Feedback: Hunger for Truth
September 2024 Webinar
Description
Watch our recorded webinar on how to receive feedback with a Kingdom mindset, and discover how to approach constructive criticism with grace, humility, and spiritual discerment. Register for future webinars, here.
morning evening and afternoon wherever you are joining us from I’m
Amanda Bolan and I’m the manager at Kingdom at work and our goal at Kingdom
at work is to inspire ignite and equip leaders to find their why before we dive
into today’s content I want to go over a few housekeeping rules with you to ensure a smooth and productive session
first and foremost we want this webinar to be as interactive as possible so feel free to use the Q&A feature to
ask a question or share any thoughts throughout the presentation we do value
your participation now about questions we will have a dedicated Q&A session at the
end of the webinar where we’ll address many of the questions you’ve submitted
so if you have burning questions don’t worry we will get to them if for some
reason we can’t address all questions during the Q&A or if your question
requires a more in-depth response fear not we are committed at Kingdom at work
in providing valuable content and some of the unanswered questions might be featured in our upcoming blog post so
keep an eye out for our blog for more insights and answers lastly this webinar
will be recorded and the recording will be available for you to review or share
with colleagues we’ll send out an email with a recording link shortly after the event on to our speaker today we are
thrilled to have Brad Nelson Brad began his career career with beatbo homes in
2007 as a software developer since then he has worn many hats throughout the
company serving in several vital roles in 2023 Brad joined the beaten bow
company’s board of directors Brad is a constant improver always Tinker
tinkering with things to make them better in 2021 he pioneered the
development of elevate Building Supply to streamline the construction process for beaten bow homes and save money for
both the company and its customers Brad is a passionate leader and resourceful
Problem Solver and he is intentional about finding opportunities to serve those around him Brad lives in LEC Texas
with his wife Jessica and enjoys camping cheering on the Texas Tech Red Raiders
and spending time with their two dogs we are thrilled to have you
Brad thanks Amanda I’m really thrilled to be here talking about uh this topic
today it’s a special one for me uh and that is uh feedback and how we should be hungering for the truth
always and so you know a couple things just up front we’re going to be talking
about receiving feedback and this is something I think I could probably talk about for hours and hours and probably
days and days if I’m being really honest and uh we’ve got a really limited amount of time today so it’s not I’m not going
to be able to cover everything I’m going to hit some of the highlights some of the low lights I’m going to skip some highlights skip some low lights so uh
there’s probably a favorite feedback topic that you have that I’m not going to hit and that’s okay uh we’ll we’ll still be friends at the end of this um
and you know another thing too I I really love Q&A so if you have some great questions I would really love to
answer those so um I dare you to ask me a really hard question and and uh we’ll see if you get a good
answer um couple things that I’m not really going to deal with directly as
well is like how to give feedback I feel like that’s actually almost like a
separate um separate webinar or separate even weeklong conference honestly uh
giving feedback to people I could talk for days on that one too uh it’s it is a great topic we just don’t have time to
hit it all um and then the other thing we’re not going to really hit on too much is
we’re going to kind of be focused on like hearing the hard things there’s a lot of feedback we get as leaders that
are that’s like good feedback and that’s great but it’s not necessarily like what
we’re going to talk today because I don’t think any of us really need improvements in that you know one example of that this just this morning
my wife texts me and I was over at her office yesterday and she has a colleague who uh shares my authentity for facial
hair and he has this really awesome mustache and I was just telling man I
love your mustache I think it’s great great he rides a Harley has a cool mustache and uh just this morning my
wife texts me and she’s like yeah you know he got some feedback about his mustach yesterday from one of his patients and uh his patient you know
maybe said some things I won’t repeat on uh this webinar but uh it was very positive feedback um I think it’s funny
but uh you know we’re not going to TI on positive feedback we’re going to talk about the hard toar stuff today so and
if we’re jumping into the hard to hear I got to start with like the first memory I have of the really hard to hear
feedback and before I worked for beatbo I worked uh for the medical school here in Leck
and I was working in a research Department I was kind of splitting my time between uh departmental it guy and
uh helping uh with some software stuff with that some of the researchers were working on and back then they had a
department that was uh charging for things and they used QuickBooks to track
all of their accounting and I didn’t really understand much about counting back then didn’t understand much about QuickBooks but one day they came to me
and they were like hey we lost all our Quickbooks data and you’re the IT guy you should help us get it back and I was like okay yeah that that’s something I
can do and I went down there and I found that they were keeping their backups on floppy discs which was a thing back then
and they uh their floppy disc their backups were bad and uh one of the Prime
rules in it is you always test your backups uh you got to be testing them otherwise you should just assume they’re
bad and they’re not going to do you any good and so I get down there discover the backups are bad and I have to
deliver the news to the guy and I have to say hey man uh sorry your backups are
bad uh good luck I nothing I can do for you and uh he was understandably not
super happy about that uh and so later on I get a call from the department head
