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Most managers will tell you they want to give better feedback. Far fewer will tell you they feel confident doing it.
That gap is the starting point for this conversation with Sue Anderson, a coach, trainer, mediator, speaker and author who has spent close to sixteen years helping individuals and teams build resilience and communicate under pressure. Sue is the author of Unshakeable at Work, a book about how to stop taking things personally and start building resilience, and she's spent the past few years researching a very specific workplace problem: how to give feedback at work, particularly performance feedback, in a way that builds trust instead of damaging it.
In this episode, Sue shares the three-part feedback model she uses with clients, the original research behind it, and the practice-building lessons she's learned along the way, including why she nearly didn't charge enough for years of expertise.
This article pulls out the practical, evidence-backed parts of that conversation: what the research says about feedback confidence, the framework for thinking about different types of feedback, and why getting this wrong is more costly than most organisations realise.
Who Is Sue Anderson?
Sue Anderson works as a coach, trainer, mediator, speaker and author specialising in resilience and empowerment. She helps people move from a place of anger and frustration toward strength, control, authority and confidence, and her specialty is helping people build the mental toughness to handle workplace pressure.
Her path into this work wasn't a straight line. She studied psychology at university, then spent around 12 years working in disability within the state government. It was there she was introduced to coaching, specifically a methodology called neurosemantics, which was new to Australia at the time and focuses heavily on beliefs and thinking styles.
That discovery led her to leave secure employment and start her own practice. Her first clients weren't corporate leaders; they were children being bullied at school.
From "Unbullyable" to "Unshakeable": How a School Program Became a Corporate Framework
Sue's first program was called Unbullyable, built from her early work coaching children as young as seven who were experiencing bullying. She was often placed with the most difficult cases, including, in her first school placement, working directly with students engaging in bullying behaviour.
That early, high-pressure training ground shaped the way she works now. As she puts it, coaching challenging teenagers "taught me to be nonjudgmental, to truly listen, to understand what's going on for them."
Parents of the children she coached began asking her to bring the same work into their workplaces. But the name didn't translate. Organisations didn't want to acknowledge they had "a bullying problem," even when the underlying dynamics (difficult people, damaging feedback, high-conflict relationships) were exactly the same.
So Unbullyable became Unshakeable at Work. The model stayed the same; only the framing changed. Instead of one bully, the workplace version acknowledges that people can be affected by five different difficult customers in a day, or by a single piece of feedback that genuinely rattles them.
That reframing opened the door to leadership coaching, team workshops, and eventually, Sue's specialisation in high-conflict teams and workplace bullying dynamics, including groups so fractured that, as she describes it, they "wouldn't even sit in the room with each other."
Underneath almost all of that work, Sue identified one recurring theme: whether or not people feel comfortable communicating with each other. And at the centre of that, specifically, is feedback.
The Three Types of Workplace Feedback (and Why One Terrifies Leaders)
Sue Anderson's model breaks workplace feedback into three distinct types: acknowledgment, evaluation, and guidance, and research suggests most leaders are confident with two of them, but not the third.
Understanding the difference matters because each type carries a different emotional weight, and treating them as interchangeable is often where feedback conversations go wrong.
Acknowledgment Feedback
This is feedback that recognises what someone is doing well. It's typically the easiest type to give and receive: there's little risk of conflict, and it builds goodwill.
Evaluation Feedback
This is feedback that establishes where someone stands. It involves some kind of rating or measure, the kind of feedback that shows up in formal performance reviews.
This is the type Sue's research and client work consistently point to as the hardest for leaders to deliver with confidence. Giving evaluation feedback means stepping into what Sue calls the role of a "qualified assessor," documenting a rating, justifying it face-to-face, and living with the risk that the other person might disagree, escalate to HR, or feel it was unfair.
Guidance Feedback
This is feedback focused on how someone can improve. It's forward-looking rather than a judgment on current standing, which tends to make it feel more constructive and less personally threatening, both to give and to receive.
The problem, according to Sue, is that evaluation feedback is unavoidable in most formal review processes, yet it's the category where leaders feel least equipped.
What Sue Anderson's Original Research Reveals About Feedback Confidence
Sue's insights aren't just anecdotal. She commissioned her own research, run in partnership with her daughter, who was completing a PhD in psychology at the time. Together they built a survey (using Qualtrics) and analysed the results using statistical software, looking specifically at patterns in how confident people feel about giving and receiving feedback.
