The Feedback Permission Slip: How to Give and Receive Feedback Without Destroying Trust

Feedback is one of the most powerful tools a leader has — and one of the most misused. Most leaders are either avoiding it entirely or delivering it like a surprise attack. Whether you're a manager trying to build a team culture where people tell each other the truth, or a professional who wants to handle feedback with more confidence and less defensiveness , this episode gives you a practical framework you can use immediately.

In this episode:

• Why avoiding feedback feels kind but is actually costing your team
• The "permission slip" technique and the psychology behind why it works
• How to deliver feedback that lands instead of feedback that stings
• What to do in the first 60 seconds when feedback blindsides you
• How to separate the delivery from the data — even when the delivery is terrible
• The one follow-up move that changes how people see you as a leader

Transcript

Defining The Next Era Of Leadership

SPEAKER_00 1:05

Hey there. I'm Jill Griffin. I am a former media and tech exec turned career strategist, leadership strategist, and executive coach. And I've been doing this work now for about 10 years, full-time, working with leaders and people within the workplace. It's really important to me that people have the tools they need to show up as a leader. Leadership is a lifestyle choice. This is where you are showing up, not only for yourself, but your team for others. And I call this the next era of leadership. We are living in unprecedented times, my friend. And whether it is about navigating the job market, your team, the velocity of business, AI, social, geopolitical issues, all of that level uncertainty is going to impact you. It is going to impact your team, the people you work with. And that is why, again, leadership, the next era of leadership needs to be one that is grounded, I believe, strongly, in your own identity and not in pressure, not in this hustle, but truly coming back to who we are as people, who we are as leaders, and being able to show up clearly for yourselves, for your team, and for others. That's why I do this work. Working in corporate for so many years and seeing some of the amazing leaders and also seeing people who were sort of bumping and trying to navigate it along the way and the impact that it creates. And again, that's why I call it a lifestyle choice. Because if you're deciding to be a leader and you are at a leader, if you want to be one, whether you're entry level or whether you're on the more seasoned side, if you are going to be a leader, the way you show up, the way you interact with others, all of that, that's the lifestyle choice. Because it doesn't just stop because you're not on the clock. It's how are you thinking through what you're going to do next and how you're showing up tomorrow based on maybe what happened to me overnight, right? Based on what happened after work and you're going back in, that understanding of how you're showing up for your people is so important. Today I want to talk about what I call the feedback permission slip. Um, let me paint two pictures. If you're the leader, you've got someone on your team who's missed who's not performing, right? Who's not hitting the mark. And you know it, they probably know it. But every time you think to bring it up, you wait because you're either waiting for um it to change, or you're like, you know what, I'll do it when things calm down, when I have more time. And FYI, things never calm down. There's always something. But now what happens is the problem gets bigger because it's further away from the episode or the incidents that are happening, and it feels maybe even twice the size of when you first noticed it, right? So that's one side of it. The second side of it is you're the recipient of that feedback, right? This is you're in a painting, you're in a meeting, things are going fine. Your boss leans over to you and says, like, hey, after this, I want to meet with you and give you some feedback on um, you know, what I'm seeing here in the overall performance. If you've been on that side of it, I'm going to guess that your stomach is going to do a flip-flop and your brain is going to start wondering, well, wait, is this good feedback? Is this bad feedback? What's happening? And you're in that right, you're in that train where the the thought, you're wondering, you're trying to figure it out. Whatever comes out of your mouth next, you're not hearing a single word of what your boss is saying because you're probably already in a full-on flight or flight approach, right? So it's the same issue, but there are two seats at the table. And today I want to cover both, depending on which side you're sitting out. Because whether you're giving feedback or receiving feedback, the thing that changes it is understand how you're saying it, how you're receiving it. And that's what really changes the relationship and the ability to build trust and move forward. So let's dig in to the feedback permission slip. All right, let's do the leader side first. So you are the one who has to give the feedback. And I'm gonna guess that you may be avoiding it entirely, or