and he he calls me into his office and he says you know hey uh you know it’s your job to make sure we have good
backups and why didn’t we have good backups and uh you know that needs to be different in the future and that’s a
totally reasonable thing to say to the IT guy like it’s your job as the IT guy to have good
backups but I was kind of a dumb kid back then and that’s not what I heard
him say what I heard him say was that you are the problem and you are either
you’re going to be different or the backup situation going to be different but we’re going to make this this difference somehow and that really
like I was just really concerned about that because um if I’m the problem then
me being around is the problem and the fix for this is to get rid of me right
and that of course got me re I got really defensive and um it kind of
became about my identity right and so my identity was now in Challenge and it was
it was a very hard thing for me and I wish I had this story where I was like like oh and this is how it ended and
Brad learned a lesson and made backups our priority from that point forward and that that’s not how that went actually
uh I didn’t really learn a lesson and didn’t really learn about feedback until I came to this company and so uh but the
cool thing was that here I have gone through a very long journey of how to receive feedback well and how to listen
and make it not about my identity and so that’s really what I want to talk to you about today is
uh is that and really the next story that happened that’s really memorable for me when it comes to feedback is uh I
came to this Amanda said I came here as a software developer and you know software
developers write code and one of the ways we know our code is good is we put it through what’s called a code review
and uh in the process of a code review basically another software developer takes your code and just rips it to
shreds essentially is how that works they point out everything that could possibly be wrong with that code they’re
going to tell you about it and it’s like very high feedback very fast all in the same moment and let’s see how fast we
can rip you down and and anything that’s left standing is a good thing right so that that’s gonna
be good code and this was uh my very first time doing
it I I had not really been a professional software developer before so you could imagine my first code review was not good because I didn’t I
wasn’t really writing good code I was actually writing terrible code um and
Cal Zant my leader back then um you probably know him from previous webinars uh he taught me something he taught me a
different way to think about this feedback in code reviews he what he showed me was that uh he he gave me a
mantra that software developers use and it’s I am not my code and the meaning of that is that like my identity is not my
work my identity is different from my work and even if my work is terrible today um that doesn’t meet me a terrible
person um and in reality in the Kingdom my identity is in Christ right it’s not um
how good of code I wrote or how good my accounting was today or you know how good my driving skills were in my
delivery truck or whatever it is that you do on a day-to-day basis uh that’s not your identity now your your quality
of work is going to go up and down and up and down and it’s important to have a good quality of work but that’s not who you are and so this is really in in
light of that this is like really really really important from a kingdom leadership perspective right um when we
receive feedback about ourselves this is not and it’s regardless of how the other person puts it it’s not about our
identity our identity is secure in Christ and so that’s like number one thing that everybody’s got to remember
is your identity is secure in Christ Christ in you and no matter what
somebody else says to you about how bad you are or how bad your work product is uh that doesn’t change so um my identity
is not terrible software developer um and just like my identity in Christ is not irredeemable sinner right that’s not
how God views me um and I can go about making it better and uh as I get better
at things my impacts on the kingdom can be bigger right and so that’s that’s where we really we really want to go so
let’s talk about where we want to start and um how you know always and
everything I feel like all the things that I’ve been talking about lately have been about humility and this isn’t a talk on
humility uh but everything seems to start there lately and and especially when it comes to feedback I think uh for
me to not make it a personal thing I have to start from a standpoint of humility and it’s a little bit awkward
to talk about for me too because uh I’m sorry to I’m sorry to say this I’m sorry to inform you uh please don’t leave the
webinar but I am not uh the guy who’s really good at humility and uh you
didn’t get that guy today you got the guy who is Moder aware enough of how bad he is that he can talk to other people
about it and that’s about what you got so I apologize but here I am and when we
experience this identity crisis around feedback really what’s happening to us is we’re letting our pride take control
right and we’re we’re basically making making it about us and when we put
ourself on a pedestal like that good or bad that’s Pride that’s and that’s a really dangerous way of thinking and we
really need need to change our approach to that and humility is the way forward in that and you know this pride is going
to kill us if we let it run our lives um and you know it when it becomes about us
it’s not as much about God or other people um and the impact that our work has had on other people or in the impact
that it’s had on the kingdom it’s just about us and um we just have to I just
have to say we just have to make continual efforts to change that over time I I have had serious struggles with
this uh in the past um and I’ve had minor struggles with it in the past and I’ve had serious
struggles today and I’ve had and I’ll have minor struggles today and I’ll have serious struggles in the future with it I’m pretty sure and I’m going to be
reliant on somebody bringing me feedback about it as I have in the past and as I will tomorrow um that that Pride can’t