A few consistent findings emerged:
Most people feel they aren't receiving enough feedback.
Most people also believe they aren't giving enough feedback.
Evaluation feedback is the type people feel least confident delivering, across the groups surveyed.
Sue also looked at differences by age group, by gender, and, notably, given her client base, by geography, comparing people working in rural councils against those in metro councils. This lines up with broader Australian workforce research: the Australian HR Institute's study on performance management practices similarly found that ongoing feedback stood out as one of the few practices HR professionals rated as genuinely effective, even as confidence in formal evaluation processes lagged behind.
One figure Sue shared stood out: she recalled that in one of the age groups surveyed, only around 3% of respondents said they felt confident offering evaluation-style feedback. It's worth noting this figure came from Sue's own in-progress research rather than a published, peer-reviewed study, and she herself wasn't certain which specific age cohort it applied to. Directionally, though, it reflects a consistent pattern across her client conversations: leaders are far more comfortable acknowledging good work or offering development guidance than they are rating someone's performance to their face.
The Feedback Fitness Framework
Out of this research and years of coaching, Sue developed what she now calls the Feedback Fitness Framework, her own intellectual property, built specifically around helping leaders build confidence in the type of feedback they find hardest.
This framework has become central to her work with what she describes as her ideal client: rural and metro local councils, along with state government and other organisations.
Sue is currently writing a follow-up book, tentatively titled Feedback Fitness, extending the ideas from Unshakeable at Work into a more focused resource on this specific skill.
Why Poor Feedback Damages Trust and Costs Organisations
Getting feedback wrong isn't a minor management misstep. It's a direct driver of damaged trust, disengagement, and staff turnover.
According to Sue, when leaders aren't skilled at offering feedback, particularly evaluation feedback, the consequences compound quickly:
The relationship becomes damaged.
Trust erodes.
Conversations become awkward, and communication breaks down.
The person receiving poor feedback may disengage, leave the organisation, lodge a formal complaint, or in some cases allege bullying.
Sue describes fielding calls from HR professionals dealing with exactly this kind of fallout, situations where an investigation has already taken place and an organisation is trying to avoid losing a leader entirely. As she puts it, these are "expensive problems": expensive in staff turnover, expensive in formal HR processes, and expensive in the innovation and improvement that never happens because people are too guarded to speak honestly with each other.
This is also where the case for organisation-wide feedback capability becomes clear. It's not just about smoothing over one difficult conversation. It's about building an aspirational capability across a team or organisation, so that feedback becomes a normal, low-risk part of how people work together, not a rare and anxiety-inducing event.
This connects to a broader shift in how Australian workplaces are expected to manage psychological risk. Under the Safe Work Australia model Code of Practice on managing psychosocial hazards, employers have a positive duty to manage factors, including poor workplace relationships and communication breakdowns, that can cause psychological harm. That gives organisations a compliance reason, not just a culture reason, to take feedback capability seriously.
Lessons for Consultants and Coaches Building a Practice
Alongside the feedback research, Sue's conversation offers a candid look at what it takes to grow a coaching or consulting practice, echoing themes covered in Rita Cincotta's conversation on deliberate leadership and building a consulting practice, and lessons that will resonate with anyone building a B2B service business.
Valuing Your Expertise and Pricing
For years, Sue undervalued her own work. She describes discounting herself, thinking of her offer as coming from "just Sue Anderson from Ballarat," partly shaped by early experiences where people questioned whether she was "really" a psychologist.
That shifted once she recognised the depth of what she'd built: nearly sixteen years of experience, a unique set of skills, original research, and, as she puts it, "thousands of hours of confidential conversations" through her coaching work. That recognition gave her the confidence to raise her prices and write proposals that reflected the real value of solving what are often very expensive organisational problems.
Systems That Free Up Creative Capacity
Sue attributes a significant part of her recent growth, close to doubling revenue over two years, to putting proper systems in place. That included bringing on a part-time business manager and a virtual assistant, and moving her workflow into project management tools like Asana.
The effect wasn't just operational. Sue describes how getting tasks out of her head and into a system improved her sleep and, more importantly, freed up mental space for creative and strategic thinking, including noticing feedback-related insights in everyday life and turning them into newsletter content.
