The Unwarranted Reprimand

This blog post is based on Episode 1 of the Culture Unfit Podcast. Listen Here:

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Welcome everyone to our first blog! I am exceptionally thrilled to be joining y’all today in conversation. As I said in the introduction, this is a podcast that’s really meant to welcome in the beautiful misfits at work, to celebrate them and to connect you all in conversation about the theme, topic, or challenge that many of us have faced in navigating our way through work, through new teams, or through organizational cultures.

One thing I just want to say before I introduce you to today’s theme is that while I’m not a trained coach, nor am I a therapist, what I am is a passionate people lover and team builder who has spent many, many years trying to understand how to bring out the best in people while really helping them to find ways to stay unique and awesome! So it’s important that you know that this is going to be a conversation born out of my ideas and my experiences but I welcome you to do your own homework. If what I say in a particular episode doesn’t resonate and if there are resources that you want to share with the community you can comment here or reach out to @cultureunfit across LinkedIn and Instagram.

So today’s theme is one that I think many of us can relate to, because we’ve all at some point had to join something new; a new team, a new company and with that comes finding out what their ways of working are and figuring out how to show up inside of that and there often isn’t a playbook that makes it very easy for us and so. Now here’s the submission from this beautiful misfit from in our community. Please listen with open ears and keep in mind that this person has been brave in sharing their story. so lets take a listen:

The Story

“…one of my jobs where I just started was a global role, working cross functionally with different markets across the globe. Right after I started, one day I received an email from one of the local markets from one of my counterparts seeking guidance, advice and opinion regarding a certain matter and they’re asking what I thought was the right approach, just to share my feedback. In a very bold leap, I let them know, you know this is how we can approach it, this is why we should approach it, or pick one option over the other, this is based on my previous experience. I caveated a lot and I don’t know, I felt the need to caveat because this is a new person, even though I'm experienced and a senior professional in my role… I caveated in case it conflict[ed] with my manager’s response. I just want[ed] to put my best foot forward and I sent the email and they really appreciated that. However when I had my one on one with my manger, within a couple of days, one of the topics that was discussed was my response to that email and I was asked not to jump in or reply and it was strange to me. [I felt] like why shouldn’t I be giving, sharing my thoughts, sharing my expertise when asked to, when someone asks me to and they’re like no you don’t always have to reply to them, just because someone in the market is asking for expertise from you. It was a little bit [more] aggressive than I expected, like that would be an issue, like that would be a topic of discussion in my one on one, why did I feel the need to response even though the email was kind of addressed to me and my manager but I feel like he may have felt threatened to some extent but he could have handled it a different way. It sounded to me like,“Just play dumb. You’re a new person, you don’t know this company as good as I do, you shouldn’t exert yourself”. I was immediately de-motivated and it kept me participating in meetings just because there was the voice in my head, "like aw you can’t, even though you’re an expert in your field. That was a bad experience like right out of the gate starting a new job”.

Whew, that was a lot. That must have felt extremely stressful at the time and I wanna say how sorry I am to the caller for having gone through that, but also to anyone who’s experienced something similar. Your reaction, the feeling of being demotivated and then that action that you took because of it which is reducing your participation in meetings and in group discussions; totally understandable, totally valid, especially when you’re not given a clear explanation as to why to stop doing something. So, if you’re reading this and you’re nodding your head and you’re thinking that hurt or I’ve been through it, know that you’re not alone.

A note to managers...

I think the thing that is at the crux of this thing is the element of management that is often very difficult to master, if not like the most difficult thing to master. So in thinking about this story, this particular scenario, I imagine that wanting to respond because an email was addressed to you shouldn’t necessarily make anybody bat an eyelid or think that there’s something going on here. However when you’re entering a new team, there may be dynamics at play between those who’ve been there before, the sender of the email, the other people who are on the email, that you’re not privy to, maybe even decisions that have been made in the past that you might want to try and figure out what those are so that you can appropriately position your response. So we’ll talk a little bit about that at the end. The thing that I want to note is that for the managers who are listening to this podcast or the people in this scenario who might think that was a little bit to premature, that response, the opportunity is to figure out how to give that feedback in a way that doesn’t make the other person feel like they did something wrong. So let’s talk a little bit about that, like how might one do that.