run my life so so maybe a few Keys maybe a few
points we can make about this um I think the first key is that communication is key and when we’re receiving feedback
this is so tough so tough um any I rhetorical question anybody out there
feel like they’re just like the best Communicator ever um they don’t struggle with this pride thing they’re just
really good at communication right I I think I always have something to to improve when it comes to communication
and I just have to remind myself when someone is bringing me feedback that maybe they might have some struggles
with communication too and that I shouldn’t expect them to be communicating this feedback perfectly
and I’m going to need to have a lot of Grace because um how that feedback gets commun to me communicated to me is
important um this is one of those things I could probably spend a lot of time talking about is like when you go to
give feedback to someone make sure you do it with uh with Grace and humility
and all these things um maybe that person who’s bringing that feedback to you didn’t really get that message and
maybe they’re not that good at it and really how good they are at communicating the feedback basically
matters nothing that’s about how much it matters um what they’re sharing with you
is still important and so I think it’s always tempting to be like oh this person they just didn’t know what they
were saying and uh that doesn’t matter uh a lot of times too like we have
really high emotions um when someone’s bringing us feedback a lot of times and especially
for me so this is something that I need a lot of feedback on is my social awareness is pretty low and I it’s
something I always have to aware of and one of the things that I always have to do especially when it comes to feedback about social awareness is if someone who
I know is a high social awareness person is bringing me feedback about social awareness that is not feedback that I
can ever reject really like I have to accept that um and it’s really important that I do that but um one of the things
that happens to those of us who have like low social awareness is that we tend to hurt other people with our with
the things that we say and so when someone’s bringing me feedback if they were the hurt person there’s going to be
high emotions in that and I need to have a lot of Grace for those emotions um because how they feel is really true
it’s not it’s not that I can be like oh you don’t really feel that way no they really do feel that way and um those
emotions tend to influence how we communicate things and so when I’m sitting in like high emotions my
communication is just going to fall off a cliff right uh I’m not going to be able to say things the right way not
none of my thoughts are going to be fully work out um and then you know what what happens
is like I’m kind of resenting that person for their emotional response to what I did and now I’m kind of like in
my head like oh you know they’re just overreacting or they’re making this a
big dealer bigger deal than it should have been or um and then I’m just kind of like playing the blame game back and
forth with them and that’s really not a good way to approach this um and if we start from the idea that people are just
inherently not great at communicating their emotions um really like cuz what I
would hope people could do better is like I’m gonna you know Bob is gonna bring me how he felt about what I did
not like what I did it’s like and that is going to give me an opportunity to be
better about empathizing with Bob and I’m going to hear him more in that case and I’m going to be able to validate how
he feels about it instead of Bob coming to me and saying hey you said this the wrong way and you should have said it
this way and you’re terrible um so remember that that’s like how they feel about it we can just assume that
that’s how they should have brought it and we can kind of interpolate ourselves uh when it comes to that and so always
um yeah that that’s a big part of of feedback is communication SE just seeking to understand like where the
person’s coming from not necessarily uh what it is they’re saying in that moment or how they’re saying
it the other thing about feedback that I think is really key is like this idea that you need to be proactive about it
um you need to be seeking feedback it’s not just enough to like sit back and and me is as a leader especially this is
true I can’t just sit back as a leader in my office and just wait for people to come to me um I mean it’s and it’s
especially true the higher you get in leadership and the more Authority you have in an organization the more you
need to be seeking this out and uh a quick like test of this if if everybody could just think for a minute like in
the past year have you received some really good critical feedback from your direct
reports and if the answer is no um that’s not that you’re a perfect leader right uh I think we all know that in our
hearts but I think we just kind of function as though that’s the case like see no e Evil Hear No Evil if I don’t
know about it I don’t need to know about it but really uh if you think about the statistics they’ve done studies on this
um you know when people leave jobs they’re not really leaving jobs they’re leaving leaders and so people leave
leaving that means they’re leaving you and they probably had something to say about you that might have helped you get
better but if you never actually ask them uh you won’t be getting better now
that means that you’re going to have to have a lot of trust with people right and especially people you lead because
uh as a manager and as a leader you always have the privilege of being right about everything and you should try to
not be right about everything but you have that privilege and and you can do it if you want to um and and I think
most of the time in my experience people who that uh are terrible leaders and people who Reserve that for only the
most extreme cases are the best leaders but it’s it’s still something you have and you can just basically if
somebody brings something to you you could override them on it and that doesn’t really build trust so um what I
always tell people is make sure you go first and in really probably what seems