Maintaining Long-Term Client Relationships
One of Sue's clearest regrets is not staying in better contact with past clients. She points to parents of children she coached fifteen years earlier, and workshop clients from eight years ago, whose details she no longer has, despite the fact that these relationships likely still hold value.
Her advice for anyone earlier in their practice: keep better records, maintain contact, and treat relationship maintenance as a genuine part of the business, not an afterthought.
Frequently Asked Questions
What are the three types of feedback in the workplace?
Acknowledgment feedback (recognising what's going well), evaluation feedback (establishing where someone stands, often through a rating), and guidance feedback (advice on how to improve).
Why is evaluation feedback harder to give than other types?
Evaluation feedback requires the person giving it to act as a "qualified assessor," documenting a rating and justifying it face-to-face, which carries a higher risk of disagreement, conflict, or formal escalation than acknowledgment or guidance feedback.
What is the Feedback Fitness Framework?
It's a framework developed by Sue Anderson, based on her coaching experience and original research, designed to help leaders build confidence in delivering feedback, particularly the evaluation type they find most difficult.
How does poor feedback affect workplace trust?
According to Sue Anderson, poorly delivered feedback can damage relationships, erode trust, make communication awkward, and in some cases lead to disengagement, complaints, or staff turnover.
What is the difference between "Unbullyable" and "Unshakeable at Work"?
Unbullyable was Sue Anderson's original program, developed for coaching children experiencing bullying. Unshakeable at Work applies the same underlying resilience model to adult workplaces, reframed around the reality that people can be affected by difficult colleagues, customers, or feedback, not just a single bully.
Conclusion
Sue Anderson's work is a reminder that feedback isn't a single skill leaders either have or don't. It's three distinct skills, and most people are only missing one of them. Evaluation feedback, in particular, deserves far more deliberate attention than it typically gets, given how directly it connects to trust, retention, and organisational performance.
Her journey from coaching bullied children to building a research-backed corporate framework also shows how a specific, well-defined problem, rather than a broad, generic offering, can become the foundation of a sustainable, high-value practice.
Work With Jane Anderson
Explore more conversations on leadership, culture, and building a resilient practice in my episode with Maureen Kyne on upward bullying in the workplace, or if you're building your own consulting or coaching practice like Sue Anderson, find out how the Women with Influence community supports experts turning deep expertise into a sustainable, well-priced B2B practice.
Key Takeaways from Today’s Episode:
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In this segment, Jane Anderson introduces herself as the host of the podcast, targeting experts who aim to enhance their impact, influence, and income. She emphasizes the importance of personal connections in business and welcomes listeners to the show. Jane introduces Sue Anderson as the special guest, detailing her expertise in resilience and empowerment, along with her book "Unshakeable at Work." Sue specializes in helping individuals build mental toughness and resilience in the workplace. The conversation sets the stage for discussing Sue's background and journey.
Jane prompts Sue to talk about her practice, focusing on her experience and clientele. Sue discusses her transition from studying psychology to working in disability and eventually discovering coaching. She shares her initial work with children who were bullied, which led her to develop resilience programs. Sue explains how her work evolved from coaching individuals to working with teams and leaders, emphasizing her focus on empowerment and resilience in high-pressure work environments.
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Sue elaborates on her journey, highlighting her shift from coaching children to working with corporate clients. She discusses the challenges of transitioning her program "UnBullyable" into the corporate world and the rebranding to "UnShakeable." Sue explains how her experience with high-conflict teams and feedback issues shaped her approach to coaching and leadership development. She emphasizes the importance of effective communication and feedback in resolving conflicts and fostering a positive work culture.
Jane reflects on Sue's journey, likening her work with challenging teenagers to her corporate endeavors. She acknowledges the difficulty of earning a living through such work but recognizes its value as a training ground. Jane prompts Sue to discuss her transition into the corporate world and how her programs evolved to meet the needs of organizations.
Sue explains how her programs evolved from coaching children to addressing workplace challenges like resilience and empowerment. She discusses the rebranding of her program from "UnBullyable" to "UnShakeable" to address broader workplace issues. Sue details her work with leaders, teams, and workshops, focusing on communication and feedback as core elements. She shares insights into the challenges of offering evaluation feedback and her mission to build confidence in this area among leaders.
