Feedback can feel like a threat. One wrong word, one offhanded comment—and suddenly you’re in defense mode. But what if feedback could be an opening instead of a shutdown?
In this episode of Feedback Fix, Collette Revere sits down with Trevor Lovegrove—business transformation advisor, Red Cross trainer, and all-around thoughtful human—to explore the emotional side of feedback. From self-awareness to safe space, they unpack the tools and practices that turn reactive moments into opportunities for growth.
In this episode, you’ll hear:
Trevor brings clarity, warmth, and practical wisdom to this generous conversation. Whether you’re leading a team, navigating change, or just trying to grow without losing yourself—this one’s for you.
Watch the episode on YouTube or listen on Spotify or Apple.
Collette: Welcome to feedback fix where we get real about the messy conversations that move us forward. We are a live podcast, which means no scripts, no do overs, just unfiltered, honest conversations happening as they unfold. I'm Collette Revere, and today I'm sitting down with Trevor love Grove, business transformation advisor and master of integration, who helps organizations bring together technology, process, people and data to improve how they serve their customers. Welcome, Trevor, we're so glad you're here today.
Trevor: Oh, well, thank you very much for inviting me, Collette, it's good to talk to you.
Collette: Yes, same. So you are a jack of all trades. Basically, you are into a lot of different things. So will you share what you're up to right now?
Trevor: Yeah, well, as usual, I've got my finger in all sorts of pies, and I was actually trying to list them earlier for you so I could give you a comprehensive answer. I had to cut it back a bit. But anyway, I I'm still doing my best my business transformation work. I'm doing a lot of blogs right now. I'm starting to build some partnerships, as you know, both Technology Partnerships and people partnerships, in order to try and offer solutions for companies that really have lost themselves in terms of the their small to medium sized business. They don't have access to the expertise that they want. They're befuddled by all of the changes that are going on right now. They have no idea where to look and turn and unlike the bigger organizations who have at least experts supposedly at their command, they don't have any of that, and that's really just a problem with outsourcing your expertise. You know, if you're let's take an example. You're selling, we use dolls because that's a topical discussion at the moment. If you're selling dolls, but your manufacturing is done in China, then then you have a problem, because you don't have manufacturing expertise or requiring it that of somebody else. So if you lose that expertise, you have a problem. And so a lot of companies do that. They do that for their IT infrastructure. They do that for all sorts of these systems. The trouble is, if it goes wrong or they need to change, they're dead. So it's how they are, how I'm there to sort of answer, help them figure out what they need to do, how they need to move forward, how they need to transform their organization into something that's sustainable and also adaptable, and that just covers all the things that you said. It's not just the technology. In fact, the technology is the last piece. It's all about. Do your people, people fit your vision? Does your data allow you to exploit your information that you need in order to grow and so on and so forth? And then your processes need to be solid as well. So all of those things contribute to the decisions you make about the technology, because that's what sets your vision anyway. That's the first bit. So that was my advert for the company. The other things that I do, as you know, is I, I volunteer for the Red Cross. I do project management training for their leadership, their management leadership, in order to and that's usually we do that. That's about 12 hours of project management training. And I also for Red Cross, I do leadership training, I've done some AI awareness training, I've done some agile training and so on and so forth, all sorts of good stuff and then I also volunteer for, I'm the vice president for the local PMI chapter where I'm I involved, very heavily involved in mentoring and networking and Helping project managers get better and prepare themselves for what they should be doing their core mission, which is change. Now, I could go on and on, but, you know, it's going to get really boring after a while.
Collette: So I just want to say, see, listeners, I'm not exaggerating. Trevor really is into all sorts of things, and that's like his short list, you know, he's cut some things back recently, and also Trevor I want because maybe I need help understanding this too, that you have recently had some certification in something around women in business. Can you please explain that?
