Human Resources: Thought Leaders, December 21, 2006

Thought Leaders
Industry Gurus Live

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Thought Leader: Joseph R. Folkman on "The Power of Feedback - Turning Feedback into Personal and Professional Change"

The process of review and feedback is common in most organizations. What do employees do with the information? Most don't know what to do.
Performance Specialist Joseph Folkman shares 35 principles that help most turn feedback into long-term change.

For business leaders and their organizations, as well as professionals in any industry, listening to and acting on feedback is the best and most effective way to become more competent, capable, and effective. In The Power of Feedback, performance specialist Joseph Folkman presents thirty-five principles that help people and organizations turn feedback into real, effective, and long-term change. He shows you how to determine which feedback instruments will work for you and how to make the best use of their results.

KE: Joe, you have written and co-written several books. What prompted you to write this particular book?

JF: I had been giving people feedback for 20 years. The process is fascinating. Early on, when I was in graduate school, I worked with some of the founders of this field as my professors Bill Dyer, Gene Dalton. They created one of the first 360 feedback surveys and we started giving 360 feedback and looking at people's reactions. I thought
that with all that feedback, I would see more change, but sometimes people were fairly dysfunctional in terms of how they reacted to the feedback, their approach to dealing with it, and their whole attitude about it. The book is really a compilation of experiences and understanding those experiences. I wrote a book several years before
this, called Turning Feedback into Change and since then I found some new insights that I wanted to communicate, so this new book contains those, as well some of the long-lasting principles, and I've called this one The Power of Feedback.

KE: Joe, what is "feedback"?

JF: It's any kind of information about your performance. It could be verbal, nonverbal, written, or numeric. And you get it even when you are giving a presentation. One of the things I do is try to look in people's faces see and what they are telling me. If they are sleeping, that's certainly feedback. So, it's the transmission of this information and the acceptance of it that makes it feedback. Ideally, you're interested in receiving it and then, doing something with it.

KE: I think when we hear someone say that they want to give us "feedback," we immediately assume it's going to be negative.

JF: We do, and one of the fascinating things we found is that people are often as blind to their strengths as they are to their weaknesses.

KE: You say in your book that without feedback, we are flying blind. Tell us more about that.

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Karen Elmhirst, Co-host, Thought Leaders Live

Karen Elmhirst is always on the lookout for research and best practices in the areas of leadership, leadership development and organizational learning. Karen writes articles and interviews thought leaders in order to provide you with the information and resources you need to help you build great organizations. Karen is also an executive coach, working with leaders to help them identify their personal definitions of success and to live lives that support those intentions.

Karen has had experience in a wide range of industries and has held senior level positions in both marketing and sales. Karen has also been active as a writer, trainer, facilitator and communication coach. Her articles have appeared in the IHRIM Journal and Leadership Excellence as well as on HR.com. Karen graduated with Hons. Bachelor of Commerce degree from U.B.C in Vancouver, Canada. She completed her coaching training at The Coaches Training Institute.

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Richard Roi on Do Leadership and Culture Really Impact the Bottom Line?

January 8, 2007
1:00 - 2:00 p.m. ET

In this live webcast you will learn:

What are transformational leadership practices and are they
associated with the long-term financial performance of a company?
What are change leadership practices and are they associated with the long-term financial performance of a company?
What is change leadership?
What are the elements of corporate culture and can they be changed?
Do adaptive cultures outperform others?

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