Scaling Your Skills: Feedback & Mentorship That Works

Feedback and mentorship aren’t just buzzwords - they’re the shortcuts to better skills, stronger confidence, and real momentum. 

Discover a simple, practical approach that makes getting feedback and finding a mentor less intimidating - and highly actionable!

In this episode of the Practicing Connection podcast, Jessica and Coral dig into the roles of feedback and mentorship in professional growth. Coral shares a step-by-step method that makes seeking input approachable and turns it into real progress. 

Learn how to choose the right people to ask, reflect on what you hear, and take small, sustainable actions. 

Plus, find out how to invite mentorship into your journey - even if you don’t have a formal mentor. Perfect for anyone who wants to develop new skills, boost confidence, and foster authentic connections at work.

Links and resources from this episode:

• Join our LinkedIn group: https://www.linkedin.com/groups/12879756/ 
• Send us a message: practicingconnection@oneop.org 

Transcript

JESSICA BECKENDORF: [00:00:00] Hi. Thanks for listening to the Practicing Connection Podcast. I'm Jessica and my co-host Coral is here as well. Today we're going to be talking about feedback and mentorship for skill growth, and Coral's going to be sharing a practice with us. Hi Coral. How are you?

CORAL OWEN: Hey Jess. I'm doing well. Yeah, as I was preparing for this week's episode, I was reflecting really heavily on the role that mentorship has played in my own professional experience, particularly most recently in scaling a business. 

And it's only been after several years of flying solo before I finally realized that I could save myself so much heartache and also have such a greater impact if I had sought support from a mentor, which is, you know, I'm a couple years deep into a very formalized, coaching and mentorship program, which is, it's been wonderful. But it took me a while to get there and yeah, I just, wow, it's made such a difference.

But it can be tough to ask for that level of support.

JESSICA BECKENDORF: Yeah. Yeah. [00:01:00] I love that perspective. It really does take courage to ask for feedback directly. I've been involved in several training and coaching programs, a big part of the program involved obtaining feedback. And, you know, it's often helped me make changes, which a lot of people would expect, right?

When you're getting feedback, a lot of people feel like, “Oh, well that's about, you know, changing and getting better.” I would say for me, even more so, it's helped me see strengths that I have that I didn't notice. Other people knew, other people could see it, but I didn't notice them until someone started to point them out to me.

CORAL OWEN: I love that and that's such a perspective shift I had as well of help other people who are seeing us doing the thing or cultivating the skill or process, or whatever it is that we're looking to elevate and hone, and they can often see things from, well, they are seeing it from a different perspective and helping us lean into the things that we're strong in. And further hone [00:02:00] those pieces, help level up the things.

And then, you know, maybe shift, pivot a little bit and we're actually getting into that today. But, yeah, a lot of people just think that they're, “Oh, feedback.” Like, “I don't wanna ask people how, you know - ”

JESSICA BECKENDORF: - “Like I already know, I'm already, I'm so hard on myself. I already know how terrible I am. I don't need anyone else to point it out!”

CORAL OWEN: Yeah. So this is definitely a different framework for perspective that is not just like, “Hey, you could really use some work on X, Y, and Z.”

It's about that really holistic perspective of receiving feedback or even developing a more formalized mentorship relationship, if you so desired.

JESSICA BECKENDORF: Well, before we move on, I'll just quickly give a little bonus exercise here. One of the best questions that I was asked, when I was trying to get feedback in one of these programs was, they told me to ask, “When I walk into a room, what shows up when I do?” And people gave me feedback on that, and that was pretty interesting.

[00:03:00] It was pretty cool. But let's learn more about feedback and mentorship for skill growth, Coral. Tell us a little bit about the practice that you're going to be sharing today and why you chose it.

CORAL OWEN: Yeah, absolutely. So, much of professional development really happens outside of these formal trainings and courses and conferences that we, you know, do attend from time to time. But once you decide that, you want to keep growing a skill or seeking it out and cultivating, that the real work is in weaving it into your day to day, not just in that, you know, kind of finite space that we're learning about it or you know, kind of developing that brain awareness of it.

And so feedback and mentorship are two of the most effective ways to do that. They give us outside perspective, accountability, encouragement. But also as we already noted, asking for feedback or arranging mentorship, it can feel intimidating. It can also, could just feel like, I hate to say that like a burden, you know, just kind of a heavier load to add to both our plate, but also to ask someone else who already is so busy [00:04:00] to take on that, level of guidance and mentorship.