Trevor: Oh. Absolutely. It actually started off with I was approached by the university utk Knoxville to be a participant on the advisory board for women in leadership, which is a course they ran. And I said, Yeah, sure, I'd love to be on the advisory board, but I need to do the course to understand what you're telling women to see, yeah, does this work out? And also I wanted to educate myself, because I've always considered, to myself to be a supporter of, I'll say, equal rights. Because, as everyone will tell you, the biggest thing that I my hot button is fairness. And so inequality, to me, is just unfair, right? So that's why I get a bit out my pram about it a little bit. So I've always been a supporter of women, but I realized that that's not good enough nowadays if we're going to move to the next level towards equality. And there is still a lot of good work has been done, but there's still an awful lot of work to do in order to make sure that women and minorities are treated equitably and based on their expertise and knowledge, not on what color of their skin or what their sexual orientation is, or what sex they are. It doesn't matter. It shouldn't matter. Unfortunately, it does so I took the course, and that was the women in leadership course I did, and it sort of helped me get much more of a perspective of how bluntly women see themselves, and that can be. It's the same way as when men see themselves. We're a lot less. How can I put this critical? Yeah, think of the right phrase, but no critical. It's the same thing. There. There are less self aware. So if you ever said leadership through men, they like, Oh no, I know how to do that. But the leadership of women gave me some great insight in how women perceive themselves in the workplace. And I've also augmented that by talking to my daughters, who are in their 40s now and are professional in the right so they give me lots of advice. And of course, my, you know, my wife is a legal mediator and an attorney before then, she's even, and I'm going to plug for her. She's even presented a case or been sat in the Supreme Court. She's got a plot by the Supreme Court. So she's, she's a very, very talented, very, very skilled, and she gives me some really good advice, because it's a very difficult subject to try and broach. So one of the offshoots of that is, I'm trying to feed some of that work and thought into a program within the PMI, because it's applicable, whatever, whoever you are, to actually have the right tools to actually deal with certain situations. And I think I don't honestly care how you get to an outcome a lot of people do, which I think is the mistake, but we all have to have tools in the tools to actually overcome obstacles like conflict management or leading a team or communication, all of those, what used to be called soft skills, and I hate that phrase, because It's more powerful, I think, than hard skills. So sounds a bit fluffy, you know, it sounds like, you know, fluffy, but they're really leadership skills, and I think it's important that we all understand how we do things. Comes back to that self awareness statement again, so that we can use our own born skills to actually get things done. What? Just a question of, well, you have to do it a certain way. No, you have to make it so it works for you, because that's the most effective way of doing it. Alright? Now, there are some skills that we don't have in which case we have to do better, but being self aware is the first step in understanding where your weaknesses, I don't like that word lack of tools, or maybe you have a couple of good screwdrivers, but you need some more, right? So you need to augment your present skill set. And I think most of it is that and but it all starts with self awareness. What? So that's really what I did, and it's been a very exciting journey for me, and I'm slowly trying to figure out how to start the debate. Because these are debates between groups of people to say, Well, look, this is how do you address these particular issues? How do you deal with this and let people hear and communicate and discuss how you exchange ideas and how do you get consensus without seeming to be ineffective, because one of the things I always find strange to me is that we talk about teamwork. We. Is to make a team work, you have to have some level of agreement, level, level of consensus, a way of working in a team. And everything is a team, right? CEO team, because he has, you know, all sorts of people working for him, and that's his team or her team. They don't seem to think like that strangely. I don't know why, but there's this view of team. So how do you get the team to work together? And there's been loads of you know, you have one on one strategies, you have human resource strategies, all of those tools at your toolbox. But how do you use them effectively? Is one way of talking about it. And one of the things you talk about a little bit is feedback, which comes out from all of this, and we're going to get onto that subject at the minute. I am certain when I shut up, it's important that we learn how to deal with certain issues as a leader, because at some point or another, at any point in our career, we are presented with a leadership opportunity, and I would shy away from it because we don't think we're ready, or we don't think we're good enough, or we don't think we have the right team skill set, or we grasp all of our courage in both hands and step forward and say, You know What, I may not be ready, but I'm willing to try. Yeah, that's really all I ask of anybody, is to say, You know what? Mistakes can be fixed.
Collette: Usually, right? Usually, I love how you added that. Well, this is, this is reflective of all of our conversations, Trevor, where you you have so much good, thought provoking content packed into a small space that now my brain is going in three different directions, because I'm just still digesting everything you said. But I think when we talk about self awareness, I totally agree at that that is where development starts, right? Not only self awareness, but honestly, for me, it's the next step of saying I don't know how to do this and I need help. What do you think the step is?
Trevor: Well, there is a step slightly before them, but I think it's a question of acknowledging that you need help in certain areas. And I think again, we have that stepping thing, and I'm going to be grossly general, okay, in my my statement, so please say step there's one view, one set of group of people. Maybe we'll call it the half empty group of people who, who, who look at themselves, reflect, become, increase their self awareness and and start to move into self criticism and say, Oh, I'm not very good at that.
Collette: Is that what you were talking about with the difference between men and women?
Trevor: Sometimes, yeah, I would call it more male, masculine or feminine. I think, okay, women are struggle with self awareness, or they struggle with that question, as some men do. I don't think it's necessarily a male female thing. I think that's a great point. Yeah, masculine, feminine thing. I think women are much better at it. But the danger because, and this is one of the quotes from the leadership in other women in leadership. One of the videos I watched is girls will be taught to be perfect. Boys are taught to be brave. And there's so you can imagine, if you start to really look at yourself, and you haven't started that journey off with being on the journey of discovery and improvement. In other words, that's your goal. And you just look at yourself and say, oh, you know, yeah, I'm pretty good at this, maybe some of this, I'm very bad at it. And so therefore, you almost throw yourself, you know, out the window, because you think you're a horrible human being, and that's not all true. So you have to start off before you do that self awareness thing, you have to define it as a journey of both discovery and steps to improve. Like you said, I need help in certain areas, and that can come from self help books. And I would always encourage anybody to do that, but also find a mentor that you can work with, not necessarily in the organization you work for, but find someone who who can mentor you. I mean, I mentor people in from the PMI. It's actually a safe space. And I tell people that when I sit down and start the mentoring process, this is a safe space. I'm not going to tell anybody about what goes in his conversation. I'm not judging you. This is you're we're talking about stuff that you are struggling with, and I'm here to help. That's it, right. End of story. There are lots of great self help materials out there, which, again, I've. Some but my daughter. My daughters both, one of them, struggle with mental health issues for a long time. One of them has been becoming a professional within Microsoft. I hope I can mention their name. They're a big enough organization that won't give you too much of a clue, right? She's my daughter, and she works for Microsoft. Okay, good luck with finding out who she is anyway. So, but my point being is that they both using it for the same reason, and they both tackled it in a very positive way. And that's the way to go into this exercise. When you start the self awareness thing, don't treat it like you know you're going to beat yourself up. This is that's point. I think a lot of people go there and they really shouldn't, um, right? So I think that whole self awareness journey, the bottom line here is, be prepared for that journey, and don't go in there and spontaneous sit down and say, Hey, I'm going to do this. And, oh my gosh, look at this. The other thing is, use start off the journey from people's feedback of you.
