Feedback That Works: Difficult Conversations Made Easier - Jacqualine Kay Raad

About the Guest

Jacqualine Kay Raad is a leadership and speechwriting consultant known for her proficiency in guiding individuals through moments of self-discovery. Her expertise spans critical areas such as presentation and negotiation skills, networking, leadership through coaching, and particularly, giving and receiving feedback. Her unique ability to identify and help resolve human interaction challenges stems from her deep-seated experience in human resources and her journey in personal development, especially focusing on emotional intelligence.

Key Takeaways:

• The significance of self-awareness in identifying and addressing personal blind spots is crucial for personal and professional growth.
• Jacqueline Raad introduces the "assertive feedback formula," which aids in delivering clear, impactful feedback without resorting to advice-giving.
• Relationship dynamics influence the reception of feedback; understanding these nuances can improve communication efficacy.
• "Whole body listening" is a vital skill that encourages full engagement in conversations, promoting deeper understanding and empathy.
• The value of emotional bank accounts in relationships underlines the necessity of balancing positive and negative interactions to foster trust and openness.

Notable Quotes:

• "The most dangerous quadrant is the blind spot quadrant, which is, you know this about me, but I don't know this about me."
• "You make the best speech you'll ever regret when you don't take the time to recover from feedback before re-engaging."
• "It's about acknowledging that it's okay to feel triggered when you're receiving feedback."
• "Imagine if we all did whole body listening to each other."
• "The cheapest and kindest thing—the greatest compliment—you could give to somebody is to listen to them with your whole body."

Resources:

• Dale Carnegie’s principles on appreciation from How to Win Friends and Influence People
• Seven Habits of Highly Effective Families by Stephen R. Covey
• Drawing on principles of Dale Carnegie, Joseph Greeny, Sheila Heen and Stephen Covey

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Transcript

0:00:00 - (Debbie Draybi): Welcome to another episode of Finding Sanctuary. I'm really excited that Nat's. I'm always excited when Nat's here, so I'm really excited. It's really wonderful always having you here, Nat, and sharing in our conversations together. And we've started a series around difficult conversations and thinking about things that. Topics that challenge us, things perhaps we want to avoid, particularly when they're areas that don't align with our views and the way we think. Or maybe they might even challenge our values.

0:00:32 - (Debbie Draybi): We had a wonderful conversation early on with Leonie around that, and now we've got another special guest.  I'm really excited to also introduce another guest who has some incredible leadership in this space, Jacqueline Raad. Jacqueline Raad works as a leadership and speech writing consultant, and she's gonna tell us a little bit about what that involves. So welcome, Jacqueline. Really excited to have you join us.

0:01:28 - (Jacqueline Raad): Thank you very much for having me. It's a pleasure. So what I do in this space is, as you said, I'm a leadership and speechwriting consultant. So I'm really there with a lot of people in moments of self discovery. So helping people uncover their blind spots. And this is in many different soft skill areas, such as presentation skills, negotiation skills, the way people network with each other, the way they lead via coaching, and in particular, one of the most popular areas that people come to speak to me about is how to give and receive feedback. So having those really difficult conversations.

0:02:02 - (Debbie Draybi): Oh, that's amazing. You know, just as you said it, I actually just had a conversation with my son this week who's learning how to drive, and he asked me what a blind spot is, and I had to explain it to him. And just as you said that, it got me thinking around. Obviously, I was telling him physically what a blind spot is. There's things that you can't see in your peripheral vision and how our. How our sort of brain is wired, but also how we position our eyes and why it is that you need to be very mindful of it and thinking about that cognitively. You know, we do have blind spots, and I wondered if you can elaborate by that. What do we mean?

0:02:38 - (Debbie Draybi): I think we have a good sense of what we mean by blind spots when we're driving. But what about with our thinking? What are some blind spots and things that do get in the way from letting us see, you know, and having full vision of whatever it is we might be experiencing?