to be an overly dramatic way uh this is true for feedback that you give to other people like a lot of times we’re just
like oh they they know what I think about their work you know I I know that plette knows that I’m a fan of hers but
like I need to actually tell her in big ways and you know it’s better than doing that is telling her that she’s great in
front of the whole team that’s going to really build her up and the same thing is true about my faults uh it’s not
enough for me to just acknowledge them in private I need to make sure the team knows that I know that I have problems
that I need to fix um and not only that but that like when I know about
something that’s wrong I actually am the kind of person who who acts on it so that’s really important it’s like um
speaking to a crowd without a microphone I mean you need to amplify some of this a little bit make sure people know who
you are and that your identity is not caught up in your work product and that you know that you make a lot of mistakes
and that you’re trying to get better the more they know that the more they’re going to bring them to
you I think the next thing I want to talk about is that we should start with the
assumption that they are correct I think too often when it comes to feedback the The Giver can barely get
their um thought out of their mouth before we’re like okay I’m gonna start tearing them down and believe me I’m an
indogram eight I love to get into an argument with people um love to like shoot down every part of what they’re
saying uh feedback is not the time for that uh if we’re starting with humility
we should really start with the assumption that they’re correct about whatever they’re saying and then we
should work back from there I’m not saying that everyone’s always correct about the feedback they’re giving you but if we start from that assumption
we’re less likely to end up at the point of denying everything they said if we start if we start from okay everything
they said they’re wrong and they’re gonna have to prove to me that they’re right um then I’m more likely to end up in a situation where everything they
said is wrong when actually uh there’s a lot of opportunities even in bad even in
a lot of wrong feedback there’s always uh sometimes we say like it’s a nugget of Truth buried in there somewhere that
we could take out and really use to to to get better even even in a sea of like
no you know we can’t fix that or you know no we’re not going to have uh
Thursday is going to be free ice cream day around the office or something like that um so there’s always going to be
these problems with every feedback you receive and that doesn’t mean you can’t get better right so there’s always an
excuse as to why this person isn’t the right person to tell you that um you know like for example they’re just too
inexperience they don’t understand um what I do as well as I do because I have a lot more experience than they do and
if they had the experience they’d agree with me um or you know they don’t have enough wisdom or they’re not mature
enough or they you know one of the one of the most dangerous ones and it’s the most prideful one that you get into is
and I hear this a lot shockingly um is the responses like I they do not
appreciate all the things that I do for them I’m just gonna let that sit for a second because it’s so dangerous to say
that to yourself when you’re receiving feedback from someone I mean you’re just basically shutting them down you’re
basically saying I don’t even care if what they’re saying is right uh because what this is about is what I did for them and uh that’s just really bad um
you know one of the one of the stories I can think of from my past is like uh Mana mentioned I was involved in helping
set up uh Elevate Building Supply and uh one of the coolest things
about doing that business and not having a single clue as to anything about I mean literally I had no clue people were
having to show me like the smallest things and it was a very humbling experience uh but one of the days uh you
know I was really dead set on this idea that we should only send two trucks a week to uh certain regions and that we
that we’re not going to like try to send trucks to another place because you know efficiency is really important and we
got to make sure that truck only goes to that region on the day that it’s supposed to go to that region and I was really trying to
minimize the number of truck routes I was like this is going to be better for the because they’re going to get back on time they’re not going to be late and I
know people are like screaming about you know they want to get more stuff and whatever doesn’t matter to me um but
really uh the guy that I was working with at the time sawy Reynolds he came to me and was like man you know I really get what you’re saying about that um and
I think you know I think you’re wrong first off and I think that we could do this better and I think there’s a way to
do this where um we could solve all these problems and I had been really shut off to that idea and he came to me
and he changed my mind about it and if I had said to Sawyer you know Sawyer I’ve got 17 years of experience managing
efficiency in construction um you know you just don’t know what I know uh that would have been bad and you
know what the the truth of the matter is he was right about that and it did improve our relationships with the
customers and it didn’t cause our efficiency to fall off at all so so yeah I think um it’s just so important that
we take this feedback and uh we don’t try to like start with like I know
better than you so the next thing uh that I hear a
lot of leaders struggle with is when they hear feedback they immediately go
to questioning the motives of the person who’s giving it and this is again really
dangerous um this is again like a prideful thing and it’s easy to think
that someone’s being cynical and you know what the fact is they might be being cynical I don’t know
I don’t know the specifics of of whatever feedback situation you’re in uh but again it doesn’t really matter um if
you have something to improve on then you you you should own that and you know people always have
motives in everything that they do and sometimes it’s going to be that that person’s for you as a person and they’re trying to make you better and sometimes
