Feedback…we like to talk about it a lot, but how well are we providing it?  It’s wonderful to be able to provide feedback to employees when they do something well or achieve something great.  Positive, praising feedback makes the employee feel good and the manager feel good.  Having the ability to reinforce that positive feedback with a reward system also provides good endorphins.

Where many leaders fall down is in providing feedback that can help an employee improve their performance or behavior.  It can be an uncomfortable situation because it requires an employee to focus on areas that are not fully developed in himself or herself.  Many times, an employee may even have a blind spot and not recognize that there’s something he or she needs to develop.  

One day, at work, I was walking with a colleague and she told me she needed to provide some “negative feedback” to one of her employees.  The comment stopped me in my tracks.  As we discussed the situation further, I realized that what she really meant was that she needed to provide constructive feedback to an employee to help the person grow and develop.  This is very different from “negative feedback.”  The employee had some negative behaviors to correct, and the feedback required was positive for that employee’s growth and development.  It wasn’t apparent to me in the conversation that the employee even realized that her behavior was not where it should be to meet her leader’s expectations.  The leader owed this employee the constructive feedback.  In this leader’s follow-up discussion with the employee, the focus needed to be that both the employee and leader knew that there could be a successful outcome in making the necessary improvements.

I regularly ask for feedback on how I can improve my performance and behavior.  Often, the response from my leaders has been, “keep doing what you’re doing.”  Albeit, that is some kind of feedback, it’s not sufficient feedback to enhance growth and improvement for an employee and/or a product.  This statement implies that I’m doing a perfect job, but as all of us know, there is always room for growth.

As leaders, we owe employees this constructive feedback.  Everyone has opportunities to improve.  Any feedback needs to be given with dignity and respect for the employee. Often, that employee may not even realize areas where they may have shortcomings.  These constructive conversations can lead to training and coaching opportunities that an employee may not have sought out without the conversations.

Building a company culture of employee development, coaching, mentoring and regular feedback can foster a healthy environment where constructive feedback is embraced and not feared.  Constructive feedback should be the norm in one-on-one conversations with employees. Improvement should be a way of life for every employee in a business.  Knowing what to improve upon is a necessity to achieve better employee performance and product results.  Without this culture, the only expected outcome is the status quo.

I was going to create a list of the top ten things that Down Syndrome has taught me about leadership. When I started to create the list, I realized that the final item on the list I had created summarized it all: 

When you help someone who you think is lesser than you, you’ll more than likely find they are greater than you.

In 2002, at around 20 weeks into my 4^thpregnancy, I was told that my baby had either Down Syndrome or hydrocephalus.  I had an amniocentesis to confirm that my son had Down Syndrome.  I cried for four months.  I was worried about my son.  I didn’t think I was capable to raise a child with a disability.  My father’s cousin, who had an adult son with Down Syndrome, told me, “God picked you.”  At the time I told God, “Pick somebody else, I can’t do this.”

Now that I know this little boy, who is now 16, I’m so glad God picked me.  God knew exactly what he was doing.  Why did I even question Him?  He did pick me, and He gave me such a tremendous gift.  

This experience of raising a child with Down Syndrome not only impacted my personal life, but it also enhanced my work life. I have discovered as a leader that I have been called to service.  Service has always been difficult for me because like many people, I tend to focus on myself.  I love to talk, and I’ve struggled to listen.  To let others rely on me has been difficult.  I know that my son was sent to me to teach me the gift of service.

When I learn to shut up and listen and focus on others, I find that in those moments I have been able to really help people.  All of the other things that I’ve learned from Down Syndrome culminate into the lesson of service to others. This service to others has made me realize that my own growth can only happen by lifting others up.  So, in helping my son, he has helped me.  I realize that every day I need to be more like him.  He holds the key to life, to leadership, to basic human kindness.  Every day that I was going into work to lead a group of people, my son was honing me to be a better leader.  He did this through these key behaviors:

1. My son has great talents.  His love for people is beyond anything I’ve ever experienced in this world.  He hugs strangers in the grocery store.  At times it frightens me, and then I think, who am I to stop it?  He’s safe with my vigilant watch over him, and I have to tell myself, that the person he just hugged probably needed that hug today.  
   • As a leader, every person that I have ever managed had talent.  Sometimes it was misplaced, but that was part of my role in helping that person find where their talent was best utilized.  It wasn’t always an easy role.  Sometimes it took lots of discussion and listening to help that employee discover where their passion should take them.
2. My son is so kind.  He treats everyone the same.  He truly loves everyone.  If someone is mean to him today, he’s forgotten it tomorrow.   
   • There is no room for anything but kindness.  Kindness builds stronger teams.  It allows people to grow and develop because they are not afraid to ask questions, and to show their vulnerabilities.  It allows everyone on the team to lift up everyone else.
3. Thinking differently opens new opportunities.  My son has an artistic ability.  No one ever told him he couldn’t draw.  He just draws freely.  
   • Creativity at work happens when we allow employees to be their creative selves. If we let everyone release their talent without micromanaging them, we allow innovation to happen.  We should encourage thinking differently, and as leaders we need to enable people, not constrain them.
4. Down Syndrome allows my son to see the world in a humorous fashion.  He doesn’t see the world problems.  He just sees that we should laugh at ourselves.  
   • We often take ourselves too seriously.  I saw that at work we often took the work so seriously, that we forgot to laugh.  In laughing, and enjoying each other’s company, we build relationships that forge a better work life.  These relationships build efficiencies in getting excellent work accomplished.
5. Life is precious.  Every life is precious.  My son’s life is precious and has great purpose.  I can’t imagine my life without him.  Our community would be less joyful without him.
   • Those people you work with have a family.  They also have their struggles just like you do.  I often think we are so consumed by our own struggles that we aren’t listening to those around us and their struggles.  I found many leaders that were so into their career and their movement upward that they forgot the people who worked for them. The employees were the people who were creating the product that was making the company money.  Focusing on people and making the employees the number one concern, will always produce a better product.  There were people I worked with who were considered great success stories.  They had the perfect diplomas from the most prestigious schools.  They were in powerful positions in a great company, and yet, if I were their mother, I’d be ashamed of the way they treated people. I often felt sorry for these leaders because they missed out on the greatest part of leadership, the employees.

Never forget the human side of work. Employees have shared with me some extremely difficult situations in their personal lives.  I’ve had employees tell me they had cancer, a newly diagnosed auto-immune disease,  children who were giving them great challenges, and many other tough situations.  In these moments of pure humanness in leadership, it made me recognize we’re all in this life together.  We are all connected, and sometimes people just need a hug, and it’s sometimes okay to do even at work.  

The greatest leadership lessons of my life, I’ve learned from the people I was sent to serve.

Copyright 2019 Beyond the General LLC.

Jeanette Kurnik is CEO of Beyond the General LLC.  She has 34 years of automotive controls engineering experience and is an advocate for women in engineering.

My grandmother was a tough woman.  She was born in 1900, and she had six children, including a son who died as a baby. When my grandmother was a teenager, she wanted to attend high school.  She was a good student and wanted to continue her education.  Her father told her that it wasn’t necessary for her to continue school because all she was going to do was raise children.  She did raise children, and she did it well.  She had two sons who experienced action in World War II in the South Pacific.  One of these sons spent three months on Guadal Canal, and my grandmother had no idea where he was, or even if he was alive.  I cannot imagine the stress my grandmother had to endure from the horror of this experience. During the war, my grandfather and grandmother worked in the automotive plants in Flint, Michigan.  My grandfather worked on aircraft engines, and my grandmother was a government tank inspector at the former Fisher Body complex.  My grandmother lost my grandfather the day before their 50^th wedding anniversary in 1969.  I was only three years old at the time, so I really only knew my grandmother as an independent, single woman.  She always worked, mostly as a housekeeper and cook at her local Catholic parishes.  She never had the opportunity to attend high school and college, let alone pursue a career.

I spent the past 34 years as an engineer in the automotive industry.  It wasn’t easy for a woman engineer in a male dominated industry.  I found many situations in my career frustrating. There were times I nearly quit.  During these difficult moments, though, my grandmother would come to mind.  I would have to remind myself that I was living her dream.  I was able to get the education.  I was able to pursue the career.  My grandmother was never afforded these opportunities.  I was making a difference.  It truly was a luxury that I had!  My grandmother helped to encourage me.  She cheered me on through my schooling.  Even after she passed, she was with me, encouraging me every step of the way.  She knew that I would make a difference in a way she wasn’t allowed to.  