0:02:52 - (Jacqueline Raad): It's a great question. So not all of us have amazing self awareness. There are things about ourself that are out there in the arena that everybody knows about us. And I know that about myself. And then you've got things about yourself that's a bit of a facade. So these are the things about myself that I don't tell you about. I know it, but you don't know. And then you've got the bit that's unknown. You don't know it about me. And I actually don't know it about myself either. And then the most dangerous quadrant is the blind spot quadrant, which is, you know this about me.

0:03:25 - (Jacqueline Raad): Yeah, but I don't know this about me. So I'm walking around thinking something about myself that everybody else sees me differently. And sometimes when those blind spots are brought up in crucial conversations and receiving it as feedback or someone is having to take that really hard plunge and give it as feedback. These are life changing conversations.

0:03:54 - (Debbie Draybi): Yeah, yeah. And thinking about that, what led you to this work? Like it's an area that I could see would involve a lot of tension and conversations that are difficult to manage. What attracted you to that? It sounds like, you know, it's pretty intense work that you do.

0:04:11 - (Jacqueline Raad): It kind of just fell into place. I started off doing a Bachelor of Human Resource Management. I was in corporate office, you know, doing the everyday HR kind of work. Had my children continue to do cert 4 in workplace TR and assessing. Realized that I love to get involved in workshops and guiding people in those moments of self discovery, particularly in leadership skills. So I started running workshops, started learning how to do coaching, was mentoring, and I started giving people feedback more often. And I found that I had a really good knack for reading the room.

0:04:46 - (Jacqueline Raad): I can read a room and I can tell things about individuals that are kind of holding them back from reaching their potential. And then there'll be moments where people caught on that and they'd be like, Jacqueline, do you mind giving me some feedback around this? And I'm like, sure, let's have that conversation. And I just started mentoring and coaching people more and more. But more specifically, I've done a lot of reading on giving and receiving feedback and I've lived it Myself, you know, I am very opinionated and I tend to give feedback probably more than I should and more than I realize that I'm actually doing.

0:05:27 - (Jacqueline Raad): We are actually giving feedback nonstop. And this is probably why it's becoming more and more interesting and there's more demand on it at the moment. People are giving feedback to each other constantly at work, people are giving feedback to each other at home. Husbands, wives, children, children to their parents, parents to their children. People are giving feedback at schools, parents to the teachers, teachers to the parents.

0:05:51 - (Jacqueline Raad): Then at work it's non stop. And what I'm finding is we tend to give feedback differently depending on who we're with. So for myself, I can have the blunder of doing things ever so carefully at work and using the right wording and then I get home and sometimes that guard can come down and instead of being really careful and using the formulas that I know how to use, I can end up coming out just a bit blunt.

0:06:16 - (Jacqueline Raad): And I find a lot of people are like that too when I speak to them and mentor them through it.

0:06:21 - (Debbie Draybi): So when you talk about formulas, tell us a little bit about that. What's your feedback formula? I think as you said, we do it all the time and mostly we don't do it well. So really good to get some guidance from you around. What is the feedback formula?

0:06:37 - (Jacqueline Raad): So when it comes to giving feedback, I like to use an assertive feedback formula method. So this is where you simply state, when you do this, it makes me feel. And as a result this is a consequence of it. There are so many blunders that come in when people go to give feedback in that beautiful formula. We can try and give advice when we're giving feedback. There's a difference between advice and giving feedback.

0:07:05 - (Jacqueline Raad): And we can do it in a compliment sandwich and confuse people a bit and say, you do this so well, but if you would do this, it would be even better. However, like I said, you're great. That means nothing. It's a bit confusing. They did a study where they videotaped hundreds of leaders giving feedback and they found three things tended to keep on happening. And the first is they would shoot them between the eyes with the feedback or they would ask questions to get them to give the feedback to themselves, or they would just waffle on.

0:07:42 - (Jacqueline Raad): And we're all guilty of that. We all do that when we're giving feedback. Or sometimes we avoid giving the feedback in general because it can be too hard because we don't know what the consequences could be or how someone's going to react to the feedback.