perhaps you're ambushing people with it. And either way, it's going to destroy your team culture. This avoidance might feel like you're doing everybody a favor. You are not. This is where we're gonna remember that clear is kind. And one approach of being avoidance, the other of ambushing them, it doesn't give people a chance to respond and to really come through and like reset their nervous system. So if you're avoiding it, but you've given them a little bit of a teaser on it, that wondering of what you're talking about is turning probably into resentment or disengagement. And you're the one who's contributing to that. That's part of the ambush. So if they're if you're a well-meaning leader who tries to then be direct and just delivers the feedback without warning or setup or any runway, it's gonna hit someone like a brick. That person is on the receiving end of that and they're gonna shut down because all of a sudden this feels like it's some sort of threat. So you're not, you're giving feedback, but they're not receiving the feedback. They're trying to survive the feedback. And then while you're walking away thinking you've handled it, they're walking away trying to remember anything you said because they can't, their brain can't handle it because they weren't in a preparation for knowing that this was the conversation that we were having, right? So neither approach builds trust. It doesn't drive performance, it actually impacts performance. And again, like I said, it's going to erode culture. So what do you do instead? I'm gonna say you ask for permission. Now, before you roll your eyes and say, But if I'm the boss, why do I have to ask for permission? It's you're asking for permission where you're checking with the person to know, is this a good time? We're gonna have this conversation, but whether we have it right this minute or whether we schedule it for tomorrow, we're gonna have the conversation. So you're not giving up your agency as a leader. What you are doing is extending the courtesy to the other person that they have a moment to function. They might be like, uh, I do want to talk with you about this, but I got to get my kid from school and I got to leave right now, or I'm gonna miss, you know, the the pickup time, right? It's not the time to be dropping it on them. They're not gonna hear you anyway. So just pausing and saying something like, hey, you got a minute? I want to share something I'm seeing. Or, hey, you know, may I give you some feedback? One thing I always say in coaching, in my coaching practice with people is I'll say to them, may I make an observation? Because they might be like, Yeah, I don't really want your opinion, right? Coaching is an opinion, it's guiding you through your best, your best thoughts, your best brain, your life experience, and how to create the experience that you want based on the goal you want. So that would be opinion giving, right? I'm making an observation. They may or may not want it, but it gives somebody a chance to take a beat, to take a pause. And again, before you roll your eyes and think this sounds super soft, or there's like a lot of hand holding here. It's the psychology here that I have always found fascinating. So when you ask permission, you give the other person a moment to have agency. You give them there's like a signal that the conversation is about to happen. It's not an ambush. Their nervous system gets a beat to prepare. There may even be a teeny pause when um that shift gives an opportunity for someone to be opened and not defensive. And it's about who you are as a leader. We don't want to sneak attack somebody, right? It also is saying, like, I respect you enough to ask. And again, we're going to have this conversation, but whether it's today or within the next 48 hours, that can then be negotiated. But you're giving them a chance to pause and not dumping on them just because you have the authority, right? It's treating people on your team and your colleagues like a professional because you also want to be looked upon as a strategic professional. And you're a professional who gives people a heads up. So here's a framework that I would suggest you, you know, making it yours, right? I always say, like jilify something, like make it yours what feels right. But the first thing you're gonna say is, um, hey, do you have a few minutes? I want to share some feedback on the meeting, right? And if they look alarmed or they slammed or they say they're emotionally fried, again, opportunity to reschedule it. Um, they might say, like, can we do this later? I'm under deadline, I gotta get this out, right? Respect it. Like that alone that that person gets to push back, that's gonna shock people and actually change the way the conversation is going to go, even if it's within the next 24 hours. Step two, you have to be specific, not general. This is not the time to give fade feedback. You need to be more strategic. Like no one knows what to do with that, right? Just tell them what to do. You wanna be thinking through specific feedback. You know, listen, in the last two meetings, you presented that data without a clear opinion or a recommendation moving forward. And it didn't