based. Immediately applicable.)
Conversations shift when we stop trying to fix people and start inspiring them to take action and grow.
We teach you how to do this by using straightforward tools that reliably transform defensiveness and friction into self-reflection, connection, and motivation to grow.
You will start to look forward to feedback conversations because you will know how to use them as powerful tools for building trust and deepening connection.
You will also explore your own mindsets and beliefs around feedback, identifying your own patterns around conflict avoidance, people-pleasing, and controlling behaviors.
And you'll get to do this while practicing with other high-growth leaders.
Make Growth a Team Sport.
Who is this course for
01
You are a startup founder.
You’ve hired multiple people and need them to either grow with the company–or leave.
02
You are an executive.
You’re tired of check-the-box performance reviews and want ongoing conversations about continuous improvement.
03
You are a high-growth manager
You encounter defensiveness but want to be the inspiring leader people thank for the rest of their careers.
What you’ll get out of this course
Behavior Change! A Step-By-Step Science to Eliciting It
Feedback is both art AND science. Combining both means you can vastly increase the likelihood that your feedback recipients take action.
This is captured in GAIN, our four-step feedback framework.
Confidence and Courage
You'll know exactly how to approach any feedback conversation.
And you'll have the confidence to do so because you will have had several real-world successes during the course.
You will also identify your primary feedback fears and understand how to move beyond them.
Step-By-Step Guide to Instill a Feedback-Rich Growth Culture in Your Team
We will share a facilitation guide with exercises for you to work through with your team to begin building the skills and norms of a high-growth, feedback-rich culture. Growth Is a Team Sport!
Reputation as a Career Catapulter
Across your company, people admire your ability to get amazing work out of both the people on your team and cross-functional colleagues. They become envious of the opportunity to work with you.
Give Actionable Feedback
Course syllabus
01
From Pain to GAIN: Lead the Conversation toward Desired Outcomes
We give a detailed and evidence-based overview of the GAIN framework, including real, unscripted videos of feedback conversations in our own team.
Using examples you provide, we teach the number one skill for making feedback actionable. Then we explore how to shift from fear and frustration to purpose and possibility.
And then we practice!
02
Natural Inspiration and Disarming Defensiveness
We share two evidence-based ways to lead the conversation towards a desired outcome and ensure you are learning as much through the conversation as the feedback receiver.
- Frame the conversation around the ultimate Goal: the possibilities gained if changes are made.
- Acknowledge your contribution and invite their feedback.
And then we practice!
03
Communication is like a Game of Catch-- How to Catch Whatever They Throw Back
Feedback often focuses on how to throw skillfully so that whatever we share is easy for the other person to catch (regardless of their "catching" ability).
Here, we shift to making feedback a conversation, not a monologue. We go beyond typical active listening and teach how to identify underlying motivations and interests.
And then we practice!
04
Closing Feedback Conversations with Concrete Commitments
One of the most common fatal flaws of feedback conversations is failing to clarify Who will do What by When. We explore how to do this in a collaborative way that keeps the focus on purpose and gain instead of fear and pain.
And then we practice! We integrate all the steps into "real plays," where you practice your desired feedback conversation.
05
Feedback Skills Team Conversation: Facilitation Guide
We equip you with a step-by-step facilitation guide to introduce your team to the GAIN method and two feedback skills.
Having a shared language and norms around feedback makes it flow so much more frequently across the team. Now, you become facilitator instead of the sole source of feedback.
Past students--at first intimidated--RAVE about this.
What people are saying
Nischal Nadhamuni
Nitzan Pelman
Brian Martin
Meet your instructor
Jack Cohen
Founder, executive coach, psych teacher. Led and coached 1000s of feedback conversations
I coach founders and executives who want to grow themselves and their colleagues as fast as their startups. In 2014, I founded the Brain-Based Workplace to help leaders create cultures that make Growth a Team Sport. Our team has worked with dozens of high-growth startups (e.g. Rippling), and I have personally coached hundreds of people on thousands of feedback conversations. Previously, I was a VP at a startup, taught psychology, and graduated from Wharton.
Course schedule
2-4 hours per week
Wednesday, September 20
9:00am - 10:30am PST
Wednesday, September 27
9:00am-10:30am PST
Wednesday, October 4
9:00am-10:30am PST
Wednesday, October 11
9:00am-10:30am PST
Optional Office Hours: Friday, Oct 18
9:00am-10:30am PST
The Science of GAIN (6-min video)
GAIN is both an acronym and an evidence-based approach to giving feedback with this premise:
It is profoundly more effective and inspiring to frame feedback based on the experiences or results we want to move toward (the GAIN) instead of what we want to move away from (the PAIN).
Evidence-based, you say?
Show me.
OK! Enter your email for a 6-minute video explaining a number of studies that support this premise.
Get the video!
Learning is better with cohorts
Real, Unscripted Demos
We practice these skills--in our own team, with our clients, in our marriages, with our kids. And since we record all our team meetings, we bring in real "game tape" so you can see what it looks like in practice.
Real Practice, "Real Plays"
We forego artificial role plays in favor of engaging with the very real, challenging situations you are navigating ("real plays"). We practice them together--and then (starting small), you have the actual conversations and come back to reflect together.
Interactive and experiential
As much as we love hearing ourselves talk, it's not particularly effective for your learning. Instead, you won't go more than a few minutes without practicing a new skill and getting feedback and coaching on it, both in breakout rooms and the whole cohort.
Learn with a cohort of peers
You'll see just how common the challenges you face are for people in your role. Not only will you get feedback on your feedback, you'll give it too--and recognize mistakes you are making in your own conversations.