Collette: Yeah, okay, tell me more about that.
Trevor: Well, we, all we, I think one of the things you were talking about in your, in your is your startup attempt, which is feedback, um, everybody's opinion of you is produced from their perspective, yes, and that's not self awareness. That's their perspective of you. So you need and that can be input. Don't get me wrong. You should listen, but don't take it as gospel. How many of us say, Oh, well, I was told I was a really bad communicator, because Charlie said, so, right? Well, judge that for yourself. Face up to that and say, well, am I really maybe ask other people. There are different ways of dealing with that, but don't judge yourself by other opinions of people's opinion of yourself. Otherwise you will, you will change the wrong things, because you've got to end up with a person who you're still comfortable with. There was a lady that I was mentoring, and she had a problem with a co worker, and she was saying, I know this. This particular coworker had interpersonal issues, right? I'm not going to say anything more. And her reaction was, well, I can get as nasty as she can. And I said, No, you don't want to do that, because that's not you. So don't distort yourself. And I think a lot of people, when they hear messages, oh, you're not quite good at this, or you're not quite good of that. That's, that may be true. You may have some improvement to make. And that's, that's not right, but how you approach that is purely down to you. How do you approach changing yourself, building up your skill set, is down to you. And what that looks like at the end should be, you should be able to look in the mirror and say, I still recognize the person I'm looking at.
Collette: I love that as a measure. And I didn't ask you, and we're not getting into your story just yet. But what is your? What is your? I don't even want to know your response to feedback. I want to know your emotional response to feedback. Trevor, what immediately happens for you? And then, how do you get to a productive place?
Trevor: Well, we could go into a lot of time talking about what, really, what the different types of feedback, okay, but I think what you mean is, is that the let's just take the obvious one, which is somebody walks up to you and say, I'd really like to give you some feedback, or variations on that theme, right? All of them have the word feedback in, right? Yeah, well, instantly, and this is the way I've learned how to deal with this, not how I used to deal with it, how I've learned to deal with it, usually, that what that means is a it's not going to be constructive. B, it's their opinion. And but they they think it's they're entitled to tell you, right? Thirdly, you're really not prepared for this discussion.
Collette: Um, you or the person giving it to you.
Trevor: It's nto the person who is going to give it to you is prepared.
Collette: Oh, you're not prepared, but they're going to give you feedback.
Trevor: Okay, what they used to call a flag, remember the flags? Yes, what that means is they want to criticize you. Okay, right? It doesn't mean anything. It's nothing going to be if it was just positive. Somebody doesn't say, I want to give you feedback. No, you were wonderful. They say you're wonderful. If it comes out of their mouth, I would like to give you feedback. It usually means something negative. Okay. Now what I've learned is, but the emotional reaction that what used to be is, oh my god, right, yes. Thank you very much. Yeah, please tell me I'm not emotionally prepared for that discussion.
Collette: So wait. Okay, I'm gonna slow you down here, Trevor, because I'm trying to make sure I understand. So for you, because you're such a fast processor, that I do feel like you get from point A to point B pretty quickly, especially now that you're a feedback Pro, and you're used to it at this point, but you're saying initially, when that would happen, what would your reaction be? What was your initial...
Trevor: It was negative. I think defensive is a better word. Okay, immediately step back. And you're like, because you know instinctively what's about to come. Yeah, you think you feel you have to you're going to have to defend yourself. So you're immediately step back. And of course, it's also sometimes given. And I'm a great advocate of watching people's non-verbals. The face that you're looking at is telling you this is not going to be pleasant. Yeah, you're not going to like it. It may not, may not be not pleasant, but you're going to like so I think most people's reaction, that instinctive reaction is to be defensive. Now they may not be defensive until they hear it, because they they're naive, and they walk straight into this trap that's just been set for them. Because I do believe it's an ambush.
Collette: Okay, you think the intention of the person who's giving the feedback is an ambush, or just that, the way that it plays out sets,
Trevor: I think maybe consciously or unconsciously, the people are setting an ambush for you. Okay, I gotcha, because they want to catch you off guard so that they get something from this negotiation that's about to start. So the way I've learned to handle it is I've said, Oh, that's wonderful. Thank you very much. I'd love to hear it, but I don't have time right now. Can we set up some time later to talk about your views, and have a discussion about it? Yeah, and it's the discussion about it bit that's the most important, because when someone comes up to you and says, I want to give you feedback, this is a one way process that they think they've started, they're going to tell you, and then you're going to go, and that's how they're working, right? Yeah, but if you say something like discuss, that implies that you want to have a debate, that there's going to be feedback from yourself back on whatever is the point that was going to be raised, and that person is now suddenly in a different position. You're now, what you're trying to do is, and not just that is, because now the control of the process has changed. Because I'm saying, I'll reach out to you and we'll get some time together. Okay, things, the equilibrium of control has changed.
