Speaker 1: Helping leaders motivate their people to a higher level of
Speaker 1: performance through strong human relations, team building, and golajieving. This
Speaker 1: is the seven Minute Leadership Podcast with your host Paul Fellavaledo.
Speaker 2: Hello everyone, and welcome to the seven Minute Leadership Podcast.
Speaker 2: It's episode six twenty six. Today we're talking about something
Speaker 2: every leader says they value and very few actually engineer. Feedback.
Speaker 2: Not the annual review kind, not the form you fill
Speaker 2: out and file away. I'm talking about real, living, breathing
Speaker 2: feedback that moves your team forward. And I want you
Speaker 2: to picture this as a flywheel. If you've ever seen
Speaker 2: a massive industrial flywheel, you know it does not move fast.
Speaker 2: At first. You push it and it barely turns. You
Speaker 2: push it again, and it moves a little more, and
Speaker 2: after enough consistent force, it starts spinning on its own.
Speaker 2: Once it is moving, it creates energy and momentum that
Speaker 2: is hard to stop. Feedback works the same way. Most
Speaker 2: leaders treat feedback like a fire extinguisher, something you grab
Speaker 2: when there's smoke. Someone makes mistake, morale dips, performance slides,
Speaker 2: and then you rush in with corrective comments. That is
Speaker 2: not a flywheel. That is crisis management. A feedback flywheel
Speaker 2: has four simple components. First, observation. Leaders who build momentum
Speaker 2: pay attention. They are not buried in email. They are
Speaker 2: not hiding behind closed doors. They are in the room,
Speaker 2: on the floor, in the cockpit, in the station bay,
Speaker 2: wherever the work is happening. In aviation. I've said this before.
Speaker 2: One degree off course does not look like much in
Speaker 2: the first mile. Ten miles later you're in a different city.
Speaker 2: Feedback starts with noticing small deviations early. Second, immediate conversation,
Speaker 2: not dramatic, not emotional, direct and calm. You see something
Speaker 2: done well, you say it. You see something off, you
Speaker 2: address it in real time, not three weeks later during
Speaker 2: a scheduled meeting when the moment has lost oxygen. When
Speaker 2: I was teaching scuba diving back in the day, if
Speaker 2: a student's buoyancy was off by a few feed I
Speaker 2: corrected it immediately under water. If I waited until we
Speaker 2: were back on the boat, the learning window was gone.
Speaker 2: Leadership is the same. Delay kills development. Third, ownership. This
Speaker 2: is where most leaders break the flywheel. You cannot give
Speaker 2: feedback and then disappear. If you tell a supervisor to
Speaker 2: tighten up their documentation, you need to circle back. If
Speaker 2: you tell a team member their tone and meetings need adjustment,
Speaker 2: you follow up and ask how it's going. Feedback without
Speaker 2: follow through is just noise. Ownership also means you invite
Speaker 2: feedback about yourself. If your team cannot tell you the
Speaker 2: truth about your blind spots, your flywheel is already rusted.
Speaker 2: Fourth repetition Momentum only builds with consistency. You cannot give
Speaker 2: feedback once a quarter and expect a culture of growth.
Speaker 2: You cannot hold one tough conversation and think accountability is handled.
Speaker 2: The flywheel spins because you keep pushing. Now Here is
Speaker 2: the leadership lesson inside. This feedback is not about correction.
Speaker 2: It is about energy transfer. Unwrite feedback does three things.
Speaker 2: It clarifies expectations, It tightens standards. It builds trust. Yes,
Speaker 2: builds trust. Most leaders are afraid feedback will damage relationships.
Speaker 2: The opposite is true. Silence damages relationships. Confusion damages relationships.
Speaker 2: Inconsistency damages relationships. Clarity builds trust. In my world, whether
Speaker 2: it's ems aviation, we're running an organization, ambiguity is dangerous.
Speaker 2: The same is true in business, healthcare, education, or any industry.
Speaker 2: If your people do not know where they stand, they
Speaker 2: will assume the worst, or they will drift. The feedback
Speaker 2: flywheel prevents drift. Now let me give you a tactical
Speaker 2: way to implement this starting to mo Step one, schedule
Speaker 2: two daily observation windows. Ten minutes in the morning, ten
Speaker 2: minutes in the afternoon. No phone, no laptop, walk the floor,
Speaker 2: listen and watch. Step two deliver one piece of positive
Speaker 2: feedback and one piece of corrective feedback every single day.
Speaker 2: Small as fine, specific is required. Do not say good job,
Speaker 2: Say I notice how you handled the customer's frustration without
Speaker 2: escalating it. That protected the brand. Do not say you
Speaker 2: need to improve communication. Say when you send reports without
Speaker 2: a summary, the leadership team spends extra time to coding them.
Speaker 2: Add a three sentence executive overview next time. Step three
Speaker 2: track follow up. Keep a simple notebook, write the name,
Speaker 2: the issue, the date. Revisit it in a week. That
Speaker 2: is how you create accountability without turning into a micromanager.
Speaker 2: Now here's the red key moment in all of this.
Speaker 2: High stakes leadership moments are not always dramatic. Sometimes they
Speaker 2: are quiet. A comment you avoid, a standard, you lower,
Speaker 2: a behavior you tolerate because you are tired. Those are
Speaker 2: red key moments. Every time you choose silence over clarity,
Speaker 2: you slow the flywheel. Every time you lean into the conversation,
Speaker 2: you add force. Over time, something powerful happens. Your team
Speaker 2: starts self correcting, peers start holding peers accountable. Standards become
Speaker 2: culture not personal. When that happens, you're no longer pushing
Speaker 2: the flywheel alone. The team is pushing it with you.
Speaker 2: That is when leadership shifts from supervision to stewardship. And
Speaker 2: here's the final warning. If your flywheel is not spinning,
Speaker 2: something else is gossip, complacency, mediocrity, feedback energy does not
Speaker 2: disappear at either fuel's growth or it fuels dysfunction. So
Speaker 2: ask yourself today, is your leadership build on annual reviews
Speaker 2: in occasional tough talks, or are you intentionally building a
Speaker 2: feedback flywheel? Seven minutes a day is enough to change this.
Speaker 2: Observe speak, follow up, repeat, Momentum will take care of
Speaker 2: the rest. So leadership is not about grand speeches or
Speaker 2: dramatic interventions. It is about small corrections made early and often.
Speaker 2: Start pushing the flywheel today. Have one real conversation that
Speaker 2: you have been avoiding. Give one precise piece of praise
Speaker 2: that reinforce this is your standard. Keep it moving every day.
Speaker 2: That is how you build a culture that does not stall.
Speaker 2: This has been the seven minute Leadership Podcast and I
Speaker 2: thank you for listening.
Speaker 1: For more Paul fell of Alito Podcasts, visit paulfellowalito dot
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