Video Transcript: Feedback

Being an effective manager, we're looking at tasks, task three, feedback Hebrews 10:24, and let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds, not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the day approaching, the ingredients of feedback. Number one, spur. The word spur comes from a term used in horseback riding. I don't know if we really use spurs today, but back in the days when people used horses to get around, to get them going, people actually had these little pokey things that they attached to their boots, and if they wanted the horse to go, they would poke them. I think we're a little more humane now, but you'll still see at a horse race, the jockey riding the horse will have a little whip, and they're smacking the horse to get him going. I don't think Paul is encouraging us to actually whip one another to get going. But we do need kind of the encouragement that comes in sort of a negative way. I mean, even kids with video games, you're trying to learn this video game and your character dies, or your character fails in some way, and that hurts a little bit. And every time you fail and it hurts, you sort of don't want to experience that again, and so you pay attention the next time, or you try to learn how to do it a little bit better. And that happens so feet this negative feedback teaches us to do it the right way. In church, when I'm trying to plan something, an event where I have all kinds of people coming to this event, or someone in my church wants to plan something where the whole church is supposed to show up, and they do the planning in a poor way, and they don't let people know, and they don't talk to the right people, and then the event bombs. It just fails. You know, three people showed up for the entire event. That hurts. And it's like a it's like a punishment, and you know, you don't have to do that too many times to realize that maybe there should be a different way. I planned on spring cleanup, and I had the feeling that a lot of people weren't going to come. I mentioned it on a Sunday morning. Hey, we're going to have our Big Spring Clean Up next Saturday. Please come if you can. But I didn't think people would really come, and so I didn't really go for it. I did really plan it well. I didn't call key people to make sure that they were going, and then they would make sure other people were going, and it turned out that very few people did show up. I mean, I was thinking, that's what would happen, and that's what happened. Because I was thinking that well, that that sort of, that sort of hurt, that that told me, you know, if we do this next year, I have to be, I have to be more involved, or this thing isn't going to work. So it was like, it was like, negative feedback. A second ingredient of feedback is encouragement. It lets you know that you're on the right track. That's this is how kids learn when they do something and then someone says, Good job. They realize that's the thing to do. Video games give you encouragement, because they let you go to the next level. And when you get to the next level and you're successful, then you get to go to the next level. And at each level, it's like the game itself is encouraging you. And software people develop these games so that they do that. But sometimes, as people, as managers, we don't do that. We get people to do things, and then they do something, and then we don't say anything. And people are insecure, especially when they're trying something new. You get them to do something. Hey, I'd like you to do the prayer here on Sunday morning, and then they do it, and they're extremely vulnerable. They don't know if they did well or they didn't do well. And then no one says anything negatively or positively. And so they question whether they're doing it. So little words of encourage. But just let people know that they're on the right track. You would think that people would just know, but the truth is, without someone saying, Good job, you don't always know that you did a good job. Third ingredient of feedback is proximity. You have to be around people. The passage in Hebrews that we quoted at the beginning of this session, some some have give up. Have given up, meeting together. The only way you can be in a in a situation where people can give you encouragement and challenge is, if you're with a group of people that's meeting regularly, that's the way sports teams work. You meet with this group, you practice with this group, you have games with this group. And over time, the group sort of lets you know what you're not doing well, and the group sort of lets you know what you are doing well, and eventually you get better and better. Number four, a habit. Some have stopped meeting together, and they've stopped this habit. We need habits of being together, habits of being around people that can give us the feedback so that we know what we're doing. Why the manager must give feedback. Number one, it's how everyone learns everything. Bowling, I don't know if in your culture, you have this thing called bowling. Bowling is where you take a big ball and you throw it down a lane, and you try to knock down these pins that are set up. I know in Canada, they have five pin bowling. Here in the United States, I think all we have is 10 pin bowling. But you take a ball and you throw it, maybe, I don't know, 25, 40, feet down this alley, and the goal is to hit all these pins down. And so you throw the ball down, and you hit the pins. And then you see two standing, and you know you hit eight down. And then you get a second chance to hit those two pins that remain. And then you keep track of how many pins you knocked down in this old whole scoring system. But let's say you went bowling and they didn't let you see how many pins you knocked down, or they didn't let you hear when the ball hit the pins. So you'd be taking this big ball and you'd just be throwing it down an alley and you'd have no idea what happened, and you could keep throwing the ball over and over and over again. You could throw the ball 100 times down this alley, and you'd have no idea whether