Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: You're listening to the Leader by Design podcast. And on today's episode, we are going to share with you the single biggest thing you can do to improve.
One small thing, but extremely powerful. If you're a person who loves to improve, and I know business owners out there who are listening to this, you love to improve every day. So if this is of interest to you, and it should be, stay tuned.
G'day.
[00:00:24] Speaker B: I'm Brendan Rogers. I've built a thriving business creating confident leaders who achieve the results they always wanted, along with the lifestyle they always dreamed of. How do you become a confident leader? By focusing on three key areas. Developing character, building competence, and creating connection. This is the Leader by Design podcast.
[00:00:47] Speaker A: Welcome back to the podcast. I'm your host, Brendan Rogers, and I'm here again today with our co host.
[00:00:53] Speaker C: Hello, everyone.
[00:00:55] Speaker A: Those of you forget, or if you're listening to the episode or their podcast for the first time, Emmy Amelia Moran, thank you very much for coming again.
[00:01:03] Speaker C: Thanks for having me again.
[00:01:04] Speaker A: And you are looking so festive today. What's going on?
[00:01:07] Speaker C: We did a Christmas video this morning.
[00:01:10] Speaker A: Turn around. Show us that little red ribbon you. Oh, isn't that ribbon fantastic? I'll tell you what, I feel underdressed.
[00:01:16] Speaker C: I think so.
[00:01:18] Speaker A: I'm actually. I'm not too bad on the top half, but the bottle held pretty ordinary red stripes on. Ah, you're so creative.
You are unbelievable. I tell you what, this is why you have you on the show. Me, I'm just so logical. You look at things and think, no, you're very Christmassy today.
[00:01:33] Speaker C: Very Christmassy.
[00:01:34] Speaker A: But our house is pretty Christmassy at the moment too, isn't it? You've seen it for the first time. Very cool. Emmy, how's your week been? You've had a pretty special week. You want to share?
[00:01:43] Speaker C: We've had a great week. I was able to present my research that I've been talking about on the podcast this week. So it went for about 45 minutes, and we spoke about the seven habits. And I showcased that to my teacher, to Brendan, my parents and students. And from the feedback that I received, it was awesome.
[00:02:06] Speaker A: I have to say, it was awesome. I was very privileged to be there. And even little. Our little fella who's with us at the moment came along and checked it out as well. So he was very impressed. Also stayed awake through the whole presentation. So you must be doing something right. Yeah, no, it was fantastic. We're gonna talk a little bit about that. Cause it relates to our single biggest thing you can do. To improve. You already mentioned it, didn't you? What was that word you mentioned?
You didn't spoil it. What was the word?
[00:02:32] Speaker C: Feedback.
[00:02:33] Speaker A: Feedback. That's it. If you're not interested in listening to any more, then you can close down the episode now. But we've got a bit to unpack about feedback and how it works. And even from your style, warm and cool feedback, we'll unpack that a little bit. But it's literally it. It's the single biggest thing you can do to improve, is ask for feedback. So that's what we want to unpack today. But before we do that, you had a great week again. I guess the highlight of my week was actually getting to go to your presentation, the exhibition. It was. It's so good to see. I know the effort you've put into it, the preparation you put into it through the podcast. And we planned it over those weeks to say, well, as we're breaking down these seven habits, you get a chance to talk about it, articulate it, straighten out your thoughts, and then bring that into your presentation. So, look, that was fantastic. So you did such a good job. I was very, very proud of you. And I know your parents, you don't even have to ask them, but just looking at them, they were extremely proud of you.
[00:03:26] Speaker C: Thank you very much.
[00:03:26] Speaker A: Did they tell you or did they. Did they give you that feedback after.
[00:03:29] Speaker C: They did, they thought it was really good as well.
[00:03:30] Speaker A: It's fantastic. It was very good to meet your parents as well. Lovely, lovely people. And I did have the opportunity to give some feedback to your mum to say that they must be pretty reasonable people because they're raising a very, very, um, A fantastic young lady.
[00:03:44] Speaker C: There you go. Thank you.
[00:03:45] Speaker A: My pleasure. My pleasure. Um, okay. Feedback. Emmy, this is the thing about improving. So you had the opportunity to present your exhibition, your speech on the seven habits of highly effective people to. There was an audience of. I guess there was probably eight or so fellow students from your class. Your advisor, Tim, who was a guest on our show last week.
[00:04:07] Speaker C: He was.
[00:04:08] Speaker A: And myself, our little boy and our little foster child. And your parents.