land well. People didn't know what to do with it. I need you to really pull through and finish the sentence as to what that feedback is, and that is going to help the recipients of that information know what to do with that data. When you give feedback that's direct like that, and gives clarity, your team or the person you're talking to is going to realize how that lands differently and that it's something that they can actually work through and work towards. And then they know they can come back to you with potentially discussing how you're going to prepare for that presentation or the data that they're giving in the room, right? You're creating an ally here with the person and you're not squishing the illumination in their soul. Step three, I want you to lead with why you're bringing it up. Listen, I'm telling you this because I believe you're capable of more and I know that you can get there. But what I'm seeing is because we're not giving the data with a recommendation, the team is getting confused, and there's a possibility here that you're going to lose trust and credibility with your peers, right? That's what you want to say. You're giving context. When you give context, it completely changes how the feedback lands because then it doesn't feel as personal. It's personal. Your name is all over it, right? For the recipient, but it feels less personal when you give context. And step four then is check for understanding. After you've said what you've said to them, ask them, what did you hear on this? Right. We're not being condescending, we're not um, we're not being in a lot of drama, right? Feedback gets filtered off often through a lot of noise and emotion, and you want to make sure it landed. So there's a before and an after. So if you're thinking without a permission slip and you're just your presentation isn't, you know, what you said today didn't hit the mark. You need stronger recommendations. Boom. Whoa, that's intense, right? With the permission slip, looks like this. Hey, do you have a few minutes? I want to go through something that I observed in today's meeting in the last couple of presentations. You're bringing great data, but you're stopping short of the recommendation and it's really underselling your strategic thinking. I would like to help you fix that because I believe this is costing you your visibility. It's the same message, but has a completely different experience. One lands and the other one sticks out for the wrong reasons. And you're again creating fracture where the person isn't going to trust you if you're the leader. All right, let's look at the other side of it. You are receiving the information. We're gonna flip this table. You're in a position where, you know, nobody's really giving you clear direction and they're not being specific. Let's just say this is your scenario. And all of a sudden, you get feedback without warning. Their first instinct, I'm gonna say, is probably to shut down, or you go into explanation mode. You want to explain yourself, you want to correct the record, you may want to tell them everything, you want to drag them through all the context, and now they're in like the undertow of what you're saying. Uh, you know, they're missing the context, they're missing the circumstances. There's 17 reasons why, they're not seeing the big picture, right? All of this is normal. If your brain works this way, welcome to being human. This is what our brains do. But it makes you look like someone who can't take feedback because based on this example, you can't get take feedback, right? The other side of it is you shut down, right? You're nodding along, you're saying nothing. You may even walk around the room, you may have nervous energy, you may want to pick up your phone, right? All of these are normal, typical reactions we have. Um, afterwards, you might bend to a colleague, you might call a friend and be like, you know, can you believe, right? But all this means in this scenario is nothing happens. In the first scenario, I'm defensing, it means I can't take feedback. In the second scenario, nothing happens because the feedback loop is totally broken before it even started. Here's the reframe: feedback, even if it is clunky and poorly delivered, even if it is ambush style, all of that is your job as the receiver is not to evaluate the delivery. Listen, I will have enough conversations with people about intent versus impact. In this case, if you are the receiver, it is your best chance of working through that feedback by separating the data from the tone or the or the intent was pure, but the delivery was messy as hell. That's what you want to do. You want to really not evaluate the delivery. Your job is to find the signal, right? So that's the leadership move. That's the leadership identity, that's your leadership presence in real time is the ability to stay regulated when someone is giving you information that you didn't ask for, that you didn't see coming. And that is the skill that is going to separate people from growth who grow from people who kind of sit still and stagnate, right? So the four things that I would suggest you do when the feedback catches you off guard is one, you're gonna buy