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The discussion shifts to the importance of feedback in the workplace, particularly evaluation feedback. Sue highlights the lack of confidence in offering this type of feedback and its impact on performance reviews. She discusses her research findings and the need to address this gap in feedback skills among leaders.
Sue elaborates on her research findings regarding feedback, emphasizing the discrepancy between the need for and the confidence in offering evaluation feedback. She discusses the three types of feedback: acknowledgment, evaluation, and guidance, focusing on the challenges associated with evaluation feedback. Sue highlights the opportunity to help leaders feel more confident in offering evaluation feedback and the potential consequences of inadequate feedback in damaging relationships and trust in the workplace.
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The conversation continues with Jane acknowledging Sue's ability to identify specific pain points for her clients and adapt her practice accordingly. Jane emphasizes the importance of relevance and evolution in responding to client needs, highlighting Sue's transition from "UnBullyable" to "UnShakeable" as a strategic move. Sue's focus on a narrow yet critical issue within feedback challenges is praised as a smart business strategy. Jane also notes Sue's branding choice of using her own name, which allows flexibility in evolving programs without the constraints of a specific brand. Sue shares her journey of valuing her expertise more and gradually increasing her prices to reflect the value she provides to clients.
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Sue discusses the transformation in her mindset, acknowledging her expertise and the value she brings to her clients. She explains how she developed her own intellectual property, the Feedback Fitness Framework, and how it has contributed to her confidence and increased value perception among clients. Sue describes her shift in pricing strategy and the tangible impact of her work on solving expensive problems for her clients. She emphasizes the importance of valuing oneself and leveraging expertise to drive business growth.
Jane explores Sue's business growth and the impact of implementing systems. Sue reflects on the significant growth she has experienced, attributing it to improved pricing strategies and the introduction of systems like Asana and hiring virtual assistants. She shares how these systems have freed up her time and allowed her to focus on creativity and thought leadership. Jane acknowledges Sue's genius and the importance of finding joy and fulfillment in her work.
Sue reflects on what she would do differently if given the chance, citing her delayed implementation of Jane's advice and the importance of maintaining client relationships. She regrets not staying in contact with past clients and wishes she had valued herself and her practice more from the beginning. Sue also discusses her mindset shift from treating her practice as a hobby to taking it more seriously, especially with the prospect of increased responsibilities as her husband plans for retirement. She acknowledges the need to prioritize her practice and embrace it as a legitimate business endeavor.
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Sue discusses her change in approach to working in January, highlighting her surprise at the positive outcomes despite initial assumptions that it would be a slow period. She shares her experience of running successful events and building her mailing list during this time, attributing it to her passion for the feedback topic and perhaps the increased independence of her children. Jane applauds Sue's dedication and highlights the importance of challenging assumptions about business trends, especially in changing environments.
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Jane asks Sue for advice for individuals starting or growing a practice. Sue emphasizes the importance of commitment and treating the endeavor seriously from the start, regardless of the initial time investment. She encourages setting up systems properly and valuing one's work and expertise. Sue stresses the significance of doing what one loves and recommends focusing on sustainability and evolving messaging to meet client needs effectively.
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Jane reflects on the concept of sustainability in Sue's journey, highlighting the evolution of messaging and the transformation of organizational feedback practices as key elements. She praises Sue's inspirational journey and expresses excitement for her future endeavors. Sue invites listeners to connect with her through LinkedIn or her website for resources and feedback stories. Jane encourages listeners to explore Sue's resources and emphasizes their applicability to various professional contexts, not just organizational settings. The conversation concludes with mutual appreciation and encouragement for Sue's continued success.
Full Show Transcript:
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Hi there, my name is Jane Anderson and this is the Jane Anderson Brand New Show. It's the podcast for experts who want to have greater impact, influence and income for their businesses and careers. As experts, we know that people buy from people and work with people who they know, who they like and who they trust.
So I'm so glad you're here because it's that time again now to really amplify how you show up in the world. Hi there and welcome to the Jane Anderson Show. I am so thrilled that you are here and joining us for the podcast today.
This podcast is particularly for women who have consulting practices and are selling B2B. So we're typically working with large organizations and looking to build a practice that provides them lots of fun, fulfillment in their work, they should do the work that they love to do and freedom, freedom of lifestyle, freedom of choice, freedom of the type of people they work with and freedom of how they deliver their work and where they deliver it, doing the work that they love. I'm super excited to share our special guest today.
