A simple feedback system that turns silence into honest input—and transforms how your team shows up, speaks up, and improves together.
Earlier this week, one of my staff members gave me feedback.
She told me I was late for a meeting.
That it disrupted the flow.
That it gave the wrong impression to the rest of the team.
And she was right.
Now – she's normally quite a timid person.
This kind of thing wouldn't naturally come from her.
And it certainly wouldn't come unprompted.
But it did.
And it landed perfectly.
Objective. Calm. Future-focused.
No blame. No drama.
Just: here's what happened, here's the impact, please don't do it again.
The thing is – this didn't happen by chance.
It happened because we built a system for it.
A documented process that tells whoever is chairing our meetings exactly what to do when someone – including me – knocks a point off the scoreboard.
The feedback comes automatically.
No awkward conversation.
No courage required.
Just a process doing what processes do.
And that's the moment I realised something.
You can tell your team you want honest feedback.
You can say the door is always open.
And you can mean every word of it.
But if there's no system behind it, it won't happen.
In this episode of Systemize Your Success, I share the full story – the message I got, how the system works, and how you can build something like this in your own business.
Have a listen.
KEY TAKEAWAYS: How a Feedback System Builds Honest, Empowered Teams
- Why Empower Your Staff to Make You Better: Everybody, including “the boss”, needs feedback to help them to improve the way they work. So, empowering your staff to break free of social norms and provide direct feedback on how you are performing is very effective.
- Systemise Feedback: Don’t rely on casually inviting “honest feedback”. If you do, you´ll never receive any. Build structured feedback into your business – I share how my meeting chairing process does this and how it is changing my company’s culture for the better.
- Give Meeting Chairs a Clear Playbook That Includes Feedback: Use a Meeting CHAIR guide, scoring, and pre‑written feedback scripts so anyone can run efficient, on‑time meetings that improve how each team member performs.
BEST MOMENTS: What a Feedback System Sounds Like in Practice
00:27 – 💬 “ My staff are now feeling empowered to give me the essential feedback that I need to improve as a member of the team.”
03:13 – 💬 “ The feedback is meant to be generic. It's meant to be future-focused, and therefore I'm actually thinking – I actually need to do this. I need to change my behaviour.”
10:03 – 💬 “ It's the systemized approach to doing this that has allowed this to actually happen and make a difference in the business.”
TIMESTAMPED OVERVIEW
00:00 Intro: Empowering Staff Through Feedback
01:00 Why Bosses Also Need Feedback
04:40 The Meeting CHAIR Guide and Scripted Feedback Messages
07:10 Normalising ‘Challenging the Boss’
Episode Transcript
Please note: This transcript was generated using automated transcription tools and may contain typographical errors or inaccurately captured words or phrases.
Dr Steve Day: Earlier this week, I got some feedback from one of my staff. This was a groundbreaking moment in my opinion. The fact that one of my staff members, someone who is generally quite a timid person in character, was able to give me constructive feedback. In a way that really made me stop and think. And made me think, yes, I need to actually change my behavior in the future based on this feedback that was given.
Today, I wanna explain exactly how this has come to be. How my staff are now feeling empowered to give me essential feedback that I need to improve as a member of the team and a manager in general. And explain exactly when this was given, the whole structure behind it. So you can actually implement something like this immediately in your business. And start empowering your staff to make you better.
Okay, so early this week, I arrived late for one of my daily standup meetings. I was doing something with my Mum who\'s over visiting. I lost track of time and I just showed up a few minutes late. It\'s all great excuses, but it still means I showed up late. This means that they couldn\'t start the meeting.
They couldn\'t ask me the questions they need to, so it delayed things. And we probably, I can\'t remember off the top of my head, we probably end up overrunning. Or I had to rush things because of the result of me turning up a few minutes late. It also disrupts the meeting. You know when someone just arrives halfway through, you have to, oh, it\'s okay, carry on, blah, blah, blah.
Or they\'ve missed some essential things you have to repeat yourself. So it\'s really frustrating when this happens, that other people do it. But me being the business owner and the boss, when I turn up, it\'s sort of, well, that\'s when the meeting starts. But it\'s still frustrating for my staff.