you're getting anywhere, whether you're improving or not improving. So you wouldn't change anything. It's the feedback that tells you what you're doing, and the feedback makes you adjust. I throw the thing down. I hit one pin down. Okay. I got to do something different than I did the last time. And so you adjust a little over and then you work on that, and then you work on something else. And little by little by little, over time, all that feedback hones you in on this game. If you're playing soccer, and you're kicking the ball, and you're learning how to kick the ball. If there's no one to catch it, or there's no goal or net to hit it in, you'd have no idea how well you are doing. So feedback is really how we learn everything. A kid learns how to walk. They learn how to walk because they're trying to do it. And then they fall down. The feedback is falling down. And then the next time they do it a little bit differently, and they get four steps, the next time they get eight steps, it's all feedback, saying that I'm on the right track or I should do a little adjustment. We learn virtually everything. And we learn how to speak, we learn how to talk, we learn how to write, we learn how to play instruments, we learn how to be with people. We learn sports, we learn work. Everything we learn is because we get some kind of feedback telling us how we're doing. Number two, it helps people feel like they're part of a team. I played on a softball team when I was growing up, and we had a coach that was hard. I mean, he practiced us hard. We had to do everything right. We had to hit the cutoff man. We had to run the bases a certain way. We had to slide the proper way. If we didn't, we had to do it again. He was a hard, disciplined person who gave us feedback on everything, and we all loved it. We loved it because we were a ragtag group of people, but under his leadership, his management, his feedback under on all the things that we're doing. We improved. We you know, after four years in fact, we went in our league, we went undefeated, and then we went to the tournament, and we won the tournament, and we were just this little little softball team from a tiny little school, and all because he gave us enough feedback made it seem important. The practices were as much fun as the game, and we felt like we were part of something special. So you're trying to run a church, you're trying to run an organization, and you have people, maybe some of them are volunteering. Let them know how they're doing, let them know when they're doing it good and encourage them, but also let them know when it's not right. Sometimes, when you put that challenge out there, people respond even more to that than the encouragement. Number three, feedback gives everyone a sense of progress. You know, I was throwing the ball, you know, the bowling ball, and I used to hit on average, seven of them. Now I can hit them all down. Or, you know, the video game, you get to this level, and then you get to the next level. You're already on the seventh level, and you feel the progress. I used to be on number one, then number two, and then it took me a long time to get past three, but that was, that was a few weeks ago. Now I'm on number seven. My associate pastor generally only preaches 6, 7, 8, times a year. And before when he would preach, he would get real nervous about it, and he'd spend a lot of time on his sermon. And then, you know, he is a bit hesitant when he did it, but this past summer, he's been preaching, actually more than that I have, and I can tell his sermons are getting better and better and better, because he has to do them often, and people are giving him feedback, and he's feeling more comfortable about it, and he senses, I think, in himself, he's sensing that he's actually getting better. And when you feel like you're getting better at something, you work even harder at it. I love playing ping pong, and I was pretty good at ping pong. I thought I was pretty good at ping pong. And then we got this guy from Germany coming to our church, and so I started playing with him, and he just just annihilated me at ping pong. And because he was so good, I started practicing, practicing more and more, and I just played him last night, and I I won. I actually won a couple games. I mean, I'll play with him for three hours and maybe win one single game, but I won two games yesterday, and I feel like, you know, that I'm improving, but it's the feedback. It's because I won, it's because I, I, you know, was able to hit the ball back and forth more than I was before that I sensed this progress. Why the manager must give feedback? Number four, it appeals to our need for a challenge. I think people get bored in some ways. People like familiarity. They like things that they can do. I am used to preaching. I know how to preach. I can do it, so next week, I have to preach. It's not a big deal. Like people like to do things they know that they can do. And so a lot of times, people don't like change on the one hand, but on the other hand, if you're always doing stuff that you know you can do, it's the same old stuff, you get kind of bored. And yes, you can do it, yes, you're confident in it, but you start not even paying attention. It's those little challenges that keep you going forward. I noticed that my wife leads the worship team, and I used to be on the worship team too, and finally I said to her, you know, I just don't want to go because, you know, we're singing the same songs. I already know these songs, you know, I need a challenge. I need something that's different. I need a part that I don't know, or something really hard, because, you know, if I'm just singing the same old stuff, you know, I love singing, I love being a part of it. But eventually, you need that challenge. You need something that you're not sure that you're able to do, and then someone challenges you, and then you're able to do it. Number five, why the manager must give feedback. It is how we keep score in any and every endeavor. Can you imagine people just going out and, you know, playing soccer, and just kicking the ball around. And