On Gratitude, Feedback, and Deep Connection

Coming off a weekend spent with peers, I’m still basking in the warmth of positivity we all gave one another during our precious time together.

Existing relationships were deepened, some relatively new ones rose to a new level, and a couple of brand new ones are off to a great start.

Of course these thoughts always get my juices flowing on considering how such ideas also affect the work we do with the families who entrust us with helping them “hold their space” safely.

So that’s where we’re headed this week, looking at gratitude and feedback, and how they play into deep connections among people.

Let’s get going.

Last year after that same peer group’s annual weekend, I wrote about how I sometimes felt like I was cheating on these friends because I also interact with peers in several other groups.

See On Peer Groups and Feelings of Infidelity

But this year when we went around the table for our check out comments on Sunday, I realized that this group was a bit different, and actually felt like the connections were deeper.

Some combination of the size of the group, the culture we’ve developed and nurtured, the quality and depth of the conversations and just how we all seem to feel so safe to be vulnerable together, all add up to its specialness.

We have many things in common on a professional level because of the we all work with families, and we have personal connections.

During one of our sessions that recent weekend, we worked on the idea of giving feedback in a more constructive way, called “feed forward”.

My friend Mr. Google’s AI overview just informed me that this concept originated from coaching and leadership guru Marshall Goldsmith, and it’s summed up nicely as:

It’s actually just a small tweak in approach, which can yield huge differences in results.

I’ve noticed myself giving feedback in one-on-one conversations with clients where I want to use this more.

I already make sure that the members of my client families know that I truly appreciate when they’re completely open and real with me.

When you work with an entire family group, there’s often some sort of family hierarchy in place, which may stem from seniority in generations, positions inside the business, or even birth order.

In order to properly serve the entire family system, facilitators like me need to make sure that while we recognize that such hierarchies may exist, we are not beholden to them.

We need to make sure that even the folks who feel like they’re lower down the pyramid are important to us, and thereby to the rest of the family.

It can take a while to establish a deep enough connection with each family member for them to truly believe that while you are there to serve the whole family, that includes every last one of them.

I believe that my giving them grateful feedback, I increase the odds that they buy into me as their advocate.

Trying to reconcile each person’s desires, viewpoints, fears, and wishes is complex enough when you don’t actually understand what those are.

When I sense that an individual has been vulnerable with me by sharing something that they likely haven’t shared with others in the family, I thank them and remind them that I can best serve them and their family when I get each person’s true input.

When your professional work can sometimes be summed up as “family relationship specialist”, it’s important to develop and maintain deep connections with every family member.

If I want to help a family get along well enough so they can come together productively to make important decisions about their common future, they all need to trust me enough to allow me to play that role.

So whether we’re dealing with peers who also do this kind of work or with the family member clients themselves, the way we are is often at least as important as what we do or what we say.