0:07:57 - (Natalie Moujalli): So, Jacqueline, I'm a little bit confused because I.

0:08:01 - (Debbie Draybi): That's your feedback, isn't it? Isn't it?

0:08:05 - (Jacqueline Raad): I'm receiving feedback already.

0:08:07 - (Natalie Moujalli): You're not confusing me. But what I've learned versus what I'm hearing right now is a little bit confusing. So from the psychological aspect, it's like when we're meant to deliver information, it's best to do this kiss slap kiss technique, right? So make you feel really good and then give this negative feedback and then make you feel really good again and kind of make it go away. Like not, not let it have too much of an impact.

0:08:33 - (Natalie Moujalli): But what you're saying is not really.

0:08:35 - (Jacqueline Raad): Yeah, because when you give me the kiss slap kiss, guess what? I've forgotten the kisses. The kisses are gone. Because I've heard this bit in the middle that has. But I was assessed about 10 years ago in an emotional intelligence assessment just to see where my leadership skills are at in terms of emotional assessment. Because guess what? The great leaders, you don't need technical skills and you don't need knowledge. You just need good heart now.

0:09:03 - (Jacqueline Raad): And so I started working on my emotional intelligence a long time ago so I could better read the room and I could better bring people along. And that emotional intelligence assessment, do you know what it told me? It said that I had a negative bias, which meant it didn't matter how much good was said to me. All I heard was the negative. And I could think about it and it would play in my head constantly.

0:09:28 - (Jacqueline Raad): When I grew up, I hated being in trouble. I did everything I could to never be in trouble. I never lied to my parents. I never got in trouble at school. And I. What I found is that when I hear the. But the negative feedback, I feel like I'm in trouble and it's the only thing I can focus on. And then I have to recover from that feedback. Why spoil the good things? The kiss kiss with slap in the middle.

0:09:58 - (Natalie Moujalli): Okay, so what you're saying is to keep them separate, to keep both aspects of feedback. But don't muddy the waters is what you're saying.

0:10:06 - (Jacqueline Raad): That's right. But guess what? Nobody gives the kiss kiss enough.

0:10:09 - (Debbie Draybi): That's true.

0:10:10 - (Jacqueline Raad): Dale Carnegie said I once went. I think he said I once went for seven days, seven nights. How many weeks without eating right? And he said it got easier as I went along. He said, but some people let their colleagues and their families go seven nights, seven weeks, sometimes seven years without appreciation that they deserve that kiss kiss feedback, that positive feedback that they deserve. We don't do it enough.

0:10:42 - (Jacqueline Raad): And in that book, seven Habits of Highly Effective Families, they say that people have this emotional bank account. So all we seem to do is we keep making withdrawals from people's emotional bank accounts. And then when it comes to giving negative feedback, there's not enough in that emotional bank account, they're going into deficit. And so we need to make more of a conscious effort to give that positive feedback, that kiss, kiss.

0:11:09 - (Jacqueline Raad): So when it comes to giving that negative feedback, people aren't going to have a negative bias. It's not going to feel like it's such a big deal. Their emotional bank account is comfortable and safe and full, and they're able to collect themselves and say, I'm safe. This is just a bit of negative feedback. I can see it for what it is and not what it isn't.

0:11:31 - (Natalie Moujalli): It's funny, I'm getting this imagery culturally, the kiss, kiss. You know. You know how we kiss twice? One on either side. Yeah.

0:11:38 - (Debbie Draybi): Or three times. Three times or four. It depends on how recently you visited Lebanon.

0:11:42 - (Natalie Moujalli): And the slap really has no place there. So, I mean, sometimes it does, depending on where you are and what kind of context you're in. But it's that imagery of that welcoming, that love that we do so well in our culture.

0:11:57 - (Debbie Draybi): Sometimes a slap is when you're hearing it from someone else. You've just had, you know, this acknowledgement, this praise from someone, and then you hear something critical they've said that's, you know, doesn't fit how they've been treating you. I think that can be a big slap. And it happens quite a bit depending.

0:12:15 - (Natalie Moujalli): On the source that it comes from.