it’s not and um you know the things you can only own the things that you’re respons respons for which is yourself
and so I think you need to own that and and accept the fact that you’re a broken person who needs to get
better so dangerous to fall into that um just saying oh they just really want
this or they you know it’s uh yeah it scares me to even talk about it almost because it’s so
dangerous so the other thing the next thing that I really am excited about talking about is if you want great feedback uh you should do something with
it when you make a real change and you show the give her the feedback that you’re worth trusting to and being like
vulnerable to then they’re going to see like hey you know last time I shared
something with Brad he decided to change the way he did something based on that feedback and so what I see now is that
Brad is a guy who cares about getting better and Brad’s a guy who acknowledges that he’s not the best at everything and
so I feel more comfortable giving more feedback to him as a result of that um
if you don’t do stuff because if you think about it and this is especially true again with someone who is be who
you are leading directly like their livelihood depends on you you
making good decisions every day that’s what their Lively like if you make bad decisions one day they might have to go
home and tell their family like I don’t know what we’re going to do about money and that’s just a cold hard truth of it
right and so like there’s a risk every time somebody who reports to you comes
to you with feedback like that they’re accepting a risk that they might walk home without a job that day and so um
when they bring something like that to you you should feel extraordinarily honored that they took the risk and
trusted you enough to to give you that feedback so when they do it do something
with it that’s a valuable thing that they just gave you um even even if it’s
wrong take advantage of the trust that they I mean that’s terrible way to say it but just do something with the trust
uh thank them for it um yeah it’s just so important that we
that we act on it uh the more we act on it the more they’re going to provide feedback for us in the future and that
just means that we’re going to get better and better and better as a result of it I think um a couple examples just uh
are important about how we gather feedback here organizationally because I think that’s an important thing um exit
interviews I want to talk about exit interviews these are B basically man the
exit interviews are one of the best tools you can use to gather feedback about your own leadership if you do it
right and they’re tough right they’re they’re really tough because you’re only talking to people who have left and if
we remember the old adage from leadership people don’t leave jobs they leave leaders so really if they left
they probably have something to say about you uh good or bad um and I have found that to be true in every single
exit interview scenario about me as a leader is that someone has had something uh
they’ve had good things to say and they’ve had uh things that are not so easy to hear right
um you know the funny thing is I can’t I really tried to look back on exit interviews for myself and think of like
some examples of hey where where did I go wrong here um or where did they where
were they off about the feedback that they gave me and where I was like I was really right actually and I honestly
just could not find anything um every time someone has given me feedback in an interview it’s been really helpful for
me um and it’s so hard because it’s a lot of times people don’t leave under
the best circumstances and you’re like oh you know I know why that person left I don’t need to do an exit interview
with them but really could you learn something is it is it a possibility to
to learn something from that person about your own leadership and I think when we have that mindset it’s a
powerful thing we can make a lot of improvements change for the better right um and you know one of the things
too is like we talked a little bit about how people are reluctant to give you feedback because you’re their livelihood
um after you’ve fired them or after they’re gone they’re you’re no longer their livelihood so they’re free to say whatever they want to about you right um
you’re going to get the best unfiltered feedback that way uh and that’s that can be really
valuable the other thing we do is employee surveys we do uh about every quarter we send out an all Company
employee survey which is really cool uh now these um are interesting because
people what maybe what they would say as feedback to their own leader isn’t necessarily what they would say as feedback to the CEO right and as a as a
all Company employee survey really what they’re saying on that survey is being read by the CEO and other senior leaders
in the organization and so they’re not going to feel as comfortable without it being anonymous and so these generally
have to be anonymous to get good feedback um and you know they one of the
problems with Anonymous surveys is like you tend to get really clear feedback
and that is that’s a real challenge with Anonymous surveys I still think you get good feedback you just have to keep it
in the right context it’s not about like the specific story of what they were talking about um it becomes more of like
well just one example of this was we we got uh we do a Company rally and we got some feedback about the company rally
and um you know one of the feedback points was like send something about one of the speakers being kind of down on
the event and I was like this doesn’t even really make a lot of sense I I can’t make sense of they’re saying um
and so I really want to go I really wish I could talk to that person about um you
know what they were thinking about that and and a lot of times when you have a survey like this you don’t really know
you don’t really know exactly what they said we spent actually just this morning the whole morning um talking about two
points of feedback literally probably three hours and I bet they’re still in there talking about it actually after I
left to come do this um about a couple points of feedback from the company service and I really wish that I could