maybe you do that, and you enjoy kicking the ball around, but part of the enjoyment of kicking the ball around is, you know, that it's part of this bigger thing called a game, and that there's scoring, and that scoring is relatively or not very often. And so, you know, there's a lot of people in the United States who don't like soccer because the scoring is not that often, but the rest of the world understands that. That's what makes it so exciting. I mean, when a with, when someone scores a goal, it's like every, every, everyone becomes unglued. There's pandemonium in the stands because it's, it's, it's such a rare thing. So it's how we it's how we keep score. The feedback tells us whether it's, it's in the marketplace and you make something, you have a product. Is it any good? You don't know until someone buys it, until you succeed, you have a church, your plant, you're planting this church. Is it any good? Is it any you know? Do people appreciate it? You don't know until people start coming and your attendance tells you, yeah, I guess this was good, and people came back the next week. So the feedback tells us it's how we keep score, and keeping score is what tells us whether we're on the right track, whether we're being successful or not. How the manager should give the feedback. So you're in charge of people, maybe volunteers, maybe staff, people. How does the manager give the feedback? What should he do? Number one, be specific and detailed. As I said, my associate has been doing the sermon lately. So a week ago he did a, I thought, an excellent sermon, but I didn't just come up to him and say, you know, your sermon today was really good, because what does that mean? He'll just think, you know, he'll just think whatever he thinks about why it's good. And I wanted to know it was good because there's certain things, because if I tell him those certain things, then he'll keep doing those certain things. So I told him specifically, your sermon was really good because you told three stories, and there were three very good stories. And number two, your sermon was really good because it seemed like you knew what you were going to say. It wasn't like you were dependent on your notes. You were enthusiastically trying to tell us something. And number three, you looked at the people. You looked into their eyes when you were telling them specific things. And number four, you let your emotion you know, some of it was personal, and you let that come through, and I think that's why it connected with people. So be specific with your deed, with your feedback, and give the details of why you liked it. Number two, in your feedback, be more encouraging than spurring. A lot of times, it's the opposite. I watch parents all the time. Parents are always correcting and directing their children. Look, don't do that. Stop doing that. Behave. Sit down, be still. They're always correcting. And there's a lot of things to correct with kids, but, but they'll have five corrective kind of words and maybe one word of encouragement, and it really needs to be the other way around. For every one word of correction, for every spur that you give someone, you really need to give five encouraging words, or you're discouraging the person. We need to really switch things around. People will not hear your correction. They will not hear the spurring words that you say unless they know that you care for them. You have to say enough encouraging words so that when you speak the hard word, they know that you still care and they'll listen. Number three, private spurring. If you're going to say something negative or a corrective thing to someone, don't do it in public. Don't embarrass someone. Hey, you did this wrong. Don't do it in public. Do it in private. Take them aside. You can always wait. Make a note of it. You don't have to correct them at the very moment. Number four, public encouragement, see if you're going to encourage, say it in front of people, because that, you know is honoring. You know other people hear this and they feel honored because other people heard the encouraging words that you said. So public encouragement, private spurring, number five in your feedback, let consequences be part of your feedback. I see this with parents all the time. Parents are always perhaps yelling at their kids, trying to get their kids to do something, and yelling speaking loudly does not make people do anything. People are not motivated because you raise your voice because your voice is louder. People are motivated when there are consequences coming, either positive or negatively, and there's two kinds of consequences. The first. Kind is natural, natural consequences. Proverbs 6:27, can a man scoop fire in his lap without his clothes being burned? And the answer is no. In other words, if you play with fire, you will get burned, and if you get burned by the fire that you're playing with, I don't need to say anything, okay. I can say, Look, you shouldn't play with fire. You might get burned, and then the person does play with fire and they get burned. I don't need to say anything, because the punishment is natural. The punishment comes whether I say anything or not. I don't have to correct those kinds of things. Remember, I used to play softball, and I was the shortstop, and I remember, you know, someone would hit a grounder to me, and I'd pick up the ball, and then I have to throw the ball to first base. And I remember throwing the ball, and I threw it right over the first baseman's head, so it was an error. The person is safe on first you know, then we go through the whole game, and then after the game, remember my father coming up to me and said, you kind of overthrew that one to first base. I remember thinking, Yeah, I did. And, you know, I really didn't need you to tell me that I knew that. And the embarrassment of throwing it over the first baseman's head, causing an error maybe eventually they scored. I don't know if we won the game or not, but the losing face in front of my own friends and my family and everybody, I mean, I made a mistake, and I made it publicly. Obviously, I know that everyone around me knows that I already got the negative feedback that I need, and I don't need any more negative feedback. It's natural. And if you, if you just let the natural consequences of people's mistake or the good things speak to them, then you don't have to do it. If you do it, if you add to the natural consequences, then people just get angry at you, and they don't learn a thing. That's a mistake parents make all the time. They they add to the kid is already feeling bad. You don't need to add anything to it, and if you do, you will take away from the learning experience. So there's natural consequences, you don't have to do anything, but then there's logical consequences. II Thessalonians. 