The Art of Email

In my coaching sessions, I often will say that I’ve been coached to get better at email because there is the way that you show up face to face in person and it shows your personality, you’re able to ask questions, you’re able to smile. All of these things go into communication signals that will reassure the other person that you’re a friendly person or that you mean no harm, but the thing about email is that all those things get stripped away. So when you respond to someone and say you shouldn’t have sent that, and its in written form, it hurts more than you probably intended it to. So one way to think about that is to say okay I recognize that this person is new and probably does not have the history nor context, how am I going to approach this, not only the words that I’m gonna say but also the format for the communication. Depending on the severity of the situation, you may want to really think about the best way to make sure that the space you’ve created for the conversation is neutral. If you’re sending an invitation, even being very careful with the subject title and making sure that its immediate or as close to the moment that they situation occurred as possible not waiting one or two weeks later to have this conversation. For this particular situation, a phone call if possible or even a quick message saying, “Hey I just wanted to talk a little bit about so and so’s message”, giving that person the caller in this case, an opportunity to say oh tell me what happened there, and then carefully positioning your feedback as much as you can in the form of questions. That’s the way forward that has proven to be most successful for me.

Which do you prefer, feedback over email or in person?

• 0%Email please.
• 0%In person works better for me.

First thing's first: Feel the pain

Now, really this conversation is less about coaching for managers and more about the individual in this situation who is feeling smaller as a result of this kind of feedback and so this is where I think there is the moment to first feel the pain. I’m not going to ever tell somebody to get over it as quickly as you can, shove that feeling all the way down and move ahead, keep on going, no. I think all too often people have been given messages to push forward when there is pain, so go ahead and feel that little bit of a sting.

Phone a friend.

The second thing people don’t often do is to try and seek guidance or just a good check in from the people you’re close to. Now that may be difficult when you’re joining a new team, you don’t have your allies to ask what they would have done differently or what’s really going on. So as much as you can turn to trusted friends, colleagues or people that you might have gone to school with to just play out the scenario, it creates space between that moment and your response. That allows you to reflect and also to just get another opinion, which may may be validating, but it may also balance your perspective and sometimes when we are going through the emotions, we need somebody who’s not attached to it, who is more objective, to be able to bring this balance to us.

Pursue Feedback

The third thing is to ask yourself the question; Is there feedback inside of this feedback that’s not being stated? In the event that all you received was an email reprimand or an emailed piece of feedback, having the courage to actually schedule a time with the person who delivered the feedback to maybe say things like; Hey, thank you so much for that. It wasn’t my intention. I didn’t know the dynamics there. Help me understand why. Can you explain to me a little bit more around the nuances of how this team communicates and most importantly, you can ask What you should have done differently or what you should do differently in the future should something else very similar happen. The beauty of this third step is that you’re displaying gratitude. It may have hurt, there’s something there, but you’re also taking control over your destiny into your own hands by telling that person, “I wanna learn if there’s something here that I missed completely because perhaps it was a decision that was already made and this particular emailer didn’t know it”.