just go find that person and be like I want to just grab coffee I want you to explain everything um that you said I’d
love to get more context I’d love to know who you are what the situation was um but I can’t because it’s Anonymous
and we value the Anon anonymity more than we value the ability to go do that because I think we would never have gotten that feedback in the first place
and the truth is we have enough to go on like we know where we need to go next um as a result of that feedback so
so um you know I I I’ll go ahead and close close out before we hit the Q&A um
but I was kind of reflecting with the Lord on this and um one of the funniest things he kind of showed me uh a while
back was I I’ve always had this kind of like idea that I would retire early right not
not necessarily like I’m not gonna work anymore but just like you know money isn’t going to be the thing that drives
me anymore not that it is today but like it’s not going to be something that I have to be concerned about and I always
thought that would be really cool if I didn’t have to work then I wouldn’t have a job and you know maybe I go do volunteer work or something like that
but um it wouldn’t necessarily be for money and I could do it for the highest purpose I could possibly find but I like
uh you know it’s kind of I’ve cringed at that in recent years I’ve gotten to this
point now where I’m embracing the feedback so much that actually like it
the idea of leaving a company where you have this high feedback culture actually
scares me the idea that I would go and leave it and then not have people
helping make me better is really scary it’s this is I would worry about losing
my identity actually and this is not feedback that I ever got from a church it’s feedback that I get from a company
and it’s not feedback about like hey you didn’t do your form right it’s feedback about hey man you were really prideful
in that moment and those types of things and or you hurt that person in this
moment and where would I be in life if I didn’t have people telling me that like I would be kind of not a great person to
be around I would be leaning into my identity as a sinner not my identity in Christ and so I really love that that is
something that a company can help with I love that that’s a way that God’s kingdom and his authority can be
expressed through business is through healing me personally by giving me
feedback so um with that said I’m I guess we’ll just open it up to Q&A Amanda do you have
anything for us thanks Brad that was so good I appreciate that hey guys we are on our
live Q&A time um if you have questions down at the bottom you can use that Q&A
feature at the bottom of your screen and we are going to do live questions with Brad Brad you know as you were talking
um I pulled up Proverbs 15 I I don’t know if you know this but in the um p
translation Proverbs 15:31 and 32 says accepting it says
constructive criticism which is feedback op your heart to the path of life making
you right at home among the wise refusing constructive criticism shows you of no interest in improving your
life for Revelation Insight only comes as you accept correction and wisdom that
it brings you just talked to us about that and I appreciate that I’m sure a
lot of people learn learned um that feedback really is the Breakfast of Champions right
absolutely all right well I know where I’d be without it I’d be probably dead in a ditch
somewhere right yeah so um question one really funny uh what is a floppy disc a
floppy disc yeah so uh yeah it’s something we used to use for backups if you were born before uh you know 1990
you probably don’t know what one is but it’s a it’s a little square and it’s it’s not floppy it’s hard uh so I they
call it floppy because the thing inside is kind of floppy but yeah used to store stuff on it uh you wouldn’t even use
storage mediums anymore I don’t even know how to how to what to even liken that to if you remember USB drives it was like the USB drive of the 90s so
that was great all right um question one we we
won’t count the floppy disc question there yeah yeah what are some practical ways that you’ve grown
in when you receive feedback not letting it like affect your identity like what
are some of those practical ways that you’ve done this over the years you know one of the things that I’ve had to do um
over the years is I have to commit myself and remind myself always to not
react in the moment um like whenever someone’s sitting me down to give to
give me feedback because you can always tell right you always know like this person is about to to dump something on
me and it’s going to be painful and I’m I’m going to experience some emotions
from this and I you know despite the fact that I am a um kind of a high SE
personality High detail High task orientation I’m still an emotional person and it’s still like it cuts at
the portion of me that’s like um my identity really and so I always have to
tell myself just thank them and then walk away and like follow up with them later take some
time so that you can actually pray about it CU that’s one thing I mean absolutely you should be praying about feedback
that people give you and ask the Lord like what what do I do with this um
because he’s going to tell you and it’s really important to not have a bad reaction in the moment um which I was
really prone to doing uh even like probably five or six years ago I was
really not very good at that and I just had to and now I think the you know I
think the the last like really big impact piece of feedback I got it was
just like okay I hear what you’re saying I need to go I need to go think about this and I’m I’m not saying I disagree
or agree with you I’m just saying I this is just who I am I can’t I’m a processor not a not a react in the- moment kind of
guy and so I’m just going to go think about it um I think committing yourself to not having an emotional or nerc
reaction is a really practical thing you can do um and then I I do think praying about it I mean that’s that’s an
absolute you should totally do that um there’s been a lot of times where my knej reaction was man this person’s
wrong and then I pray about it and I’m like and the Lord convinces me he’s like man yeah that’s a problem and uh and
then I’m like okay well I got I got confirmation of that from the Lord and now I can definitely say that it’s a problem and so and then I can fix