yourself some time by going silent, just taking a minute, right? You don't have to respond immediately to the feedback. What I would respond to is the overarching words. Okay. All right. Thanks for bringing this to my attention. I want to make sure I'm really hearing you. So I'm gonna sit with this for a day and get back to you tomorrow. That's what we're asking for. That's maturity. It gives your nervous system a time to come back online before you stay something you regret. The other thing you can do if this is happening like in a formal job interview and you didn't expect to be get ambushed or get blindsided like this, you can even say something like, um, hey, you know, is it okay if I take some notes? I want to, I wanna jot this down as we're going through it. Um, in that case, depending on the culture in which you work in, I would probably recommend pen and paper because if you're getting feedback and all of a sudden you pick up your phone and you're sitting there typing and you're like in your notes app, or you like whip out your laptop. You don't want to be like this in the middle of the experience and actually have them be like, are they listening to me or have they just gone to check their email? So asking to take notes, asking clarifying questions before you actually respond. Hey, um, okay, can you give me a specific example? This does two things, right? It gets you better information and it gives you a beat to breathe. You are not challenging them, you're giving yourself a chance. Like again, I feel all of my stress in my upper chest and throat area. It's giving me an opportunity to separate the delivery from the data. And maybe again, that feedback was delivered terribly. The timing might have been awful. Um, maybe you want to send that person a copy of this podcast, right? But whatever happens, none of that changes if you're lost in the feeling or you're lost in the um the way they expressed it versus the the the intent versus the impact, right? Looking at the data versus separating the delivery. So I want you to close the roop when you've had time to process, go back to them, right? Maybe shoot them an email the next day and say, hey, do you have time to set up so we can talk through this? I've been thinking about what you've shared. And then when you do meet with the person, why don't you find an iota of truth? It can be 0.001% of truth. But the way you grow as a leader and the way you work on your own leadership identity and your own leadership presence is you said, you know, I've been thinking about what you've shared. And here's what I'm going to do differently based on it. This one gives you the simple follow-up and it shows the person that, you know what, you're not someone who got defensive or got quiet or went quiet and then didn't follow up. You're someone who takes feedback and does something with it. And that's what's going to get you noticed. The bigger picture and what ties both sides of these things together is that feedback only works when both people are treating it like a tool and not a weapon. It gives the givers who ask permission to create the conditions for a real conversation. And it gives the receivers who want to stay curious instead of defensive. It makes them people who are able to have an honest conversation to stay opened and to be able to grow as a result, right? When both these things are happening on the same team, that's when culture actually shifts. That's when people start dreading feedback and they start trusting it. That's when, you know, growth actually stops being a talking point and actually becomes a tangible performance where we can measure it, right? Something starts to actually shift. And as I say, it starts with that permission slip and it ends with the team that really tells each other the truth, again, respectfully, giving us a chance to respond and to receive and give and doing it through a lens that is more calm and more in your leadership presence, right? So I'm gonna give you two challenges this week. And you get to pick your seat at the table. If you're the giver, I want you to find a moment to try this tactic of using the permission slip before you give feedback. Notice how the conversation changes. And if you're the receiver, the next time you get feedback and if it catches you off guard, I want you to try buying yourself something, um, a little bit of time in that case, buying yourself time before you respond. And you'll see what happens when you separate the delivery from the data. And as always, if you've got a story, whether it is bad or awkward or surprisingly great, you can come find me on LinkedIn because I want to hear about it. I read everything. Also, I encourage you to share this episode with someone who wants to hear it and needs it and from both sides. And I always want to hear from you. You can also email me at hello at Jill BriffinCoaching.com. I get back to everyone. I love hearing your emails and your comments on the podcast and the episode because it helps us get the word out and helps us see what you're enjoying. All right, friends, have a great week and be intentional. Ask for permission and always, always, always be kind. All right, I'll see you soon.