I’m not finished with my contributions to the engineering world.  I’m still living my grandmother’s dream.  There are things that I look back on in my career thinking perhaps I should have done more for women.  I worked hard to ensure equity, and I have to remind myself that I have done what I could in the time and generation that I have lived.  I will continue to educate others to bring about equity and fairness for all.  When I think about it, I know that women of my generation and I have made a significant difference for the next generation of women.  I hope that the women entering the workforce today look back to the women of my generation with gratitude for the road we paved.  I hope they look back just like I look back to my grandmother and thank her for her mark in the world and her fight to make it a better place for me.

Copyright 2019 Beyond the General LLC.

Jeanette Kurnik is CEO of Beyond the General LLC.  She has 34 years of automotive controls engineering experience and is an advocate for women in engineering.

Every day we should be motivating ourselves to learn something new.  The only way to grow is to push ourselves beyond our comfort zones and learn.  Unfortunately, I believe many of us have looked at education as solely a means to an end.  We go to college to get a job.  In our late teens and early twenties, many of us are not looking at education as a growth opportunity.  We just want to take the classes in our major and finish college.  It can be a “check the box” process for many students.

Broadening ourselves is difficult for many of us.  Woe to the engineering student who has to take an American literature class.  This student many times forces himself to just survive the class.  The same situation is true for the literature student who must take a calculus class.  Pushing our boundaries is uncomfortable.  Learning something in an area where we may have little interest or no experience can mean hard work.  

When I finished my undergraduate degree in electrical engineering, I was burned out on school. Engineering school was tough, so much so that the experience didn’t motivate me to continue on to graduate school.  I also didn’t think it was necessary to get a graduate degree because many of the engineers I worked with didn’t have a graduate degree.  At the time, I didn’t have mentors who encouraged me to continue my education. It truly was unfortunate because when I finished my undergraduate studies there were few women getting graduate degrees in Electrical Engineering.  

Pushing yourself to learn something even outside of your current role may actually help you to better understand your chosen profession. In 2007, after working for a while, I was personally motivated to learn about speech pathology. I went back to undergraduate school to learn something new.  It was an amazing experience.  It convinced me that every person should at least take an anatomy and physiology class.  At some point in time, everyone will experience a medical event in their life.  Knowing the human body, diseases and treatments, at least at a foundational level, is important in helping make decisions about healthcare for you or your loved ones. It was also enlightening that there were many corollaries between medicine and engineering. Laminar and turbulent flow not only occur in pipes, but in our vascular system. Ohm’s law (V = I x R) not only applies to electronics on a circuit board, but in our nervous system as well.

The economic crisis of 2008-2009 convinced me to go back to school again.  I went back to college to earn a Master’s degree in Information Technology.  This degree didn’t even exist when I graduated with my undergraduate degree.  It was an online program, which made it more convenient for me to incorporate into my busy life.   I loved the experience for many different reasons.  First, the degree program got me back into programming.  I learned how to program in Java and SQL.  Secondly, it pushed me to study and to formally learn again.  The most surprising and rewarding aspect I experienced by going to back to school was the opportunity to give back to younger people.  Many of the classes I took had group projects. I worked on projects with other people from my company.  On these projects, I was able to introduce younger engineers to experiences that I had in my career.  I was able to share my knowledge, and to help these engineers grow in their knowledge as well.  The experience helped me build relationships with younger people in the company, and to understand a new way of learning in an electronic age. It was one of the more rewarding experiences in my career.

As a people leader, I encouraged my employees to pursue their graduate degrees.  I know I personally influenced several engineers who I worked with to go back to get their Master’s degrees.  What a wonderful sense of pride to know that I made a difference in their lives.  I helped to secure their futures because even if a job goes away, no one can take away an education.  Leaders should be encouraging all of their employees to grow their knowledge, and to push themselves out of their comfort zones.  This education can be formal or informal.  There are so many opportunities through colleges and universities.  There are also many new learning venues online now.  Sites like Udacity, Coursera and Udemy offer a plethora of classes and even nanodegrees.  

Maybe today you can learn something new or inspire someone else to learn something new.  It may be related to your career or it may not.  Why not go back and get that degree you always wanted? Take the time to learn about that new technology that is a part of your world today. Just pick up that John Steinbeck or Ernest Hemingway novel you were inspired to read because you took that literature class in college.  Maybe you’ll be immersed in the arts to take you away from the everyday stress of your job.  Perhaps, you’ll start those piano lessons you always wanted to take to broaden your knowledge of music.  Learn sign language so that you can communicate with someone who may communicate differently. Whatever it is, push yourself and broaden your horizons through education.  You won’t regret it!