Collette: I gotcha, so you don't feel like ambushed. You feel like you've taken back control of the situation where, you know, maybe, I'm sure, the feeling of being ambushed comes also from just the natural defensiveness people have when ou're getting feedback, and so it's like a strategic way for you to feel in control and not defensive anymore, right?
Trevor: Yes. And now I'm still again on the control thing. I am still perfectly and I've learned this trick as well. Going to see someone, whether it be an office or whether it be cube or meeting them for coffee if you want a neutral environment, is the best way to set that up. But now you're, you're now going to set it up so that you can have an a deep and meaningful conversation and give yourself time to have that debate. It's no longer beautiful. I think you were rubbish, yeah, and then walk off. You're like, I've got a million questions here, and and you've just disappeared, you've thrown your grenade in the room, and you've done a done a runner. Yeah, you're not it's just not constructive. So my view is always going to make it constructive. So that's the way I've learned to approach it. And I think it's a good lesson for other people not to immediately. I will say, react rather than respond. So what is to respond to the situation rather to react to it? Right? Use that in other situations. I don't know about you, because you've been in the corporate world too. You're walking along the corridor and you're going to a meeting, and you're preoccupied with the meeting, blah, blah, blah, and somebody walks up and says, Hey, have you got a minute? Right? And you're like, I used to say, Yeah, okay, and it was never going to be a minute. And then you're like, you're meeting, and you're not listening to them, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, yeah. And I learned to say, look, if it's a yes or no answer, absolutely that you want from me, but if it's more than a yes or no answer, can you can we make an appointment to meet? Like, yeah, with every baby, because I felt that I wasn't I was short changing the other person because I really wasn't concentrating, like they were listening. I really wasn't listening, and that wasn't fair on them. What this was important to them, and I need to they. I owed that to them, to give them my attention.
Collette: I love that. So it's about invest. Also just the time and space and energy into really hearing what the other person says and making sure that you're in a good position to do that,
Trevor: Yeah, and both mentally and so on, make yourself yeah, prepared. I know people worry about, oh, we have we're so busy, we're so busy, and they're absolutely right, but you need to give yourself time to prepare for what you're about to say, and then maybe think about your key points anyway, emotional reaction to feedback.
Collette: Okay, that's great. Thank you, Trevor, because I think I hear you going, you've solved it kind of already with you're not you've moved, you've learned the lesson from that, and so you move into your strategy of how to navigate it. But I think it's so helpful to just revisit, like, what happens for you, what's the normal reaction? And I have to tell you, when you talk about the ambush, I just can't help but think about probably how many times I've done that to people Trevor, because I'm uncomfortable giving the feedback. And I'm like, I have this feedback. This is totally immature, but I'll own up to I know I've done this. I have the feedback. I value the relationship so much, and I have the feedback. And I'm playing it through in my head. How am I going to say this? What is going to be their reaction? I really want to do this because I think it'll be helpful, but, you know, like, but I really don't want to do this because this is really uncomfortable for me, too. And so I know I have chosen bad times. I have done it like, really aggressively, I think just trying to get it out of my mouth, because I don't even want to do it in the first place. So not aggressive, like obviously physically, but just like being a little too direct, because I just need it out there so we can be done with this conversation. And so I can only imagine what that would seem like to the person on the receiving end of, you know, really getting that, that kind of feedback,
Trevor: And it comes down to what you're pointing out. It's your non-verbals, right? Yeah, it's going to come across. I would have used not aggressive, but Intense. Intense. You're very focused. Yeah, what you want to say you as you say you practiced it in your mind. So it's all going to come out, yeah, and the other person. And honestly, none of my things are on, and I'm still getting stuff coming up. I've turned them all off, but just to take this point a step further So, so what you've done is, although you're uncomfortable, you may know the person, but it's always still uncomfortable to give feedback. So it's a question of getting a bit of a better Zen, and do the same for you. If you want to deliver some feedback which is not necessarily complimentary or positive, or at least to you, then find a neutral place, you know, go. Go for places where you're both comfortable in, I know, if you know each other, you know, try to say, hey, pop in and say, Hey, do you want to go for lunch? And then talk about it. And, you know, there's those situations, everybody's guard is a little bit down. You're a little bit more relaxed. And it works when, whenever I have bad news to deliver to somebody I and it doesn't have to be, but it it's similar. I'd always try and think about the forum that I want them to do, because the overall message here is, is you want them to listen to you? And if you, if you're if you've not got them in listening mode, then they're not going to hear what you say. No, truly, they're going to go, oh, yeah, Collette, being, you know, nasty, you know, horrible. And no, four people aren't going to listen to you. And that's not, that's not what you want. You want them to be able to take your advice and also treat it as your advice. As an adult, they can take it, or they can leave. Don't, don't take that personally if, if I say, thanks very much, Collette, but I'm going to completely disregard what you say, totally. That's fine. Yeah, a lot of people take that very personally to say, but I've thought of this, and you should be, you know, begging me to accept it, and no, sometimes it's not. And I'll give you a little example of a classic one, which is very personal to me as a new dad. And you can imagine, many years ago, my son is nearly 45 now, so it was a very long time ago. He just got born. And my mother in law, I remember this to this day, right? And she's dead now. So. I can say this, and I hope there's no clap of thunder, so if this flash of lightning, she's wagging her finger at me, um, but she said to me, she said, do you mean, do you mind if I give you some advice, basically, about parenting, how to bring up my son? And I said, I have no problem with you ever giving me some of if you see me doing something that you feel uncomfortable with or whatever, please feel free. But equally, please be Do not be concerned if I ignore it, because at the end of the day, I'm accountable for bringing up my children. That's right. Not you. Yeah, right. And she never gave me one bit of advice since then. So she clearly took it very personally, which I didn't do. So I didn't do a good job. It's saying, I'm okay with you giving me advice, but, but if I say, Yeah, I thought about it, and I'm not, I'm not going to do it that way. I want to do it my way. And if I screw up, hey, that's my problem.
