Cheerleaders and critics is an Adam Grant riff that he explained when he was talking to Steven Bartlett recently.
I'm not a fan of Steven Bartlett, and in fact, I find him hard to listen to, but I do drive through that because some of his guests are extraordinary. Some of the insights from his guests are brilliant, although I'll pick and choose the guests so that I can avoid the Bartlett effect as much as possible.
The recent podcast, though, with Adam Grant is particularly good because I'm beginning to believe that Adam Grant is really, really good.
I explored Adam Grant a long time ago when I found out that he was effectively, for a time, in direct competition as a worthy rival with Simon Sinek, and so I wanted to find out what he had to say, but I started one of his previous books and didn't really like it and was put off him and never started again.
Off the back of the recent podcast, I've downloaded his latest book 'Originals', and although only really just at the start, it's a fascinating concept anyway, onto cheerleaders and critics.
In the podcast, Grant explains the importance of achieving and obtaining feedback from people, but really from the right people.
If you go out for feedback, you really get cheerleaders or critics.
You may have surrounded yourself with cheerleaders in an echo chamber where everyone says yes (I think probably the best leaders understand that that's the worst thing that they can do), or you attract the critics.
The cheerleaders will always tell you you're great, appealing to your best self.
The critics will always hurt you and stab you and try to get to your worst self.
What we actually need, in Grant's view, are coaches, and this makes complete sense to me.
The greatest people I ever met were coaches in my life, maybe in sports, maybe in business, maybe in life.
The thing about a coach is that they give you advice, not feedback, and advice is different to feedback.
For the guys who run a business or a football team or any other organisation, like a charity or a not-for-profit or a school, whatever, the people at the top of the pile have the main role of bigging up everybody else.
The teams work best when every member of the team works to their highest possible level and works towards their potential, and that happens from coaching, not from feedback.
It's a subtle change, but words matter, and in fact, maybe in the Academy, we'll stop asking delegates for feedback and ask them to coach us on how to make the courses better.
Blog Post Number - 3722
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