So I don\'t wanna be that guy that thinks that I can basically do anything I want because I\'m the business owner. Quite on the contrary, I wanna be a team player. I want to be showing that I\'m trying to live by my own rules. And I wanna be treated in the same way. As in, you know, I want to get feedback when I do something that isn\'t ideal.
And this is exactly brilliant example of this happening, and it happens so well that I sort of, I\'d forgotten I was gonna get this feedback. And I got this message from my staff member and I read you the message exactly as it was written. Because I think it was a brilliant way of using what we call the feedback model. Which I\'ve discussed in previous episodes.
A great model for giving feedback by a guy called Mark Horstman. Who wrote a book called The Effective Manager, which I highly recommend. And, in that it gives a very structured approach to do it. This is the message that I got, I received shortly after that meeting had ended. This is from my staff member called Von.
May I offer some feedback Steve? Arriving late for meetings, today\'s daily standup meeting, disrupts the flow and often requires repeating information. This can delay meetings and give the impression that you are considering the impact on your team members, on other team members. Please consider what actions you need to take to ensure that you arrive on time for future meetings.
So for me, that\'s a very objective way of giving an observational feedback with the intention of improving future behavior. It\'s not saying anything about the reason I was late. It just says when you are late for meetings. It does give the example of this specific meeting, which is not actually required. Because the idea, but it\'s just to give it context I think. So she can remember, so I can remember which meeting she was talking about.
But the feedback is meant to be generic. It\'s meant to be future focused. And therefore I\'m actually thinking, right, I actually need to do this. I need to change my behavior. So. I massively appreciated getting this. But it didn\'t just happen by chance.
It wasn\'t that Von woke up one day and said, you know what, I\'m gonna give Steve some feedback when he is next late for a meeting. This is something that we have systemized, like everything we do. If I want something to happen consistently in the business, regardless of who is in the particular role at that time, it has to be documented. It has to be systemized.
Otherwise, you know, Von could do it today, forget to do it next week. She\'s not getting monitored on it. Next person comes into the same role. Or a different person is chairing a different meeting, in this example. They don\'t do it, Von does. It\'s inconsistent. That is what happens when you don\'t actually systemize everything that you are doing.
So this is something that\'s come up and been developed over many months, if not years, actually. Of building a brilliant, structure to run our team meetings efficiently. Because back in the day, if I go back, or when I started nine or eight or nine years ago, like team meetings were chaos. And when I had a business partner involved, it got even worse. Because we\'d ended up really discussing things that were totally irrelevant to everybody else.
The meetings would drag on for, you know, 90 minutes and at two hours, whatever. And everyone would just be sat there losing the world to live. And I realized that something had to change. So we spent a lot of time refining, like the agenda for the meetings, the schedule for the meetings, this scoring of meetings. And now this is the next evolution, is this feedback given for meetings.
And this isn\'t just given to me as the business owner. This is given to anybody who is responsible for a point getting knocked off. So for example, today, which is, this is the reason this has prompted me to record this today.
Today, Von said, what do I do today because I\'m the one that lost the point. And I said, send the feedback to yourself. Call it reflection. But you\'ve gotta actually keep consistent. So send yourself the message, and then acknowledge it, and read it. Because that will be enough to actually do the job of the feedback. Which is to actually take acknowledgement that yes, the thing that, in this case, she brought up a topic that was too long to discuss.
We should have stopped called a tangent that this was gonna over make the meeting overrun. And then we should have rescheduled that to be discussed at another time. As the chair, that was her responsibility. It\'s difficult for her as a chair because she\'s trying to think and chair at the same time in this sort of circumstances.
So it\'s not like this is a disciplinary thing. But it\'s an observational thing. And it\'s good that she\'s taking this on board to say, look, I realize I actually did this. And we overrun the meeting because you know of something that we\'ve actually got a documented scoring system for. So I need to actually take ownership of this and say, yes, I acknowledge I did this. And that is what this feedback is about.
So how we\'ve built this in so this actually now happens on a regular basis. And as I said, it\'s not just for me, it\'s anybody who knocks a point off. And so created a meeting chair guide. And this is, works for every single meeting we have. It\'s how do I chair a meeting. So showing up for the meeting, run the agenda, et cetera.