Collette: Yeah, well, that's always the that's always the truth. Trevor, it's crazy when people don't see that as the truth, or acknowledge that as the truth, that it's the person receiving the feedback who really gets to choose what to do with it, how they take it, if, if they take it, if they believe it. And so it's interesting, because it is true. It's just kind of objectively true. But for I could see how saying it out loud, for some people might feel like negating what they're saying before they're actually saying,
Trevor: Yeah. And if you think about, let's just think put it in a professional sense, your boss and you are having a month, monthly review, or whatever it may be, quarterly, yearly, whatever that you do, and you're just sitting there and having a conversation, if, if your boss says something to you, Well, what I think you ought to do this in a different way, and you're sitting there thinking it doesn't they don't know what they're talking about. It's very hard to say that. Yeah, right. So feedback to feedback is as important as feedback itself. It's the interaction, because you're immediately, let's be straight with this. You've immediately created a conflict.
Collette: Oh, so you so let me make sure, because I think I know what you're saying here. So you're saying that the feedback about the relationship, and the vibe in the room is just as it so I guess the feedback about what's happening between the two of us is just as important as the content. Absolutely, yeah,
Trevor: Absolutely. Let's put it a different way. If we don't have a we have a pretty good relationship. I think you're gonna listen to me a little bit more about what's going on. If you trust me, if you feel that you trust my judgment, to take the personal thing out of it. If you, if you have doubts about my judgment, you're going to put another couple of red flags in what I've just said before. Before I've said it so and this is why, and it sounds so antiquated and so weird, but trust is a key thing, right? Yeah, and, and relationship is a key thing. So when you're even when you're in a boss slash subordinate relationship. If the subordinate and the boss don't trust each other, you have a bad relationship. You have a toxic, potentially toxic relationship, because you doesn't matter what I say and however many good intentions I provide, it's going to be received with suspicion and vice versa, right? So I'm going to, like, if you say, well, I finished. Okay, well, I want to check your work. I'll check your homework. You can see how that can very quickly turn into a very toxic relationship. And I'm being slightly, you know, wavy of hands and being big bodied about this, right? It's very true. You think of any other relationships that you've had, and it doesn't matter coming back to that, that lady who said she had a co worker that wasn't, you know, very her indirect personal skills weren't very good. She would her co worker would treat everything that she said, My mentee said, with suspicion, because somehow she thought she had other motives, and it didn't matter how well intentioned these conversations were, yeah, where she was always going to go trying to mess with me
Collette: As you were saying this, I'm thinking, okay, there's intention and there's judgment. So like in the example that you used about somebody who has bad judgment and trust for me, I'm almost like, if you have bad judgment, then you have bad judge with your things and my things. And so it's kind of like, you know, Trevor just as bad judgement. So I'm not going to take in everything you say. But if your intent, that your intent. Like when it comes to trust, the reason I think you're saying something is more important to me than what you're actually saying. Does that make sense?
Trevor: Yes, it does. I think, yeah. I think the important thing is, even if, again, this comes back to the balance, it's not so much that you can say something wrong. It just feel doesn't feel right to me. Okay? And again, we come back to the do something that you feel comfortable with. Now, that doesn't mean to say you throw out the baby with a bath water and say, Well, that was a really bad idea. You can think about it. Maybe tweak it a bit until it becomes, you may say, well, actually, there's a kernel of truth in what they said, right? I talk a lot, right? So the obvious criticism for me, somebody else, you could have cut paint, cut that down, right? And I'm going to go, you know, I did go on a bit about so if I do this again, maybe I need to think about how to say this differently. I'm not necessarily agreeing with them, but what? But taking the idea, the concept of what they've said on board, chewing it over and spitting it out, is is a way of reflecting back on your behavior and trying to be aware of yourself, cos that is more self awareness moment that you can have to say, hey, I can learn from that. So it doesn't matter whether, even if it's bad intentioned or good intentioned, okay, it is still intentional. Take it on board, chew it overnight. Maybe you know, sleep on it. Sleep on it. Wake up in the morning and say, You know what, I can either discard it outright because ain't going to work for me, or maybe I can think about this and maybe build it into my skill set, or I can fully embrace it and send me in a different it doesn't matter. I think the point is, you're making those decisions for yourself. Yeah, that makes sense. Sorry. And then go back and thank the person for saying, You know what? Thank you for the feedback. That was great.
