Executive coach Stephen Burt urged coaches to think about who feedback is feeding- it needs to be two-way and in both parties’ interests, he said. By Elaine Robinson
Speaking at the European Mentoring & Coaching Council UK conference on 5-7 May, Burt said feedback can help the client by improving what they do with the coach in the relationship and helping them to develop resistance and handle feedback received from others. He said that clients frequently thank the coach for ‘going there’ in feedback and this deepens the relationship.
However, the coach may embody authority for the client so they should beware of the potential to fracture the relationship. It can be easy for the coach to fall into being judgmental or to use the term feedback quite casually, he warned.
Burt warned coaches to check when feedback is ‘good’ whether it is more about the coach as coach and whether that is appropriate? He gave the example of the self-declared “I’m a challenging coach”.
“Why does a coach need to make such a declaration of ego, does this reveal some baggage within the coach?”
He said it is important to find appropriate and timely anchor points throughout coaching sessions to give verbal feedback or “space”: “Some clients need time to think without me staring at them”.
Burt, who is an independent coach working mainly on leadership development in public sector organisations, pointed out that behavioural feedback is being received all the time through observations of body language, cultural and social indicators.
Stephen Burt’s tips for generating an integrated two-way approach to feedback:
- See it as an opportunity to stop, get clear, be heard
- It works best to have a tight definition of feedback
- Say what you did and the impact it had
- Do more than observe
- It’s not advice, opinion or judgement
- Acknowledge your beliefs and emotions around feedback
- Vary timing of feedback – beginning, middle, end
- Use process reviews and timeouts
- Find a common language
- Use powerful questions
- Trust your intuition
- Use yourself
- Try experiments: propose, agree, do and review
- Re contract, re-contract, re-contract