Our guest today is a trainer, coach, mediator, speaker and author specializing in resilience and empowerment. She is the author of a book called Unshakeable at Work, a book that shows you how to stop taking things personally and start building resilience. She's a thought leader in the areas of resilience, building an individual empowerment at work and helps people move from a place of anger and frustration to strength, control, authority and confidence.
Her programs empower employees and her specialty is helping people develop mental toughness so they can excel in the pressures at work. She believes in developing an unshakeable workplace culture and is critical to improving everyone's well-being and quality of life. Please welcome Sue Anderson.
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All right, Sue, thank you so much for being part of the show today. We really appreciate your time. I know how busy you are, so thanks for joining us.
Thanks, Jane.
[Speaker 1] (2:16 - 2:18)
It's a pleasure to be here. I feel very privileged.
[Speaker 2] (2:19 - 2:44)
You're in good company and others are in good company with you. Sue, you have an incredible practice for those who are listening. We have a lot of listeners who sort of starting a lot of women who have consulting practices, sometimes starting out and growing.
You've had your practice for some time. You're well seasoned at this. Tell us about your practice.
How did you get into it? How did you start and what are you doing? Who do you work with now?
[Speaker 1] (2:44 - 6:25)
Yeah, so I set up what I thought I was setting up a business 15 years ago and got lots of business advice. Which didn't land very well. Oh, really?
What type of advice did you get? You know, about developing a business that you can sell at the end and you can franchise out and all that. Yeah, that's not what I thought I should have done.
So the backstory is I did study psychology when I went to university. Now, this is 30 years ago. So back then it was still very much disorder, dysfunction, looking at what's wrong.
I did some placements and I just thought, oh, this is not for me. As much as I loved it. So then I went into, still fascinated by the brain.
So I went into disability. So I worked in disability in state government for about 12 years. Then I was introduced to something called coaching, which was quite new in Australia and became qualified in a coach methodology called Neurosemantics, which has come out of America, created by Dr. Michael Hall and Australian woman Michelle Develle. So that was my first insight into, oh, my gosh, this is such a powerful tool. So I actually left my regular employment and set up my own business at the time. And I started working with children who were being bullied.
Right. Which wasn't a deliberate thing. I started just working with women coaching their stock.
And then four of them at once said, this is amazing. Can you help my child? Because they're being bullied at school.
And I was like, okay. So I started working with children as young as seven and ended up, you know, making what I thought was going to be a business out of that. So I'd work with them one-on-one, you know, charging $60 an hour back then.
Tough way to make a living. Yeah, it was. And then I had my own children as well.
So that led to working with the parents and with the teachers, going into schools, which led to writing the book, Unbullyable. How I think, even though I wasn't commercially smart, it set me up because I had to explain pretty complex things about how to be resilient and not affected by other people to children, seven, eight, nine years of age. Wow.
So it forced me to simplify these big concepts down into easily digestible bits of information. And the other thing it did is it because I ended up going into schools and my very first school I worked in was a very interesting school. It was very low socioeconomic and they gave me basically the bullies, engaging in bullying behaviour to work with.
So that was thrown straight into the fire. I had to really think on my feet. But how that set me up was I'm not afraid to coach anyone.
You know, I've coached teenagers who have put other kids in hospital and it's taught me to be nonjudgmental, to truly listen, to understand what's going on for them, that that would make sense. So the neurosemantics, which is all about beliefs and thinking styles and a lot of belief change work combined, had to really simplify everything down and then give me really challenging people to try and work with one on one and in groups, imagine a group of interesting teenagers who don't want to be there. So I think that really set me up to have, I think, the courage to now do what I'm doing.
[Speaker 2] (6:26 - 6:53)
Amazing. What an incredible journey. So coming out of all that study, working with children, and I guess some days you might feel like you were still working with some children in the corporate world.
So you've come out of that. That's a tough kind of way, as we said, to earn a living, not big revenue at all, working hard for every dollar. That's been an incredible training ground for you.
Then you started to make this move into corporate world. How did that work?
[Speaker 1] (6:53 - 10:32)
Yeah, so I'd work with the children and I would always work with the parents. And the parents would say to me, oh, my gosh, this is amazing. You've been able to help my child be far more resilient, less affected by other people.
We need you at our work. I'd say, no, no, I like working with kids. They're fun.
