Emily Falk

it feels different than the way that we engage when we're busy in our day-to-day lives, right?

And so having that foundation, then it feels possible to hear the constructive criticism or the constructive critique.

Like I'm thinking about one of the senior folks on my team last year told me that it felt really demotivating when it took me a long time to

get papers back to her like she would work really hard to put a paper in my writing queue and then because of whatever else I had going on in my life like sometimes it would take me weeks to give her feedback and she said you know when I do that I lose steam it makes me feel like unmotivated to keep the process going and you know there's kind of like with the situation with Bev there's an interpretation of that which is like oh like look at my calendar like I have meetings all day long and

You are one of many people who wants my feedback, right?

And so I think there's a way that it feels very easy to respond defensively there.

But there's also something that's really valuable about the feedback that she's giving me, which is like we both have a goal to share the research that we're doing with other people.

And I certainly don't want to be the bottleneck in that process, and especially if it's going to feel demotivating for her.

So, you know, over the past year, I've tried to think with her together about how we might plan and schedule so that I know when these things are going to be coming into my writing queue and that I can turn them around more quickly.

Right.

If I know that that's something that's really important to her, I can prioritize it.

And that's been really good.

Another senior person on my team, you know, told me that she felt like it was sometimes hard to get meeting time with me.

And that she felt like it was, you know, she didn't want to impose basically.

And that that felt really hard that like since I was clearly, you know, running around and doing so many different things and juggling them and sharing that with her, that it felt like maybe she shouldn't take time in our meetings to like,

catch up about our weekends or maybe she shouldn't take time to you know get into the weeds of little things that weren't the most pressing things and so this year I've worked on trying to protect more time to meet with that person and you know it's bi-directional performance feedback time again and she's like

It's a little bit better, but I still feel that way sometimes.

And so, you know, I guess I just don't want to like paint this picture like we do this one thing and then everything's fixed.

But I think that my goal is to go into those meetings thinking about how we can work together to make things a little bit better each time.

Well, so purpose has all kinds of benefits.