[00:04:14] Speaker C: Yep.
[00:04:15] Speaker A: So a really good, cozy audience.
[00:04:18] Speaker C: Good crowd. Good number as well.
[00:04:21] Speaker A: How did you feel about your own preparation and presentation? What do you think you did well? What were you happy with?
[00:04:29] Speaker C: Being very prepared. I remember looking through my slides the next day and it's like, okay, I have to learn my topic and what I'm talking about. But then I was like, I think that's just a matter of fact of also going in there and not winging it, that you know what you're talking about. So there's no point rehearsing it and rehearsing it and rehearsing it, rehearsing it, because you get there and you do something that you didn't do while you're presenting. It's like, should have done that. And it did happen. But I thought it was very well prepared with it as well. I gave off information very well, so I only had a few dot points on the screen and then elaborating off that, which was really good. And I think coming from the audience, they found that really easy to understand, which made it sound good because it was so easy to understand.
It was creative, it was engaging, it wasn't just listening to me the whole time. The audience was putting into their own words and their own scenarios as well, which was really good.
[00:05:25] Speaker A: It was. Again, I can't speak highly enough about how you presented and the preparation, all those sorts of things. So look, you're. Your reflection on your own performance, I think was spot on. What was. Was there one or two things that you, on reflection you felt that you would like to improve upon for next time? Because there will be other times, won't you, during the course of 2025, where you'll be able to present and do these sorts of exhibitions?
[00:05:50] Speaker C: Yeah, definitely. I think what we spoke about earlier as well and the feedback you gave me was like the fidgeting and the standing still and just even standing behind the laptop, like, yes, I had speaker notes on there, but I think I would have been confident enough to talk without them. So the audience can. Audience can see me and not standing behind something.
Maybe having all the activities ready as well on the weekend, not the night before of.
I think it was really good. I think it was just simple but effective and it got the point across, which made it really good.
[00:06:26] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. And one of the things that I was also super impressed with was this concept of warm and cool feedback. I was a bit confused to start with, like I said to you, because I didn't know, I didn't hear the word warm feedback. I only heard the word cool feedback. And I'm thinking it was improvement type feedback, like where does cool come from? But anyway, you explained to me the warm feedback and the cool feedback from a temperature setting made a bit more sense. So one of the things that Tim again on the show last week, who's the advisor for you guys, he asked each or they had a sheet in front of them and that was their opportunity just to write down the Warm and cool feedback. So again, reiterating warm feedback was that, you know, what you did well, what that person saw, thought that you did well. And the cool feedback was that improvement opportunity, constructive criticism type feedback.
[00:07:19] Speaker C: Yep.
[00:07:21] Speaker A: What do you recall from your peers, your student mates that they gave you about the warm feedback?
[00:07:35] Speaker C: I think like I said before, very easy for them to understand. Like they came out of there and they learned what the seven habits are, they learned what the message was out of the whole concept, how easy I spoke to them, how they weren't just listening to me the whole time. They got engaged and they got to put the seven habits into a hands on activity as well. So I think just they learned something which is the point of this. You want them to learn and they, you want them to see your reflection as well. Over the last term as well.
[00:08:12] Speaker A: Yeah, to some extent. Again, I haven't seen any of the other presentations that were done and you've said they've been really, really good as well. But yeah, from my perspective, it was a bit of a masterclass in really breaking up the, you know, the content that you're sharing, the stories you were sharing, the relatability of your experiences you've had in over the last number of weeks. But then with the hands on component, there was a really cool sort of Chinese Whispers exercise you did. Do you want to tell the listeners sort of how that related within the talk and also if you can remember the message, what the message was and sort of how it ended up at the end?
[00:08:49] Speaker C: Yes. So the habit that we played Chinese Whispers on was seek first to understand and then to be understood. So Chinese Whispers is basically a game. You pass on a message through a group and see if the end person has the same message as the starting person. So we did this throughout the class and we started at one end, went to the other and the message was understanding somebody is like putting in a piece of a puzzle or connecting a piece of a puzzle or something along the lines of that. And it was, the message went along quite well. When it got to the end, it was completely different from what we found out. But it's funny, even throughout it, people were laughing at the end because it completely changed either one person interpreted, interpreted it differently and so everybody else did as well. So it was really interesting. And they all got to understand that. Seek first to understand and then to be understood. Understanding the meaning behind that sentence or not just focusing on the words as well and how it can be interpreted differently.