Collette: Yeah, I love the way that you describe this, because it's so visual of what did you say? You said putting it in your mouth, chewing on it and then spitting it out. It's like, so visual about internalizing it, kind of tasting it, to see if it fits for you, if it doesn't, if it's sour, if it's sweet, and then if it's not working for you, spit it out. It's just a great visual Trevor of kind of what that looks like. And I also like that that does so for me, intention is so much, but I get what you're saying is that almost negates intention, because it's like, no matter what your intention is, the quality of the content giving me is a is a separate thing, and I can use my own judgment with that once I internalize it and kind of like sit with it for a second. So I think that's really good advice. I think that's really good advice. Okay, I know we need to talk about your most powerful feedback moment, but there's something that's just like tugging at my brain that I need to untangle with you before we do that. It's about something you said earlier, about women needing to be perfect and men needing to be brave. And I love that there's something so true to me about that, and we see it reflected in the data about, you know, people applying for jobs that women don't apply for jobs unless they're 90% met the criteria, and men are, what, 60% 40% but so what's what kind of I'm I don't know what to think about this, but what's nagging at me is that brave isn't The opposite of perfect. Is it like they're not. So you can want to be perfect and still be brave. But if women are not applying for jobs that they are 60% qualified for, 70% qualified for, what is? What is that? Is that the opposite of bravery? What is it?
Trevor: No, I think it's, it comes back to that. It is purely a base question of a basis of, I've got to be perfect, so 60% ain't good enough. So therefore, and there's the transference, yeah, therefore, the people who are, who are going to be looking at this, will think, I'm not good enough. That's so it's the importance of being accepted, or even, yeah, accepted as the right word, yeah. When somebody gets your resume and they go through that they're not, and this is where the issues come, wrong, right? Different. I'll explain my process, which I hope resonates with you, okay? I used to get a lot of resumes, and when I used to work with outside recruiting companies, they said, oh, we'll filter out, you know, the rubbish, and we'll send you three or four that you can read. I said, No, I don't want that, you know, if there's obviously somebody not qualified, yes, of course, but I'm happy to read through all of them, then I'll tell you what, who I would like to see, because I'm looking for certain things which the recruiter will not know. So when I'm looking through a resume, I'm not looking specifically at, you know, what their experience is. I'll glance at it, but I'm really after the first paragraph, which is, why am I doing this? Why am I applying? Because it tells you so much about the human being, if it's right, if it's sort of, I've achieved this, and I've achieved that, it's fine. What? What? What is your vision? You know, where do you want to be in five years? That type of thing. That's what I'm looking for. I'm looking for energy. Yeah, right. And I can, then I can say this person feels to me with the right energy. Let me talk to them, right? That's my next week. One of the examples I specifically had, I was looking for a data analyst to work with business objects for a technical service center that I was running 200 people, and we had a small group of analysts who produce reports and so on and so forth. And I interviewed this, this lady I'd seen a resume, and she was from marketing. And I'm like, well, it's not really a marketing job, right? So I'm like, maybe, but her otherwise, I'm like, I love the girl. Ladies energy. Anyway, eventually, after several weeks, I interviewed her, and I'm like, perfect. Now, if I don't want my original instinct, she would have got the job about two months earlier, didn't I procrastinated, but in the end, I was so happy that I finally took courage in both hands, interviewed her and hired her. Because everyone said, Oh, what are we doing with it? Trust me, this is good. She was brilliant, absolutely brilliant. Um, because you brought a different perspective to it, which is something that was an added bonus. But my point being is that first view of your resume, it isn't on what you've done. It is not on a lot of things, very specific things. It's people read a resume and then get a feel for you. So it's a big thing. So it doesn't really matter if you only fit 60% of the of the requirements, because most of those are made up anyway, right? Yeah, yeah, proficient in Excel.
Collette: I used to write that. I used to write something about being an expert internet researcher back in the mid 90s on my resume, right? What does that mean? Right? I don't know.
Trevor: It doesn't mean anything. So my point being is a lot of the stuff on a resume can be bypassed if you look at it like for instance, if it says you need a graduate degree. Oh, well, I don't have one of those. But I've been doing this type of work for the last 10 years. That must count for something. And I think to take your statistic, and again, it's a statistic a lot of women would look at that and say, Well, I haven't got a graduate degree. I can't apply for that job. Bang. Not hard enough minute I'm good enough. Yeah, right, yeah, I can do this. And so yeah, damn it, I'm going to apply anyway. That's the bravery bit. So we need it's not a question of whether women are or are not good enough. It's just that they feel they should be perfect, yeah, um. And therefore, if they, if they perceive that they're not, they won't take that step and say, God damn it, I'm going to go for it.
Collette: Yes. And there, there was that the thing that I think was bothering me about that is not what you said, Trevor, but just this. There's something you can bother you that's good for you. There's something just dissonant for me about that, because perfect is an end result. It's an outcome. Brave is an action that leads to the end result. It's the process, action versus I have to be this at the end of the day, and so I It bothers me, because I want women to be brave. I think what would happen if we acknowledged our desire to be perfect and instead decided to just be brave that will get us so much farther? Because it's not an unrealistic outcome, it's truly just a way to be in any given moment. You know? Yeah, it's just so interesting.
Trevor: I think there's also another factor to this, which is alongside the perfect thing, which is acceptance.
Collette: Okay, tell me.