Anyway, eventually I did transition into some. So it was through the parents of the kids that I'd coach. UnBullyable was the name of the program.
So then I started running UnBullyable into businesses, corporate, and that wasn't commercially smart. You don't want to say we've got a bullying problem. Exactly.
That's exactly what they'd say. They'd say, I've got this program, UnBullyable. And they'd say, can you just not use the B word?
And I even heard of one team when they heard that I was coming in to work with them. They said, no, because we don't want people to think we've got a bullying problem. Yes.
So that's when UnBullyable grew up and turned into UnShakeable. Right. So UnShakeable, it's exactly the same model as UnBullyable, except it's not one bully.
It's that you might be affected by five different customers today, or you might receive some feedback that has really rattled you, or you've got an interesting person in your team. Yes, they're not bullying you, but you're being affected by them. So that's how UnShakeable at work was created.
So that led to working with lots of leaders, how they can be more empowered, more confident. I still do now a lot of one-on-one coaching. That led to leadership programs, workshops.
And then somehow, oh, can you coach me? Because I've got this really challenging person in my team. So I'd coach the leader.
And then the leader started saying, can you work with the team? And I was like, okay. So then I developed a sort of a niche into high-conflict teams.
And again, I think it was that working with the very challenging teenage bullies, I can feel really comfortable going into a very high-conflict team. So I worked, I still do work with teams of lawyers who are so in conflict that they wouldn't even sit in the room with each other. So that UnShakeable, the resilience, the how you can feel more empowered led into, okay, how can the whole team now sort itself out?
That's been very interesting in that it's led to more work sort of comes off. So I'll coach the leader. They'll say, can you work with the team?
Or can you do a leadership program? Or can you coach these particular people in the team? So, yeah, that's sort of all meshed together.
So in the end now, I end up, I do coaching, yeah, the team stuff, the workshops, I'm doing a few at the moment, just reconnecting your team type of workshops, but it all comes down to, I think, communication, what I think sits behind all of the work I've done over the last 15 years is do people feel comfortable communicating with each other? And when I reflected on all the high conflict teams I've worked with, a lot of it has come from people's inability to give and receive feedback in a way that's not going to cause a conflict.
[Speaker 2] (10:32 - 10:32)
Right.
[Speaker 1] (10:33 - 11:06)
So feedback is really the core of the problem. Yeah. The armour that people put up, if you, about Brene Brown's work around your armours of self-protection, the emotions that come up, the lack of trust, just basic communication.
The thing I love about the topic of feedback is this, it's so juicy. There's so much to it, yet most people, well, especially I've been doing my own research lately. They're really fearful of getting it wrong.
[Speaker 2] (11:07 - 11:16)
That's actually a really interesting point because you've been sharing your thoughts about the research. You've surveyed quite a few people. What have been the insights that you've gained from that?
[Speaker 1] (11:17 - 11:20)
So it's my own research, so. Which is great.
[Speaker 2] (11:20 - 11:26)
Yeah. You haven't had to go and engage a university. You haven't done all that.
You've done this yourself.
[Speaker 1] (11:26 - 13:47)
Yes, to a point. So I do have a very clever daughter who's doing her PhD in psychology. So we set up the survey in Qualtrics.
I think it's called Qualtrics. That's right. She's now pulling out the data.
I think it's SPSS, a program like that. And so she's providing me with the reports. So what's been interesting are things.
So we've looked at the different age groups, right? You know, millennials and Gen Z. We've looked at the difference between male and female.
Interesting insights in there. The other thing I've done is I've looked at people who work in rural councils, because there are a lot of my clients, versus metro councils. So we're pulling out all these differences.
But what's come across, if I was to summarize, is most people believe they're not receiving enough feedback. They're also most of the people believing they're not offering enough feedback. And it's really interesting if you think of three different types of feedback.
So the first one is acknowledgement. This is what you're doing well. The middle one is evaluation.
This is where you stand. So this is some kind of rating, some kind of measure. And the third one is guidance.
This is how you can do better. The one thing that's becoming very, very clear through the more and more conversations and the research is that middle one, the evaluation feedback. That's the one where the majority of people do not feel confident in offering.
Yet that's the one that's in the annual performance reviews every year. So my mission at the moment is to figure out what's going on. And I'm talking like only 3% of people in one of those age groups, I think, forget which one it was, said they felt confident in offering that type of feedback.