[00:09:50] Speaker A: Very cool. You did, you did exceptionally well. Do you recall Any of the cool feedback that you were given.
[00:10:00] Speaker C: We spoke about this before and I can't remember off top of my head.
[00:10:02] Speaker A: I know, but I thought you might ruin it. Out.
What about the cool feedback you're giving yourself? Or actually, what. What was some cool feedback that your mum gave you? Do you remember?
[00:10:14] Speaker C: No.
[00:10:16] Speaker A: So your mum mentioned there was a couple of. A couple of things. And Ian on point, but one of them was about one of the words in the presentation, which was a longer word. I can't remember what the word was now.
[00:10:28] Speaker C: Oh, it was autobiographically. So it was like the listening and the empathic listening.
[00:10:35] Speaker A: That's right. Autobiographically, It's a bit of a tongue twister in itself. Yes. I.
Again, I think, again, your mum, Janelle was on point there. What? I look at those things a little bit differently at times, too, but I think that there's an element of when people are presenting that if you say an Aminah every now and again, or if you mispronounce something and then correct yourself, it almost gives a bit of, hey, this person's a real person doing a real thing. And it, to me, it can create a stronger connection with the audience. I've seen many, many polished speakers over the years and they're fantastic. I'm not knocking them, they're exceptional. But it doesn't always leave me, as a personal experience of the level of connection that I'm wanting, that that's valuable for me. Whereas those ones that just a little micro stuff up from here and there, it brings them down to, okay, they're just a real person doing a real job. So that's my take on that.
[00:11:40] Speaker C: Actually. It sounds. When you put it that way, it does sound very true.
[00:11:44] Speaker A: So now what you're going to say is that you actually meant that to say it.
[00:11:48] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:11:48] Speaker A: Incorrectly the first time.
[00:11:50] Speaker C: Yeah. And I think it was actually, I put in the word wrong on the slide, so I didn't even have the double ly.
[00:11:57] Speaker A: Again, I think from memory, you had the word right on the slide. It was just when you started to talk about it, there was a different way to pronounce the or. There was a little bit of an extension of the word, which you do have written up there. But, yeah, anyway, like, for me, it just, hey, you're a real person doing a real thing. And I don't sort of look at those in that way. But again, it was still very, very valid feedback. Without a doubt.
[00:12:18] Speaker C: Yeah, definitely.
[00:12:20] Speaker A: The.
How does this feedback, now that you've given both in the. Again, we'll Use the terminology that you guys have been using, that warm feedback and the cool feedback. But how does that feedback help you for future presentations? What's the power of it?
[00:12:40] Speaker C: What will I keep doing? Well, that feedback, that was really good in that exhibition. Okay. I'm going to keep having minimalistic slides and then elaborating on that. Okay. I'm going to keep preparing weeks on end before my exhibition so that it comes across that I know my content. I'm going to do activities so they feel engaged, the audience feels engaged.
And I think with the cool feedback, it gives me things that I can improve on for my next exhibitions or for future presentations as well.
[00:13:11] Speaker A: And that's. I mean, that's the basis of this conversation, isn't it? Like, what's the single biggest thing that helps people improve?
[00:13:19] Speaker C: Feedback.
[00:13:19] Speaker A: Feedback. That's it.
[00:13:21] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:13:21] Speaker A: And that's what you had the opportunity to do and that's what the opportunity you've had to do with the presentations that you've listened to. What sort of feedback, warm feedback, have you given people on their presentations?
[00:13:34] Speaker C: That it was once again engaging, how they spoke about future plans. It wasn't just their ongoing topic at the moment. What are they going to do throughout year 12? What are their end in mind goals? I think how people were able to talk about what they've done as such an achievement as well, was so good to listen to, like not talking it down as much or. And having elaborated on it, gave simple dot points on a slide again, which is so easy, not lots of writing and not just really simplifying it down. It might be a really broad or, I want to say, like fancy topic or really smart. And sometimes you can't understand it if it's something like one of the presentations. Biomedical science, that's a hard topic to understand. But if you can really dull that down. Not dull it down, but simplify it for the audience, it's going to help them take away a message. We're still getting the point across.
[00:14:31] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. So I just want to bring up your personality style.
Your personality style is I style in the disc personality style.
[00:14:43] Speaker C: Yep.
[00:14:43] Speaker A: So that influencer type.
The reason why I'm bringing this up is because different styles within personality styles can find it harder or easier to give particularly that constructive or that cool improvement type feedback.
When do you struggle giving that sort of cool feedback?
