Feedback Season
With another reporting and tax season successfully completed, CEO Denny Schleper introduces the season of feedback and shares a life lesson on giving and receiving.
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Transcript
NARRATOR: Welcome to “Own the Promise,” a CLA podcast created to share what guides every decision we make and every relationship we cultivate. With another reporting and tax season successfully completed, CEO Denny Schleper introduces the season of feedback and shares a life lesson on giving and receiving.
SCHLEPER: Hello once again, CLA family. I wanted to take sometime to congratulate all of those individuals across the firm that put in tremendous efforts for our reporting and tax season that we just finished. It was an incredible start to 2017, and all of your efforts really paid off extremely well not only in the results CLA is having but ultimately the on the benefits you’re adding to all of our client base.
I also wanted to just wish all of those that are entering into their busy season the best of luck to do the same. You know,what was on my mind today was really a lesson that I was given many years ago, and it was really a life lesson around giving and receiving. It was even described to me at that time as it was the secret to life. The ability to know how to give in life and truly the ability to know how to receive in life.
These are difficult things. Some people in the world are very,very good givers. Many times,those same givers may not be the best at receiving, and it really is critical that, in life, we learn how to be great givers and we learn how to be great at receiving gifts and receiving the benefits that are given to us. Why is this on my mind today?
Well, we’re really entering into a season of giving and receiving, and that season is the season of feedback, feedback to all of our people within the CLA family. You know, I read a survey the other day of different issues that are common amongst all companies across the country, probably across the world. The number one thing that ends up on everyone’s list is this issue of feedback.
It’s a problem no matter where you go, and it’s an issue and a challenge within CLA as well. Everyone struggles with this. The YET group, the Young Executive Team, they’ve been putting forth a lot of effort on how can we not only improve feedback within CLA, but how we can really make it part of our culture. Now really what they’re concentrating on in a lot of efforts today is really that first part and that’s the givers. Those people that should be giving proper feedback. We have a seminar on May 12th to hopefully help people understand what the career-building firm is, the role of the CLA career coach, and all types of tools and checklists that can help our people giving feedback, the givers in the firm, to become better givers of feedback.
You know, to the givers that are out there, those that should be providing proper feedback, please remember there’s only two reasons for feedback. One is, you’re trying to change, perhaps, the behavior or something to help that person improve, or the feedback is to reinforce what that person is doing. Really any other type of feed back probably is not beneficial in this process.
So I encourage all the givers out there, use some of the tools; take this seriously to make that feedback constructive and really, ultimately make it part of the culture of CLA. You know, I had an opportunity to speak with one of our people, probably in their late 20s, and they were struggling with some of this feedback issues across the firm. So, I really want to challenge the person on the other side of this equation and that’s the receiver.
For all of those receiving feedback, I’d just like to share that conversation that I had. I really tried to explain and help the person through that, all of us, when we receive feedback,there’s probably three different emotions that run through us. One, initially, is a truth factor. In other words, the information that’s being given to us, we have a tendency to want to question it and to say, “Is it accurate? Is it complete? Is it fair?”
The second emotion that we have is from the person giving us the feedback, the giver. Is that personality biased? And we sometimes want to look at the person giving the feedback and start judging that individual.
And the final emotion that we generally have is our identity. In other words, there’s kind of two things with our identity that is common to all of us as humans beings. And that is, first of all, we truly all have a desire to improve. We want to improve ourselves each and every day. That’s a pretty common element for all of us. But the second element, which sometimes can be contradicting to that, we also want to be accepted and we want to feel like we’re doing good. And those sometimes can contradict one another.
What I told this individual is, try not to fall into that trap of questioning the information. The feedback is what you’re requesting. It’s what I’ve described in many times, it’s a basic food group that we all have. We need that feedback. We need to get that feedback. Don’t let yourself question the information and block the real feedback. Also, try to eliminate this personality issue of where is this information coming from. Again, I think it’s going to block the great feedback that is trying to be communicated to really help you do that last piece, and that is improve.
So while we as CLA have to do a much better job at being givers throughout CLA, I think I’d also like to challenge all of us to be better receivers of that information and make sure that all of the feedback, as it becomes part of our culture in CLA, will truly ultimately do those basic things: change our behavior if it needs to be changed, reinforce our behavior if it should be reinforced, and then ultimately all of us improve as we continue on this journey of fulfilling the CLA promise.
Again, this season of giving and receiving, please CLA family take this seriously,and let’s just move this along as being part of the great culture at CLA.
Denny is the chief executive officer of CLA. As he goes about his duties related to the oversight of CLA’s direction, operations, expansion, and strategy, he is also an enthusiastic ambassador for the CLA Promise. He is fully committed to the firm’s position as a professional services firm that delivers integrated wealth advisory, outsourcing, and audit, tax, and consulting capabilities to help our clients succeed professionally and personally.
Great message! Very good reminders and life lessons on being open minded as we are giving and receiving feedback and as we are putting our career dreams into action plans!