3:10, Paul says this to the church at Thessalonica, even when we were with you, we gave you this rule, the one who is unwilling to work shall not eat. Now that is a logical consequence, if you don't work, then we're not feeding you. I mean, it makes sense, it's related, but it's not natural. In other words, you could not work and still eat. I mean, that's perfectly possible. It's something that you have to impose on someone. So if you're all doing something and then someone refuses to do it, you can say, well, then you don't get the enjoyment of whatever it is that we're putting here together. But I have to impose that on a person. But it's not some weird thing. I'm not I'm not imposing something that doesn't make any sense. So when we give feedback to people and we impose punishments that don't make any sense, sometimes, as parents, we do that you do one thing and it's a mistake, and then the parent says, For the next two weeks, you have to sit in your room when the thing you did has nothing to do with your room or sitting in your room. Then, then a person's like, I don't get it. I don't get how these two the punishment. I don't get how the punishment fits the crime. So it has to be a logical thing that okay, it makes sense. It's being imposed on me, and it's logical. Well, how the managed should be allowed to give feedback of their own. So instead of you always having to tell people that you're managed, you know, either something positive or negative, let them do it. Number one, the manager should ask them managed to give their own feedback. So how do you think you did? So I come to my associate. He preached the sermon. I go, Well, what do you think he did? Tell me what you think you did well, and generally they get it right. Tell me what you think you could have improved. And you know what? Generally they get that right. And guess what? They're open to their own feedback. That they might not be open to what I have to say, but they want to be truthful enough to themselves. And so now they're open to their own feedback. Number two, the manager should ask the manager to give feedback on the manager's feedback. Okay, you know, I'm trying to encourage you. I'm trying to help you succeed at whatever it is that you're doing. And as a manager, I sometimes encourage you, and sometimes I have this in to do a little bit of spurring or correcting. How am I doing? Am I actually helping you or not helping you? A lot of people have negative views about the manager. Manager's always finding me and correcting me. Manager is always trying to, you know, see what I'm doing wrong. He doesn't realize how hard things are. He doesn't recognize the contribution that I make. A lot of people, a lot of people in our organization do not like the manager. Manager is always on everyone's game. So why come to the people your manager and saying, so how am I doing? Listen to what they say and see if you can't put that into practice. Feedback is only as good as it is accurate. So again, being specific, if I just give feedback in general, yeah, in general, you're doing a good job. Or in general, you know, you could do better. People don't know what to do with that. What exactly should I correct? I remember someone coming up to me and saying, you know, your sermons are not very good. I don't get anything out of your sermon. So I say, Okay, so can you tell me more specifically? Can you give me an example? Well, how do you expect me to remember, you know, from one week to another? Well, so you can't give me one example. I can't think of an example right now. Okay, so I don't really know what I should change. I don't know what I should do about it. I hear what you're saying that you're not getting anything out of it, but I don't know why you're not getting anything out of it, and I don't know what I can do to change that, because you're not going you're not giving me anything. Oh, well, we can't talk about this. And they walked away. It's like, okay, how am I supposed to correct anything if I don't know what it is. So you have to be accurate. It has to be something that you can say, rather than just a general blanket statement. Number two, feedback is only as good as it's given with the end goal in mind. Sometimes we give feedback to one another, and we do it because it makes us feel good. Hey, you didn't do very good there. Or you could have done this, or I have an idea you should have said this, and it doesn't, you know, I just want to poke you. I just want to feel good about myself and give feedback, rather than a manager always has to have in mind the end goal is the betterment of that person I'm trying to manage. I am trying to help you succeed. I want you to succeed. My goal is not to put you down. My goal is not to build myself and put myself up. And I'm using you as the foil to be put up against. No, my goal is to lift you so that you do a good job, so that the organization and the purpose, you know, we're here, let's say we're a church. Our goal is to worship God, and our goal is to support those that go to this church in their walk with God, and our goal is to help people that don't have a walk with God, that's the whole point of everything that we're doing. And I'm trying to help you to become everything that God has in mind so that we can all do this better. That's the ultimate goal of any positive or negative feedback. So I'm giving you this with that ultimate goal in mind.