[00:15:08] Speaker C: That's a great question. I think when you have to get straight to the point and you're not. And you can't just sugarcoat it.
Like, I think it was a Lot more easier in the exhibition formatting because it helps them improve and it gives them feedback and things that they can do better. But I think if it's a one on one giving it to your friends, you know, let's do that better, they might take that on differently as well.
[00:15:33] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. And I'll get you to share a bit of a story as much as you can about a recent situation which is a bit more difficult for you. But the next week on the show, we're going to unpack your mind and your personality style a little bit more and then how we've used that to hopefully work well together in these in this term. So we have worked well together, haven't we? We have, we have, haven't we?
[00:15:56] Speaker C: We've produced great podcasts.
[00:15:58] Speaker A: Absolutely. And we are, we are quite different in a number of areas, our styles and there's a few little similarities in crossover. So that, anyway, we're going to unpack that in a bit more detail next week and really how you can use that to work better as a team and taking the sixth habit of highly effective people, how we can synergize, how we can synergize better, which we've done well. But your personality style is one that can find it a little bit more stressful and unpleasant. Giving feedback, again, cool or constructive criticism type feedback to people. So there was a situation in the last couple of weeks amongst your school leadership team. Tell us a bit about that and what you found uncomfortable.
[00:16:38] Speaker C: I think not confronting, but getting the point across of, okay, this isn't working within our group and our school leadership group. As a person, how can I personally help you as a group, how can we give you this constructive feedback and you take it on board without an attack as well? Like we're just trying to help you, help you improve as a person, as a leader, as a captain, as everything in that group. And for them it might have been interpreted differently. So giving that unpleasant feedback to somebody isn't very easy at times.
And wording, even just the simple things of wording it, how do you word it? So it comes across as supportive and not. This isn't right. This is. Do you know what I mean? So it wasn't easy, but I think we've overcome it well and seeing that end result as well.
[00:17:34] Speaker A: Yeah, again, absolutely fantastic skill to have at such a young age. So the more you can develop that and enhance your skill around it, the better you'll be and continue to be and the more you'll improve and the more you'll Help improve others. I think the moral of that story that underpins that, and I know you and I spoke about, is that you cared enough.
[00:17:52] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:17:53] Speaker A: In order to provide the feedback. What I find is that if people care enough about the other person and you really want them to improve or you want them to do more and more of what they did, really, really well, you'll care enough to have the conversation. If you don't care enough, you won't.
[00:18:08] Speaker C: No.
[00:18:09] Speaker A: It's pretty simple like that.
[00:18:10] Speaker C: Yep.
[00:18:11] Speaker A: In relation to business and really how this implies applies in business or again in the sporting field, you know, you into netball? Netball student at the, at the college. I'm my chosen sports, football. Soccer. So it's really taking a business connotation if you.
It's anything. I mean, I had meetings today with an organization on the north end of the coast and what we. I'm working with five leaders of that organization. What we spent some time doing was just understanding like what success looks like and for their role. And that's a bit of like begin with the end in mind. But then bringing that down to, okay, what do we, what do we need to do? What are the stepping stones we need to do in order to get to where we're trying to get to? And quite a bit of that improvement opportunity that we talked about was based on feedback that people had received. So either their direct leader had provided them some feedback about, hey, keep doing this, it's great, it's really helping you and your role and succeed and there's some other areas that we can improve upon and some other areas that you need to learn about. So we started to create a bit of improvement plan around that. But like I said, that was all based embedded in the feedback process that these people have had conversations with with their leaders. So the people I'm working with have a better understanding about what good looks like, how they can improve. They're not thinking about maybe this is the next step. They're knowing what the organization is asking them to do in order to take steps to improve from a sporting sense. Again, you coach netball, you've coached a team for some time. If you're not clear around providing feedback to people, then it's very, very difficult for people to take that on board and to improve upon. So in the netball situation, if I was your netball coach and I couldn't be because I don't know a lot about netball, so I'd say, Amy, you just need to do better.
How does that help you?
[00:20:25] Speaker C: Doesn't.
[00:20:26] Speaker A: It doesn't, no. But maybe if I was to say, Emmy, you can do better than that, you weren't running back at this time. And this is your position. You need to be able to defend where you need to defend. And this is a situation where, you know, I thought you could have done better. Is everything okay? What's happening with that? Then you can talk to that a little bit more.
[00:20:47] Speaker C: Elaborating on that.