Trevor: What bravery tells you to do is, is. Okay to step out from the crowd and move forward Exactly.
Collette: It's almost the opposite of perfect in that way, I guess, right?
Trevor: It's saying, Yeah, I want to do this. I think I'm good enough, and it's okay to be different, right? It's okay to stand out from the crowd, I think. And again, we forget that. You know, women haven't really been treated with any level of equality in the workplace for relatively short amount of time. So I think a lot of it comes down to just maturity of the process. But a lot of women feel they they're trying to measure themselves against everybody else. Yeah, and not say, You know what, I think I'm good enough for this job. If I fail, it's okay, right?
Collette: Doing that too.
Trevor: Oh, I'm certain they are. I'm certain they are too. There's a lot of false bravado that goes right, yeah. But again, because boys are taught to be brave, they feel they're obligated to do it. So it's almost opposite end of the scale. Women won't try it because they're worried that they'll get rejected. And guys do it because they use the and if they don't get accepted, they usually excuse that well, they didn't know what they were talking about, so make up a false thing so it neither end is good, okay, yeah, of be brave, but be cognizant of, uh, if it doesn't work out, that's okay.
Collette: Yeah, and what you said earlier, just really kind of frames that nicely of you know, you decide what's true about you. You decide what's true for you, nobody else, nobody else's opinion of you is real. Is anything solid? The only thing that becomes solid is what you think of yourself and how you operate then as a result. So Trevor, I can't even believe how much time has already passed as we've been talking, I really want to hear about your most powerful feedback experience. So can you, can you tell the story like in first person, like, set the scene. Where are you? What are you thinking?
Trevor: The lucky thing is, it's a segue to what we've already been talking about.
Collette: Oh, great, okay, okay, so I think that was complete accident. But who cares?
Trevor: It started off. I took over a position, really, part of my modus operandi, apparently, was a change agent. So I was asked to take over an organization that had been a sort of a bit of a startup mode. It was a brand new platform. It was a networking platform. Actually. It was the advanced 800 network in the UK, and I was responsible for the development of it, working with vendors and so on and so forth. And I took over this job, and they'd established all sorts of working processes. And we used to have this monthly program meeting with me and my team and the vendors, or the vendor and their representatives, and the structure they've been set up was that they had a series of working groups, and I think it was 13 working groups, and each one of my direct reports had some of these working groups, and they had opposite numbers from the vendor, okay? And I'm sitting in one, it been about three months, and I'm sitting in one of these meetings, and I'm looking through the list of outstanding problems. And I said, Well, let's, let's go through this one. Where are we? And then it looked like it was owned by one person anyway, try and cut a long story short, accountability. It was nowhere to be found. It was, it was, Oh, I was waiting for them over there. Oh, and they would say, Oh, I'm and it late. Basically ended up going in a circle anyway. At that point, I'm like, I won't say what I said, but it was not, you know, particularly complimentary to anybody in particular. And I said, I'm done with this, right? I sat back, as I usually do, try to reflect, thinking about, Okay, well, you know, there's the problem accountability, or lack of accountability is the problem. How do I resolve this? And I came up with a proposal on my own, which is my mistake about how to structure it. I basically produced a much deeper hierarchy, because I thought, well, some of the people in some of the teams were perfectly capable of running some of this work, and it would mean that I could draw drill down into accountability. So I basically made it a more of a pyramid structure, and it was also to allow some of these issues to resolve themselves before they even got to this particular board. So all sorts of reasons why I did it. So I told the team at the next meeting, which was going to be at the vendors site. I said, Look, we're going to get together. That I'd like to talk to you about a few ideas I had about how we change the organization. I stood up there, did my little presentation. One slide, I think, uproar, complete uproar. You can't do this. This is the end of the universe. You know, I had phrases like, you know, all of that all came out a complete anarchy. Yeah, I stood there and I'm like, what all I'm doing is, like, changing the organization. They freaked out. Anyway. That was the end of that. So how did I approach this I thought, Well, I must have done something awfully wrong, right, because maybe I've completely missed the point. So I went back, chewed it a bit, spent a week hiding in my office, you know, tears, lots of what the professionals said, lots of self reflection. And this is my process, by the way, so you probably gathered that by now. So I went into this self reflective Moses, and this is why it was so important to me, because it was the first time that I'd actually said something that created controversy. Because usually I thought about it and I'm like, Well, this is a good idea anyway. That's beside the point. So what, how I tackled this was I then said, Okay, I'm going to meet with each of these people, these direct reports and their equivalents in the vendor, sit down and and I asked them one simple question. I said, this is the problem I'm trying to solve. What's wrong with my idea? I got nothing, really, no feedback at all. Nobody could tell me that there was a problem in my idea. Okay, all of that noise, which was good, because, in a way, they were reacting to, basically, i i ambushed them right at the beginning of this about, I'm giving you feedback, and you get that defensive reaction, yeah, that's what I was getting, which is why I'm I learned. I try and learn from my lessons that, and that's it. So we we did it, and I got accountability. I had to do something as well. I create for the project office as well, which is the first time anybody had created a project office in my organization. And we were 250,000 people.
Collette: Oh my gosh, big deal.
Trevor: Now I'm going to tell you one thing about myself. I never considered it to be a big deal. Okay, I'm solving a problem right now.