It could also be something as simple as within that organization, within that culture, no matter who the email is addressed to, the higher up always responds first. If that is an aspect of the way your team makes decisions that you need to know about, better to use that conversation to sort it out in a very friendly or unassuming way. It’ll be up to you of course to get the response to that question, to decide if that makes you feel okay, uncomfortable, or if you want to dig in more to ask why is it that way. If you’re somebody that has strong opinions because you’ve had all this experience that makes you an expert in your particular subject matter and you want a place to share it, I think again it’s up to you to work that out with your manager or the person who gave the feedback and to ask the acknowledge, that this is a thing that makes you, you. That you’re the most productive when you're able to share your thoughts on what you know, recognize that you have a lot to learn in this new team, company and environment, knowing that you absolutely want to give back and finally reaching out for help to understand how best to do it. Ask if they can be your ally, your guide, and the magical thing that happens when you do that is that you disarm the feedback that your manager gave, in a way that says “I can’t do this alone. I’m not a know it all, I don’t know everything, I really want your help”, and so there is this subtle education of that person that’s happening through that brave moment of conversation and so its really important that those three steps are followed.

To Recap...

1. The first thing is to feel the pain. Give yourself the time and space to feel the sting, don’t react or respond, give it 24 hours to just look in the mirror and acknowledge that it didn’t feel good but don’t let it stop there. Don’t squish the feelings somewhere deep and dark and try to move past them too quickly.

2. The next step I would summarize as call a friend. Find a group of people or a person who you can trust in the organization or as I said if it’s too new and you haven’t made those allies, turn to the people you went to school with or you know someone who may have worked with you at a previous job who you admire and just play out the scenario to them and ask a question, like am I crazy? Is this a thing that is a little unsettling to you as well? This will offer you either additional perspective or validation, that the feelings that you have are indeed the ones that others might have as well but also balance because sometimes there are things that we feel that others are like actually, no I think that was not a strong enough reaction or an overreaction.

3. The third thing is, try and find that space if one isn’t offered to you to have an honest conversation driven by questions to really seek clarity about what was it about this particular email. Was it the fact that you responded? Was it the contents? Ask what you’re missing, whether it’s the way that this particular theme comes to discussion or decisions. Ask them to help you understand how you can contribute.

Part of what one might call a forth step, is to really leave that conversation acknowledging that this is who you are.

Letting them know that your’e still learning and growing, however you’re your my best self when you’re doing this, in this case it’s contributing. It’s sharing thoughts based your expertise and so saying to the feedback giver, how can you do this in a safe way, in a way that doesn’t disrupt perhaps the ways of discussing and coming to decisions in this team, I think is a really helpful way to move forward.

One last thing...

Okay so let’s go back for a moment to the place where I asked us to pause. “I feel like he may have felt threatened to some extent, but he could have handled it a different way”. It’s interesting that the words “threatened”, or “may have felt threatened”, were used here and I think this is something that if I were having a one on one coaching session, I would dive really deeply into that to understand what signals the caller had that suggested that the feedback deliverer may have felt threatened, but what I want to share with all of your reading is that it’s important when you have that clearing conversation with the feedback giver to suspend all words that might suggest judgement. I think that using the SBI Technique which is Situation Based Behaviors Impact, has proven really successful for me in conversations where I’ve sort of had to approach something that felt like there might be some tension and I know that those who have sought counsel in me have always appreciated. For example, what you might say to the feedback giver is, “During this moment, when you sent the email after I had sent my email”, which is both the Situation and the Behavior, “I felt xyz”, and the impact statement always begins with I. What you do is that you remove all judgment, it’s not about this person, their personality or even the way that they exist, because what you’re doing is being clear with facts; this is the situation, we were talking about this, these emails came forward directly to me, the behavior in this case, the feedback givers response, and the impact it had on you, and starting that statement in the first person, "I felt this way”. It’s a really great way to have non-defensive conversations hopefully and I think it has proven to be something that is not only successful but helps to diffuse the atmosphere a little bit because it's personal, it’s just about the situation and I think the only person you’re bringing up is yourself and how you felt, how that particular thing felt.

This is where I’m going to close today’s conversation. Thank you to the caller for being brave enough to share her story of being a beautiful misfit. I hope that the guidance that I shared today resonates with some of you! If it has, let’s build a community around Culture Unfit!

Leave a comment down below and let me know your thoughts!