0:12:17 - (Debbie Draybi): Yeah. And I mean, as you said, like, it's difficult sometimes to give negative feedback, and perhaps it's easier to say it to someone else than directly to the source. And I think there's a bit of that in our community avoidance.

0:12:29 - (Natalie Moujalli): And that's what feeds the blind spot.

0:12:31 - (Debbie Draybi): Right.

0:12:32 - (Natalie Moujalli): Because if what you're saying is that if everyone's aware of a certain way that I am and I'm not aware of that way, then people not communicating to me what that is, and communicating to each other only enforces the blind spot, only enables the blind spot to get stronger and deeper and go for longer.

0:12:51 - (Jacqueline Raad): But guess what? We all do that every single week. We have conversations in confidence with people where we're sharing something that may be of a frustration, and we go, it's not a big deal. Please don't tell anybody. Yeah. And is that a right or wrong thing? Maybe not. For giving that feedback, though, could be a gift to someone. It's a gift to be able to uncover a blind spot. But it is so painful.

0:13:24 - (Jacqueline Raad): If I'm hurting, I'm learning. Yeah. And what I've realized is the more that I've tried uncovering my blind spots, like, as time goes on and I'm learning and I'm learning and I've learned that the more that I've learned, I learned I know absolutely nothing. I know nothing. And when it comes to receiving feedback as well from other people, you know, when it comes from a different source or someone's told someone and you found out, it can be quite challenging because you don't get to take that time to ask those questions, to uncover.

0:13:59 - (Jacqueline Raad): And there are so many different triggers that you can get when you receive feedback. I know myself. I've received all sorts of feedback. I receive feedback all the time in conversations that I have with people. And there are three main triggers that get us stressed out. And the first is the truth trigger. Well, that's not true. That's not what happened. You know, I've received a phone call from someone saying, jacqueline, you know, I just wanted to have a chat with you about something that you've worked on.

0:14:26 - (Jacqueline Raad): And, you know, a couple of people said that they didn't receive this bit of information like you gave to everybody else. And I. I was in the car driving. I pulled over the car, and I was like, hold on one second. Just one second. I know that I sent that email. I'm just gonna find it now. And I'm looking for the email. Like, you don't need to find the email. It's fine. I was like, no, no, no, no. I know I did this.

0:14:49 - (Jacqueline Raad): And here I am trying to prove my point, sending the email, and I'm like, this is so embarrassing.

0:14:56 - (Natalie Moujalli): So defensive, like, straight away, yeah, I became defensive.

0:14:59 - (Jacqueline Raad): I help people on how to give and receive feedback, and I have just made the biggest blunder when it comes to receiving, which is defensiveness, because I was triggered by what I felt was the truth instead of stopping to say, tell me more about this. Maybe I haven't understood this situation or your bit of feedback properly. So that hurts. So you've got your true trigger first, and then you've got what we call the relationship trigger, which means I might accept this feedback because it's coming from Debbie.

0:15:30 - (Jacqueline Raad): But if it was coming from Natalie, I'm not okay with it for whatever reason that is. And it could be someone saying to me, jacqueline, you come across as a bit rude to me. And I'm thinking, this is the rudest person I've ever met. I am angry about this feedback because it's coming from them. And then that's this last bit, which is the hardest bit to deal with, which is the last trigger. It's when your sense of self feels triggered.

0:15:58 - (Jacqueline Raad): When it's this person is telling me something about myself, they're uncovering a blind spot about me that I thought was secure and it's not. And now my self worth is feeling undone and I'm feeling insecure now.

0:16:14 - (Natalie Moujalli): I think those three triggers are amazing. I want to take you back to trigger number two, relationship trigger. I think it's really interesting because so many times personally, with people that I know and in my own relationship, but also professionally, where you're willing to take advice or feedback from people you don't really know, but then the people closest to you, like your husband or your children, you're so triggered that you can't hear it. And often you'll go outside of that to hear the same thing and take it on board. And I know it causes a lot of frustration for people, so I'm just wondering, do you see a lot of that?