And it gives very clear guidance that anybody who is responsible for charing a meeting in our company is, reviews this operational manual that tells them what to do. On there, it explains during the meeting they\'ll be scored, the meeting will be scored. And anybody responsible for getting a point deducted needs to have some feedback sent to them.
We then give them structured feedback examples for each of the five points. And obviously people can then make it slightly, they can tweak it. So it makes more relevant to the person and that specific circumstance. But generally speaking, they\'re written these feedbacks in a way that they\'re objective. That they\'re not subjective. They\'re not criticizing on a specific act or event. They\'re talking about behaviors.
So when you arrive late for a meeting, not when you arrive late to last meeting, because it was really bad, you know. It\'s generalized and it\'s future focused. Therefore they can pretty much be used without any thoughts and actually still have the impact that they need.
And this means that we are slowly improving our meetings. And especially for me who is, known to have a problem with time, time to time, and turn up for things late. This like, first of all, the scoring and now there\'s feedback. It\'s just transformed how much I think about not being late to stuff now. And it\'s really helped me to focus, to turn up, and to be a proper team player.
And so I highly recommend you to think about how you, if you\'re the business owner listening to this, can encourage and empower your staff to give you feedback. And what I\'ve realized in the past, what I\'ve observed in the past, that if I simply say to them, hey, I\'d love for you to give me some feedback. On, you know, how I\'m doing as a manager or on this particular circumstance. It\'s really challenging for people to do that with their boss.
Because ultimately, you know, they don\'t often let, there are exceptions to this. And if you find someone who will give you honest feedback in a constructive way that\'s helpful, then, that\'s gold. But I found, that generally speaking, it\'s difficult.
I work primarily with people in the Philippines as well. So there\'s a cultural thing about criticizing your boss or giving feedback to your boss. So there\'s a lot of things to overcome with that. However, this is about, Von in this example, who\'s also Filipino, about her just following the instructions that I\'ve given her. Or a documented system for giving feedback.
So therefore, it\'s not about her judgment on this. It\'s about an observation that feedback is needed because of a behavior. And now there is a systemized next step to give that feedback in a constructive, objective way. And this kind of approach can help people to be empowered to give feedback that would otherwise feel far too uncomfortable to do.
And that is one of the key learnings for me from this. Was how it has transformed one of my member staff who would been very uncomfortable of doing this entirely for an initiative. To someone who is now able to laugh about it. And we talked about it today in our team meeting in the daily standup when she was giving her own feedback.
And it\'s now actually a pleasure to see this happening in real life. And because I\'m getting this as well, I know what the other staff members are. Because if she\'s doing it to me, I know she must be doing it to everybody else. And I have noticed there\'s been a improvement in other people turning up on time since this has started.
I need to look at the metrics behind that. I probably should have that before I did this recording. But there you go, I didn\'t. But thinking about it, like on the fly right now, I\'ve definitely seen a difference. And I wonder if this is the reason why. Maybe I\'ll do a follow up episode in a few months with some stats to go on.
Anyway, that\'s it for today. I just wanna share this. It was just a great observation about initiative I put out to allow, to empower my staff to give me and other people feedback. Without it becoming something they have to think about personally. And it\'s the systemized approach to doing this that has allowed this to actually happen. And make a difference in the business.
Thank you very much. And as always, please do hit subscribe. If you wanna learn more tips, tricks, and cool stuff to live with more presence per person and peace. And build a business that doesn\'t rely entirely on you as the business owner. And please do share this episode with anyone else who runs a business you might think it might find useful. Or they might find it useful.
Thank you very much. I\'ll see you next time. Bye.
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ABOUT THE HOST
Steve moved to Sweden in 2015 and transformed how he ran his businesses—switching to a fully remote model. A former NHS doctor, with a background in computing and property investing, he now helps overwhelmed business owners systemise and outsource effectively. Additionally, through his courses and coaching, Steve teaches how to automate operations and work with affordable virtual assistants, freeing up time and increasing profits. He runs his UK-based businesses remotely with support from a team of UK and Filipino VAs. He is also passionate about helping others build scalable, stress-free companies using smart systems and virtual support.
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