[00:20:48] Speaker A: Exactly. It's specific. So again, you got some really good specific feedback from your fellow students and also from the room. You and I have spoken about the feedback and I'll elaborate a little bit on that. But giving specific feedback, whether that's that warm feedback. Hey, when you spoke in your presentation and you smiled a lot, you faced the audience, you had great eye contact. There's specific things that. Okay, great. Now I know what he means by he did really well.
Where we can look at the cool feedback and the improvement type stuff is. Well, there was. When you, when you presented really well to the audience and there was connection and stuff like that, there was an opportunity to move away from the, from the computer and to show your full self and people you could connect with and you could have used your arms or had the opportunity to use your arms and your hand gestures more when that happened. So again, there's some specific feedback there, some cool, some improvement type feedback they can utilize. And if you think that's valid, again, because it's completely up to you, if you think that's valid or not, then you can take that. And as we say, feedback's a gift. You can unwrap the gift and you can throw it away, not doing anything about it, or you can unwrap the gift and use it for good.
[00:22:10] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:22:11] Speaker A: So these are the opportunities. But everything like this episode is about. Everything is about. All of that is rooted in I care enough about helping you, you improve. You care enough about helping other people improve. And if people take up the challenge and have the courage to provide others with feedback, then it does mean they care enough about that person and they want to see them improve or they want to keep them seeing them do more and more of what they've been doing?
[00:22:36] Speaker C: Well, yeah, definitely.
[00:22:38] Speaker A: Before we close out, Emmy, is there anything else you would like to say about feedback?
[00:22:44] Speaker C: I think we've covered it all. I think the main summary of this is ask us feedback and we'll help you and help your group. It'll help somebody give that unpleasant feedback and give. Have that unpleasant conversation occasionally. But it helps you improve. It helps you show what you've Done great. For instance in that exhibition. So ask would probably be the takeaway from this. Ask about feedback.
[00:23:10] Speaker A: Absolutely. Ask for feedback. Even if it's just a really simple structure of like what's one thing that you thought I did really well and what's one thing you think I can improve upon for next time? Here's a great starting point. So asking for feedback is super powerful. It's actually one of the parts of our lessons and modules within our master one on one meetings program that I'm running again or launching again in February 2025 to another cohort because again, building a culture of feedback.
It's as simple as what you say, asking the feedback. And if as leaders we do that more than enough times and we value the feedback that we're getting, we'll take steps to improve and you'll be better, your team will be better, your business will be better. I think that all said, we can wrap it up.
[00:23:57] Speaker C: I think.
[00:23:57] Speaker A: So Emmy, you have a great evening, a great rest of the weekend. What have you got planned for the weekend?
[00:24:03] Speaker C: Not a lot. No, I don't think so.
[00:24:05] Speaker A: No. Christmas shopping. We ran into each other Christmas shopping the other day, didn't we?
[00:24:08] Speaker C: We did. That was very quick. Settle. I think we're heading up doing a bit of Christmas shopping on Sunday so that should be lovely.
[00:24:14] Speaker A: Fantastic. Well, we've got a Christmas photo thing with other children that we've cared for and brothers and sisters and stuff like that. So that's going to be cool. We're heading down to Castle Hill in the morning to meet some people and do all that stuff. So it's a lot of fun.
[00:24:28] Speaker C: Beautiful.
[00:24:28] Speaker A: Hopefully a tea or coffee and I don't know, biscuits, muffins, all that sort of stuff. Our food.
[00:24:33] Speaker C: Some more free food?
[00:24:35] Speaker A: No, I'll probably have to buy this probably.
Anyway, it's going to be great fun. So thanks again for listening and Emmy, great to have you on board again and we look forward to chatting next week when we unpack our disc profiles a little bit more. How we are similar but also very different and how we've used those to work well together over this term.
[00:24:55] Speaker C: Definitely can't wait.
[00:24:57] Speaker A: Signing out. See you later.
[00:24:58] Speaker C: See you then.
[00:24:59] Speaker A: Bye. Bye.
[00:25:00] Speaker C: Bye.
[00:25:01] Speaker B: In the hybrid working world, I've seen too many business owners and their businesses suffer because of poor performing employees leading to below average results. If you want to improve your employees performance to deliver consistent results for your business, you have to master one on one meetings. The doors to our master one on one meetings training program are opening soon. I'll teach you how to improve employee performance and deliver consistent results using one on one meetings. To be one of the first people notified when the doors open, go to leaderbydesign AU waitlist. Don't wait. Sign up now.