0:16:56 - (Jacqueline Raad): Absolutely. And people will pay a psychologist to tell them the same thing that their partner has been telling them for years. Okay. When it comes to giving and receiving feedback, what's involved in it, in the heart of it is feelings. Everything has got to do with feelings. So if you're giving and receiving feedback with somebody where there's a lot of baggage there, a lot of past arguments, sometimes the feedback can be hard to hear. It's muffled.

0:17:24 - (Jacqueline Raad): It's muffled by previous trauma in conversations. So sometimes people need to go and get advice and get feedback or debrief their feedback with a professional. There is always someone there to support you. We are blessed in Australia with the resources that we have. There are psychologists, there are doctors, there are priests. All these three people are bound by confidentiality to be able to serve you and support you, to work through those feelings.

0:17:56 - (Debbie Draybi): I was also wondering about, I think that's really important thinking about who the feedback giver is. And that feedback happens in a context of a relationship. I think that's a really, really big one.

0:18:07 - (Jacqueline Raad): Absolutely.

0:18:09 - (Debbie Draybi): I was wondering about that. You know, you said earlier there's a difference between feedback and advice giving. They're two very different things. And I wondered about those too, because sometimes it might land because of the relationship. You constantly have this automatic advice giving in your relationship, in your marriage and your partner's constantly going into solution mode, and it feels like it's not feedback, it's advice.

0:18:35 - (Debbie Draybi): But then when you go to a psychologist, it feels different. It feels like, okay, she gave me feedback right now, or actually, I'm paying her to give advice so she better thinking about that, I guess. My question is around how do you distinguish between the two as a feedback giver, how do you not go into your automatic advice giving if that's what you're naturally doing as well?

0:18:59 - (Jacqueline Raad): I'm so glad you brought this up, because this is what is ruining feedback conversations. Because when you give her feedback, you have to be in the right mindset. And the right mindset of the person giving the feedback should be, what can I learn from this conversation? Not what am I teaching them. People who give feedback, a lot of the blunders revolve around, I think I have access to the truth, I have access to the solution.

0:19:30 - (Jacqueline Raad): I know everything there is to know about this situation. But in actual fact, you don't. You don't. So when you go into that conversation, it's a chance for you to learn. And when you go forward asserting advice that you think could help, I'm just here trying to help, right? You're actually putting in an idea into their head. So they're sitting there hearing the feedback and they're like, and now they're telling me what to do. So not only am I getting feedback, I'm being told how I should do this better.

0:20:00 - (Jacqueline Raad): I walk around constantly observing. I have this overactive mind. I can sit in a conversation and I have distorted thinking. It's called the Autumn, where I know in my mind what people ought to have said, what they should have, could have, would have done. And I could leave majority of my conversation saying, this could have gone better for you if only you did xyz. You could have ran this meeting better if you had planned it this way.

0:20:30 - (Jacqueline Raad): You shouldn't do XYZ or say these things to people. And as a result, I've had to tell myself to be quiet because people actually don't want my advice. They want someone who's going to listen to them. So if I give that feedback, I tell myself, okay, I need to do whole body listening now. And what is whole body listening? Okay, well, my son, he had an operation, and when he woke up from this operation, he was quite young. And the nurse was like, raymond, please calm down. You know when you're waking up from that anesthetic? And I was like, raymond, please darling, do whole body listening. And the nurse goes, to me, whole body listening. What's whole body listening? And I said, oh, you know, it's just this thing from his preschool. It's probably not doing much, but, you know, it's when you listen with your feet, you're not tapping your feet as someone speaking. And you listen with your legs. You're not walking away, and you're listening with your hands. You're not on your phone, and you're listening with your arms. You're not folding your arms as people are talking to you. And you're listening with your eyes. You're not looking around the room, and you listen with your brain. You truly try and understand what this person is saying, regardless of whether you agree or not. And most importantly, you listen with your heart.