it really really practical thanks Brad so the next question um right off of
where you left off can you give us an example of some of the hardest yet best
Fe feedback you’ve received and who gave that to
you oh man okay story time okay so probably like
oh three years ago three and a half years ago probably I was uh I was definitely in
some struggling moments uh I was probably if I had to say I was probably drowning in my own Pride um not doing
well with work um not doing really well with anything in life to be honest with you and I was just kind of like mad at
the world and um Cal Zant actually came to me and he
was like I hey I’ve got I think you need a fresh start and he G he was like I
think the Lord told me you’re supposed to help start uh Elevate Building Supply and that was kind of the moment that um
really caused that but he gave me in the moment he gave me some really important feedback uh and it’s feedback that I
rejected actually in the moment and he said to me like hey man you know like
and and he saw me struggling with the pride portion he was trying to like gently tell me and he was telling me
that um hey you know you see you’re just kind of like making this all about you um all these problems that you have and
he’s like it’s not it has nothing to do with the fact that they’re real problems or not it’s just you’re making it all about you and that comes out in your
work too and you’re and you see it and you’re like you when you build a spread
when it’s not just in like failures it’s in successes too and that’s really where it becomes really dangerous this pride
thing and um he said this to me and I was like No And and I think my initial
reaction was just like no you don’t understand what I’m facing or the things I’m going through and and you just don’t
understand at all um and I think that was like the Lord came down on me pretty hard after that for like the next year
probably um like finding an alternate way to teach me that lesson um which was
a lot I I wish I had just listened to Cal at the time and said yeah you know what you’re right about that um I do I
do a really terrible job at that um and you know I could say like I got better
at it at in over the year over the course of the year and I’ve got tons of stories of of how that happened um and
it was mostly through um the Lord putting me in a business where I have no idea what’s going on and there was
literally nothing I could celebrate in my own success in it because I couldn’t do any of it um there was a moment where
I was trying to figure out how to drive a forklift into a truck and I I literally could not do it right U and I
remember just like yelling out at the Lord like what have you done to me here um and then like within a couple months
after that like I was I was basically by myself for that first six months of doing it um and within a couple months
he sent he started to send people who really knew what they were doing um and it was an opportunity to for me to
celebrate their success in it and it kind of broke me in a lot of ways of of
my celebrating my own success in it and it really gave me this opportunity to celebrate other people’s success but I
never really understood it until way later um and so I that’s not an example
of me doing it well and and to be honest with you I’ll probably uh come come see me in five years I’ll be telling another
story about how two years ago um I was struggling with pride again and uh somebody had to tell me about it but um
that’s just one example I can think of that’s kind of recent and probably the most profound that I’ve
experienced and I’m so thankful that he had the The Obedience and to to the Lord
to tell me that too um I think it really important even though I didn’t listen um
it was still really important so thanks for that example that was really
good as a leader how do you word questions to get feedback from your
team um that’s a great question I think um a
lot of times as Leaders we have uh ways that we’ve figured out to ask questions
with an intended answer right I think you know I I I catch myself doing this
all the time where I’m like I think I know the answer and I’m gonna ask him in a way that makes it seem like he’s really giving me the right answer but
really I knew what the right answer was all along you can’t do that when it comes to
feedback um how you ask is really important um making sure you don’t use
any judgmental language in the asking like you’re you’re just kind of don’t prime the pump maybe I should say so
don’t say like hey you know I’m you know just thinking about my own performance and you know I know we have a great
relationship and I know you think I do a good job but do you have any feedback for me like that’s a terrible way to do that um probably the best way would be
start with something that you know you’ve done wrong and you know you’re not good at and say Hey you know I know
that I’m not really that good at um picking up on people’s emotions and you
seen any ways that I’ve done that recently in our interactions um because what what you do then is you’re you’re
starting by acknowledging that you have something to improve on and you’re framing the discussion in a way where
it’s not like what you tell me I’m going to reject because I’m already saying that I agree with you about what you’re
going to tell me and as time goes on and you build up more trust uh with people doing that you’re going to get more of
the unprompted stuff but if you’re just looking for a way to Kickstart it and you and you haven’t really gotten any uh
feedback from that person that might be one way to do it
so awesome okay we have two more questions um next question is I like you Brad um
did not receive feedback well I’ve gone many years of being prideful hearing
your story I really relate to it how do I pivot and change do I just apologize
what ways would you say I start doing this better um man there was a there a a good
friend of mine gave me a book um he one of the guys that called me out on Pride
um he gave me a really good book on humility um and I read that and it was really it was a profound thing for me
and I would recommend that book and I and I wish I could tell you the name of it off the top of my head um but I’ll