I was my, my I actually worked, worked it through a couple of times. We did some evolution. I did some evolution on it to the point where the company adopted it as a was a process. Oh, that's awesome. That was something else. Anyway, yeah, I'm not sure it fixed the real problem of making sure things delivered on time.
Collette: But hey, well, that's, that's why you that's why project managers have a job constantly for the until the end of time, because that's a chronic problem.
Trevor: We are a cost of failure, yeah, and I used to say that too, and everybody used to go, but it's and I know we're running out of time, but that's my story.
Collette: I love your story. There are several things I love about it. There are several things I love about it. One is yours. Is the first story. I think, I think where it's not like somebody go set goes to you and said, Trevor, I've got some feedback to share with you. And actually gave you feedback. Your feedback came in the form of reading the room as people were, you know, intense and emotional and saying, like, okay, nobody's telling me this. But this is feedback right here.
Trevor: This is telling me something what it is. That's exactly what it was.
Collette: Yeah, and there's something really powerful about that, because I think a lot of times it's difficult to identify that as feedback, that that is a form of feedback, that it doesn't have to be formal, it doesn't have to be a conversation between two people. Ideally, somebody is verbally expressing so that you don't have to mind read or try to figure out what's going on. But feedback comes in a lot of different forms, and you know, honestly, people are usually doing the best they can. So if they're not really talking to you about it, it may be, just like you said, they don't see a problem with your plan, but internally, they have a problem with you solving it by yourself.
Trevor: Yes, yeah, I think really, that was the deal. I realized that I made the mistake of what I what I'd done is I got the process backwards. Because if I'd have gone to them and consulted them individually to start with, and said, Hey, I've got a problem. I'm sure you understand this too. Can you help me solve it? The outcome would have been. Probably the same, but we wouldn't have had the tsunami, or I wouldn't have faced the tsunami. I like the point that I'm going to come back to your point that you've just raised. We get feedback all the time, all the time, all the time, nonverbal feedback. If you see, if you're doing a presentation or somebody's got their head down, they're not necessarily asleep, that means they may very well have removed themselves emotionally so they're no longer listening to you, but you're going to take a little note to yourself to say, I probably need to talk to that person over lunch or afterwards or whatever, and ask them, were they Okay, right? Or doing the other way. I'm told that when, when I'm quizzical, and I used to do this, I think I used to do this with my children when they were young and they were doing something that I wasn't necessarily approving of. I would look at them and raise my eyebrow. That would the message to them was, turn it down a bit, straighten up. Yeah, right, yeah. He was again, excited. Didn't have to say anything, didn't have didn't have to cause a scene, didn't have to belittle them in public. The message was clear, so you can do feedback without hurting people. And I think a lot of people see feedback in that they're hurting me, right? Yeah, trying to belittle me. They're trying to make me feel smaller. There's an old adage about for parenting you. I'm sure you do this all the time with your kids. You criticize the action. You don't criticize the child. Say you're stupid. You say that was stupid.
Collette: We don't say stupid at our house. Trevor,
Trevor: Well, I'm but it's that, that's what it's criticizing the action. Because, yeah, to me, I am right. I am bad person or whatever. That's a personal thing, because I can agree that, oh yeah, I just stuck my hand in this Collette crocodile's mouth. That was that one. I'm not quite sure what you would describe it, other than stupid, but there you go. But you know, we do things that are ill advised. That doesn't mean to say that we're we are stupid people, right?
Collette: I love that, because I feel that way too. I've talked about it a couple of times where it's just like, there's this thing, okay, there, there's part of receiving feedback that honestly just makes me sad, because my initial response is shit, I have to be different, and I'm just kind of being myself, and that kind of sucks. And you know, there Thank goodness for the feedback that I've gotten in the ways that I've shaped, been shaped and shaped myself with it. But there is it. Is that difference of saying I'm a bad person because I need to change something, or this behavior would work better than the one that I'm doing now, and depersonalizing it from me as a human being, and saying this would work better?
Trevor: Yes, and it usually is. It fixes certain things. I mean, there's certain people that have no self reflection, or self no self awareness at all, not because they don't think they know themselves. They actually don't care how they're perceived by the outside world.
Collette: Do you think so there are people don't care. I feel like it's just an integrated part of us to want to belong, and so everybody cares what other people
Trevor: Okay, we can have that discussion some other times. Okay?
Collette: I want to hear what you have to say about that.
Trevor: It's an is that's going to be an interesting discussion. Yeah, we will. I think probably will end up agreeing, but I think it's a great debate to have, yeah, and I'd love to have it with you sometime.
Collette: Okay, well, Trevor, I know we are at four o'clock and we've had back to back meetings, but it's all happened so fast. Every time I have a conversation with you, it feeds my brain. Long after the conversation is over, I'm thinking about things, and I'm just so grateful that you were able to come on today and share your thoughts and your wisdom with other people who are listening today too. So thank you for doing that.
Trevor: Well, thank you again for asking me, and I hope some of those grains resonate with other people, and maybe think about it and see if they want to change it to their own personality and maybe use it against me.
Collette: Sometimes they're going to chew on it and decide whether they want to spit it out.
Trevor: Yeah, exactly what? Process, all right. Well, thanks very much again. Thank you for the opportunity.