0:21:40 - (Jacqueline Raad): You try and empathize with them. And she said, well, when Raymond does whole body listening, the world wins. Imagine if we all did whole body listening to each other. The feedback giver is giving feedback, but they have just as much duty to do whole body listening as the person who is receiving the feedback. Because each party has something to learn.

0:22:08 - (Debbie Draybi): And just for our listeners, being on your phone is not whole body listening. Just to clarify.

0:22:13 - (Jacqueline Raad): Absolutely.

0:22:14 - (Natalie Moujalli): But, Deb, I'm about to do it again and say that it sounds like what Jacqueline is referring to is humble curiosity.

0:22:21 - (Debbie Draybi): Yeah. And what I'm hearing as well is being fully present in a conversation. And I think our devices are something that is a massive issue that keeps coming up in a lot of our conversations, thinking about that moment in a conversation when you're engaged and your whole body, not just your eyes. Cause often we think, oh, you gotta have eye contact. But it's about full body contact in terms of engaging with all of you.

0:22:51 - (Debbie Draybi): And as soon as you look at your screen or your device or whatever is in front of you, that's gone. That's lost in that instant. And I know for our listeners, it's a big, you know, it's a big issue in, across the generations now where people just are at dinners and on their phones and just not really being fully present in a conversation. And it just adds another layer of complexity, doesn't it?

0:23:15 - (Jacqueline Raad): It's the cheapest and kindest thing. The greatest compliment you could give to somebody is to listen to them with your whole body.

0:23:24 - (Natalie Moujalli): Because as soon as you. You break that eye contact and you look at your phone, you're already. They're already assuming that, that you're bored, that you've checked out, Right? So you've. You're looking at them in the eyes and you look down at your phone, then you look back at them, but they know you're somewhere else. You're. They're not fully engaging you. So we know that our body language is the majority of the way that we communicate. It's like 80, 90%.

0:23:51 - (Jacqueline Raad): Absolutely.

0:23:52 - (Natalie Moujalli): So that really reinforces that.

0:23:54 - (Debbie Draybi): Right.

0:23:55 - (Natalie Moujalli): That whole body listening means you can't turn any part of you away to that conversation.

0:24:01 - (Jacqueline Raad): You can, you can tell when someone's rushing you as well when you're speaking. You know, it could be. Yep, yep, okay. You know, we all have negative listening habits. I know mine, mine's term waiting. I just wait till you finish speaking so then I can start speaking again. But it's about having that self awareness around it, snap myself out of it. I hate how much self awareness that I have because I can leave a dinner and go home and go, okay, what were all the things that I said tonight that I shouldn't have said? And I pray for prudence all the time.

0:24:36 - (Jacqueline Raad): You know, Lord, take control of my tongue so I don't go saying things that I shouldn't say. And then you come back and you're self reflecting on it.

0:24:45 - (Debbie Draybi): Yeah. One of my, just as you're talking, it's reminding me of one of my, you know, wonderful colleagues that I work with pretty much daily. He's Aboriginal and we talk a lot about indigenous practices and we've done a fair bit of work around yarning and the principles of yarning circles. And one of the Aboriginal indigenous practises of being fully present in a conversation and letting someone know that their ID is what's surfacing, not yours.

0:25:19 - (Debbie Draybi): And a big part of their philosophy is trusting that your turn will come. With yarning, they have like a talking piece and whoever's holding it, their idea is what the focus is. And trusting, letting go of whatever ideas emerge as someone's talking, as you talk about those triggers, letting go of all those triggers and trusting that when it's your turn, it'll come and letting go to allow other people's perspectives and create that space for their ideas to emerge. And even if it's uncomfortable, even if it's different, even if it challenges you, again, that level of trust, it's a very spiritual thing that your turn will come and they actually hold something when it's their turn and recognize that it's my turn now to have an idea and to share it and not necessarily evaluate what's been said, but just appreciate it and sit with it.

0:26:14 - (Jacqueline Raad): Simon Sinek said that Nelson Mandela has been universally regarded as a great Leader, no matter which country you're in, he's known as a great leader and it's because he has amazing, amazing listening habits. And he said he learned how to listen through his father, who was a tribal chief. And they would have meetings and in those meetings everybody would have a chance to speak. They'd go around in a circle and his father was always the last to speak.