And so I wanted to share a really simple structured practice that makes it very attainable, very easy to access, and hopefully just something that is a very, approachable way to go about this.

JESSICA BECKENDORF: Well that sounds super useful. Let's walk through the practice.

CORAL OWEN: Sure thing. So here's a practice that you can try next time. You want to develop a skill more deeply in your place or professional space. The first step is of course, choosing the right person. So think about someone who you have seen applying the skill, or who interacts with you in the context where you're trying to grow.

And it doesn't have to be a supervisor. It can be a peer, a colleague, even someone that you support. And sometimes the end user perspective is actually the most helpful. So from there, once you've settled on this person, step two is, or perhaps a little bit in tandem, using a simple framework in asking for feedback and one that I have leveraged in the past.

[00:05:00] Jess, I think, you know, in kind of our pre-show conversation, you mentioned that you've used this before, with a slightly different spin. I've come to call it start, stop, continue. Here's how it works. Just very straightforward. So this is asking, “What's something new that I could start doing that would help me use the skill more effectively,” or something of the sort, right. 

Number two here, stop. You can ask what is, and this is, you know, the question that you're asking of this person who is helping you along in this process, you can ask them, “What is one thing I'm doing right now that might be getting in the way of progress?”

And then thirdly, continue to ask, “What am I already doing well that I should keep doing?”

So the reason I love this framework so specifically is that it makes feedback concrete and balanced. And you're not just hearing what needs fixing, you're also hearing what's already working, which is really important for motivation, but also just for that holistic [00:06:00] perspective like we talked about.

All right, so step three is reflecting and acting. Once you've gathered this feedback and had that input from your mentor, from your experience: write it down, look for patterns, and then choose one small doable action to try straight away. we actually talked about this in our prior episode last week about those just like bite-sized nugget actions that you can do, rather than trying to, you know, just change everything straight away, just choose one thing in a very specific context and just try that in a very, minute sense. 

Don't try to change everything at once. It can get a little overwhelming sometimes. So that's just the very ground floor asking for feedback, and it can be, you know, multiple times over, or kind of a continuing sequence. 

It can also just be a one-off, like, “Hey, you know, can we watch me do this thing, and let me know what should I start doing? What should I stop and what should I continue?” 

If you have something [00:07:00] that is a little bit meatier in nature, or that may take more continual progress, you know, more of a long term, you may want to explore mentorship, and a mentor does not have to be a formal role. It can be someone who's a step or two ahead of you and the skill you're developing. And when you're reaching out you might say, “I'm working on developing this skill and I really admire how you approach it. Would you be open to occasional check-ins or giving some advice as I keep practicing?”

And by and large most people will simply be flattered that you asked and oftentimes are happy to share their experience.

JESSICA BECKENDORF: Yeah, I mean, like you said, Coral, in our pre-conversation, before we started recording, I love the start, stop, continue framework. I've used it with groups in a totally different angle. It really does though in this context, it makes feedback less overwhelming for both the person asking and the person giving it.

CORAL OWEN: A hundred percent it, it just lowers the [00:08:00] barrier, right? And so instead of, “Hey, can you give me some feedback?”, that can feel really huge both to you and to the person that you are liaising with. And instead being very specific and giving three small buckets that that person who's advising or supporting you can fill, just, yeah, it's a lot more straightforward and specific and just clear. 

There's clarity around it. And the mentorship element, if you choose to dig in a little bit deeper, it builds on that and you can still continue using that start, stop, continue framework. And it just gives you that ongoing perspective and encouragement as you integrate your new skill into your daily work.

Continue to hone whatever practice it is that you're cultivating and leveling up what you're doing.

JESSICA BECKENDORF: Awesome. Well, that is it for this episode. Thanks so much for joining us. If you enjoyed this episode, click the share button in your podcast app to send it to a friend who might benefit. We'll be back next week with a new episode. Until then, keep practicing. [00:09:00]

CREDITS: The Practicing Connection Podcast is a production of OneOp and is supported by the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, US Department of Agriculture and the Office of Military Family Readiness Policy, US Department of Defense under award number 2 0 2 3 4 8 7 74 3 3.