People don't become defensive because they received feedback. They become defensive because their brain decided the feedback meant something about them.

Most feedback training focuses on delivery, be clear, be specific, be timely. This course starts somewhere earlier. Two people can hear the identical sentence from the identical manager and walk away in completely different places, one leaning into the work and one pulling away from it entirely. The difference is not the words. It is what the brain predicts those words mean, and where that prediction sends the listener's attention. Using a Prevention, Suppression, and Investigation framework, participants learn how to set the climate before feedback is ever given, how to deliver it in a way that keeps attention on the work instead of on self protection, and how to follow up so the lesson actually sticks. Participants leave with a five step conversation framework they can use the same day, and a specific commitment to one conversation they will handle differently this week.

YOU WILL LEARN:

• Why the brain predicts what feedback means before it processes the actual words, and why that prediction often determines the outcome of the conversation
• To diagnose the climate your team is already operating in before a single piece of feedback is delivered
• A five-step sequence for feedback conversations that keeps the other person thinking instead of defending
• How to structure the conversation that happens after feedback, so the lesson holds

SO YOU WILL BE ABLE TO:

• Deliver critical feedback without triggering the defensiveness that shuts learning down
• Recognize, in real time, when a conversation has shifted from productive to self-protective, and redirect it
• Build a team climate where problems surface early instead of only after they have grown too large to fix
• Run a follow-up conversation that makes a lesson stick instead of fading by the next quarter