0:26:42 - (Debbie Draybi): Always. Yeah. I think what resonates is understanding that we've been talking to each other throughout, in the primitive years and being able to recognise that it is about going back to basics, it's about being human and being fully present. And unfortunately, society has taken us with all the technology, but all the information and all the knowledge that we have that gets in the way. And particularly what you said earlier about that push to be the expert and to have, you know, these automatic sort of evaluation of what someone else is saying and recognizing that you could have, should have done it in a certain way. And I think that's really hard to turn off in an environment where often we perceive ourselves to have the right ideas compared to someone else.

0:27:30 - (Jacqueline Raad): That's right.

0:27:30 - (Natalie Moujalli): I also think it's hard to be fully present, not just because of our lifestyle now and all of the distractions, but it's hard to be fully present in these discussions because it's. It's difficult to hear the feedback. Yeah, we don't want to sit in it, we don't want to sit in the self reflection. We don't want to think about what we should be doing, ought to be doing differently. We're barely getting by as it is, so it feels like a lot of work.

0:27:57 - (Jacqueline Raad): Natalie, I'm amazing at orchestrating my own feedback. After today, it'll be great. I'll be like, that was great. Thank you for having me. It was great, wasn't it? Yep, yep, yep. And off we go. But if I really wanted to know, if I truly wanted to grow as an individual, I would say to you both, tell me one thing you would have liked me to have done differently and you'll go, no, Jacqueline, it was fine. And if I really wanted to uncover a blind spot or to better myself, I'd say, I am going to contact you tomorrow at 9am and I want you to both tell me one thing I should have done differently in that podcast.

0:28:37 - (Jacqueline Raad): And the research has shown that people who actively seek out negative feedback do better in all areas of their life, at work, at home. Imagine if after a weekend with your family, you know, your husband came up to you and said, each Sunday what's one thing you would have liked me to have done differently this weekend without you having to actually say it?

0:29:01 - (Natalie Moujalli): Well, honestly, we've. We've sat around the dinner table a few times as a family, and we've asked the kids what we could be doing better. We've asked them what we do well and what they like, and then we've asked them what we could be doing better. And the feedback was hard to hear and we really had to stop and listen to it. My 8 year old called me a fun crusher, and I am a fun crusher.

0:29:25 - (Jacqueline Raad): I'm boring. Is this a surprise?

0:29:26 - (Natalie Moujalli): Anyone who knows me and is listening to this knows I'm a bit of a fun crusher, so I had to listen to that. He said it in the most playful way, but. But it was so hard to hear.

0:29:36 - (Debbie Draybi): You're the funnest person I know. I don't know what your son's talking about.

0:29:39 - (Natalie Moujalli): No one's going to agree with that.

0:29:40 - (Jacqueline Raad): But even good feedback is a word anyway.

0:29:45 - (Natalie Moujalli): But even just now, before the podcast recording started, we have a few staff members here tonight, and Jacqueline, being a really good friend of mine, took it upon herself to ask them how I am as a. As a leader in Hill Sanctuary House.

0:30:00 - (Debbie Draybi): And as the boss. She didn't want to say it, but she is.

0:30:03 - (Natalie Moujalli): And that was hard to hear as well because I am a micromanager and a control freak. And Jacqueline's asking me to sit with that as they're trying to tell me, and they're all trying to soften my. The blow to my ego and my pride, and I'm just kind of. My face is red, going, yep, okay, I can hear this. I know this about me. This is what makes me difficult. So I get what you're talking about because you invited that into this for me. So thanks for that.

0:30:29 - (Jacqueline Raad): And then what we do with that.

0:30:30 - (Debbie Draybi): Maybe you could have done that differently.

0:30:31 - (Natalie Moujalli): You could have done that.