find it and I’ll get it to Amanda maybe she can email it out to everybody after um but that was a really profound thing
for me it kind of changed how I thought about myself and my identity and uh the
people around me and I think it I had to somehow I had to get to the conclusion
and I think it’s funny because if I had been if I had if somebody had come along and had this conversation with me I
would not have even understood it would have been like they were speaking great to me because I I don’t think the Lord had really
like exerted the change on me that had to happen um very it was kind of like a
violent thing that had to be just ripped out of me um in a lot of ways and I
don’t think that change had happened back then so um until all these things came along um I wish that there was
something that I could just say that’s like hey you know these are the things that you do differently but it it didn’t
really work like that for me I don’t know a book would be a good place to start though that’s that’s kind of where
it started for me along with a lot of other things that were happening in my life yeah a violent way for something to
be ripped out of I think that’s one of the um best illustrations of Pride like
with because I was holding on to it so tight I just I was holding on to my own Pride so tightly that the Lord had to
rip it out and um yeah yeah we will get the name of that
book to you guys um and we’ll include it um as we email the recording out so
promise y’all will get you that okay Brad last question we have it’s a good one um they want to know what are the
questions that you ask in an exit interview oh man that is a good
one so um sometimes when it comes to feedback I get really negative uh
because it’s like that’s the stuff that I can use to improve the most I don’t tell me I’m doing a good job that’s all stuff you know I’m not going to change
if I’m doing a good job I’m not going to change anything so I don’t need to hear about that and I’m only going to focus on the on the bad things uh don’t necessarily do that make sure you ask
questions that like give them an opportunity to share a good experience with you because I think that’s really
important for you to hear as well as the things that you need to do better so some of the times I like to ask uh I think we have a standard form as a
company But it includes questions like you know how is your training you know
that’s something that we don’t spend a lot enough time as Leaders thinking about is how we train and onboard people and so like how is how is that for you
and how was your interview process and uh in what ways did your leader uh give
you coaching on in your day-to-day job um one question I would want to know is
were they doing one-on ones with you consistently do you feel like that you trusted
them um what are some ways that you felt like they could have improved their leadership or did you ever have a
conflict with your leader could you tell a story about that where you had conflict and and maybe it wasn’t resolved or maybe it was
resolved awesome that’s great well we had another question come in and so
we’re g to do one more because we have time so why not questions the question says I like to
give feedback to others and really want to receive feedback for what I do but
sometimes it comes from a place of insufficiency is that a
problem yeah I mean I think it is I mean I think we all know that
like the Lord’s grace is enough for us right and um you know it’s not about me
this is not about me getting better enough to to be saved or or Justify
myself in any way right um that’s not what it’s about and so like I have to start from a position of like I am I am
a child of God um I am his son and he loves me and the the things that I’m
going to do with my feedback are not going to change that at all there’s nothing there’s no there’s no feedback
somebody can give me that will change that either make me a Son of God or make me not a son of God that’s that is that
is my identity and uh that can’t be changed but I definitely feel you and there have been a lot of times over the
years where I’ve been like man that one cut deep um and I don’t know if I can do
this and like I don’t know if like maybe God really doesn’t want me man I’ve been
there I know I know the feeling I hope uh I hope you find somebody who can go
grab coffee with you or something and and tell you otherwise because I think uh sometimes I’ve needed that over over the years too is like somebody just
remind me of that like I’m I’m not this terrible person that I’ve made myself out to be um and that I’m I’m called to
something different and that uh the things that I’m doing are enough for um
for God even though he wants more
so yeah that was a great answer for that well we appreciate Brad taking time to
be with us today we thank each one of you um just just a reminder we will send
out the recording of This webinar later on this afternoon or this evening or
maybe in the middle of the night depending on where you are watching this from um I want to tell you about two
things we have coming up at Kingdom at work our next Kingdom at work leadership
Workshop is October 1st through the 2nd actually through the 3 it is in L Texas
and there is a QR code on your screen if you would like to get more information on that this is a workshop for business
owners and CEOs we would love to have you and your executive team come and join us we have more information on our
website on this challenging yet transformation event that we get to put on last thing I want to tell you about
is next month we will have for the first time ever a panel of live um Q&A we will
have different um Business Leaders from different organizations and the next webinar will
be October 9th um you can register for that webinar with that QR code and you
can either email us in questions or you can um text it in with that phone number
right there 80632 559 we are taking questions um
from our conference from our Workshop from those of you that are out there anything you can ask business related
Kingdom related um we want to to help equip you and be a great resource we
don’t have all the answers but we serve a God who does and so if we don’t have the answer we will Circle back with you
thank you again for joining us we pray that you have a blessed day bye-bye