0:30:32 - (Jacqueline Raad): We're telling you now, that's great feedback and I'll unpack that with you later. But when we receive that feedback that we're uncomfortable receiving, our job is to scour that feedback for the truth.

0:30:42 - (Debbie Draybi): Yeah.

0:30:43 - (Jacqueline Raad): You know, it is to understand it. I have been told before I noticed my relationship had changed with an individual. And I picked up the phone and I thought, I'm gonna have a conversation about it. And I said, I've sat with this and it's not sitting right with me, and I just wanna see if there's any feedback you have to give me. How is that that if. If I have done something that I am unaware of, I would like to know.

0:31:11 - (Jacqueline Raad): And they gave me that feedback, and I had to scour that feedback for the truth. That. That I had been at times rude, that I had ignored this person. And guess what? It was a learning experience for both parties because this individual was unaware that I'm actually partially deaf and that I may have missed when they had said hello. So I learned that I needed to be even better with my surroundings. And then they learned something about me that they didn't know.

0:31:45 - (Jacqueline Raad): And that is. That is the ultimate feedback giving and receiving scenario. And I have to scour that feedback to find truth in it so I could work and better from it just.

0:31:58 - (Debbie Draybi): On, just on that. In terms of finding truth, one of the things that we've talked about, and it came across, you know, quite strongly in Leonie's episode, was, you know, that truth trigger that you mentioned, recognizing that multiple truths can coexist. So your truth is your truth, and the, you know, your friend who you had the tension with, their truth is also true for them. And being able to engage and sit with multiple truth, one doesn't discount the other. They can coexist. And I think that's been a huge lesson for us in these conversations around that.

0:32:36 - (Debbie Draybi): And is that something that you sort of recognising your work too?

0:32:40 - (Jacqueline Raad): It comes in conversations, for me personally, all the time. And when I see that there are areas that I did know about and then there were areas that I didn't know about, there are three things that I have to do. I go, you know what? This is what I heard you say. This is what I accept from that and this is what I commit to doing. We skip that step too often. We hear the feedback. Some of us may take a long time to recover from the feedback.

0:33:08 - (Jacqueline Raad): And then we forget the engage step, which is, what am I going to do with this? I worked with a lovely gentleman, I mentored him, and he would have run ins with people every so often, and I gave him some feedback. I said, when you use that tone when you speak to people, it makes them feel really stressed. And as a result, it impacts their evening with their family, sometimes a whole weekend. It actually has the power to impact their whole annual leave.

0:33:40 - (Jacqueline Raad): And he sat with that, and he said, that is not that. I'm not okay with that. Okay, so what do you want to do about it? It's not what do you need to do about it? Because there are many things that we all need to do to change. But what do you want to do about it.

0:33:59 - (Debbie Draybi): Jacqueline, it's been an absolute pleasure having you on the show and being able to have this conversation. And I'm wondering, just as we're wrapping up, whether there's any other, you know, points that are really important that you think for our listeners to hear around giving feedback and having those difficult conversations and entering into a space that might be challenging and uncomfortable for them?

0:34:20 - (Jacqueline Raad): Yeah, I think it's acknowledging that it's okay to feel triggered when you're receiving feedback, because in a sense, basically what you're hearing from someone is you still have a little bit of work to do, and that can impact your sense of self. And I think it's really important to understand that when you do get upset and you do get triggered, you'll make the best speech you'll ever regret. So take some time to recover from feedback before you can re engage with people.

0:34:50 - (Jacqueline Raad): And it's not about, you know, when I think of my kids, you know, I can say I want my kids to be happy. No, I want my kids to be self aware because what is the point in being happy and not treating people the way they need to be treated and people being fearful to give you feedback? I want my kids to be self aware and to be hungry to receive feedback so they can be the best version of themselves for themselves and for everybody around them.

0:35:17 - (Debbie Draybi): Yeah. That's beautiful feedback. Thank you. It's been lovely having you on the show and look forward to seeing you again soon.

0:35:24 - (Natalie Moujalli): Thank you so much, Jacqueline.

0:35:26 - (Jacqueline Raad): Thank you.