3% is stepping into the role of, I call it qualified assessor. So you're using some sort of rating. And if it is an annual performance review, you've got to document that and you've got to sit face to face and say, I'm rating you as this, and you've got to justify why, and there might be a bit of fear around what if the other person doesn't agree?
[Speaker 2] (13:48 - 13:48)
Yes.
[Speaker 1] (13:48 - 14:21)
You want to send it off to HR, you know, it's in writing there. So I think there's a real opportunity there to help people, leaders feel more confident in that type of feedback. The thing that comes across very clearly is, if I'm not very good at offering this feedback, the damage is high risk, the relationship's damaged, the trust is damaged, it's going to be awkward.
That person's going to stop talking to me. They're going to leave. They're going to put in a complaint or they're going to say I'm bullying them.
Yes.
[Speaker 2] (14:21 - 17:07)
This is amazing Sue. So, because there's so much that comes back to it, which is innovation, being able to improve things, organisations losing good people, and you've identified when it comes to growing and identifying what you're going to do to start a practice, but to be able to grow it, is you've identified a specific thing that is actually in your customer's shopping list and is a major pain point for them is this issue around being able to, you've identified it's the one that they find the most challenging. So I think a few things that are standing out to me so far is if we look at, we go right back to when you started your practice and with kids and you started your practice in that way, that was a specific problem they understood how to buy.
So it's all about relevance. You've been able to evolve your practice over into from unbullyable moving into what was relevant for corporate, which was unshakable. So it was more palatable to them.
And then now you've identified one really, you've narrowed right in on one specific thing that is a crux of the challenge that your clients have. So I think what's even interesting and relevance again, so you've gone right into narrowing, right into the relevance of where people are needing your help. Interesting that you've always called your practice Sue Anderson, right?
So that has allowed you the freedom to evolve your programs, I'm imagining, because you've gone, well, that's okay. I could just get a credit new program. I don't have to build a new brand.
I don't have to start a new business because if you started a program called unbullyable and your business was called unbullyable, geez, that would have been tough to make that move. So now that you've evolved this, you've narrowed, you're digging right into the specific little, and this is a challenge for a lot of people. Sometimes they go, I've got to solve this whole big thing and we have to sort of start there, but I love what you've done here.
You've identified after all this experience, which gives you even more credibility to deliver this really narrow little, Peter Cook would call it the aperture, is you coming right in on this little angle and really amplifying it and blowing it up to say, well, in the context of all this problem, this is your real problem, but it's also what they understand. But what you're doing along with your research is you're going deep into this work now of going, okay, so you've come out of that other work, you've got a book to write, you've built out a questionnaire and you're identifying, you're doing your own research, which is fabulous. So many people go, oh, there's not enough research out there.
I'm trying to fill out my content, but not being afraid to go in and do that. So what's happened as a result of this evolution of your messaging and your practice now?
[Speaker 1] (17:08 - 21:28)
So what's happened now is I've got my own IP in that I've got the feedback fitness framework. Yes. So that's been really useful because now I can go into my ideal clients and my ideal client, a rural local council, state government.
I do a lot of working and also other businesses, but that's my ideal client. So what's happening at the moment is I'm starting to value my product because in the past, not my product, my expertise in the past, I always thought of myself as, oh, you know, she's just Sue Anderson from Ballarat. Right.
I would discount. Yeah. And I think it came from working in the schools where they'd say, so are you a psychologist?
And I'd say, well, no, you know, I did study psychology. I was like, they didn't want to know me. And so I think I was like, OK, so what's happening, I think, for me now is I'm starting to go, well, hang on a minute, I've been doing this for nearly 16 years.
I've got a unique perspective, a unique set of experiences. I've got my IP and I've got some research. I've got so many thousands of hours of confidential conversations I've had through my coaching of leaders.
So it's me starting to value myself, which has enabled me to meet with someone, a potential client, write the proposal, start to put my prices up, because what I was doing was not charging enough. And what really helped me there was the problem that I'm solving. It's a very expensive problem.
HR person reached out to me yesterday about a team. There's already been an investigation. They don't want the leader to leave.
Like this is a really expensive problem. And it's really good to be able to say, yep, let me work with the leader. Let me work individually with each of the team members.
Then I'll bring them together. So I think it's a confidence in myself that I can solve problems. Yeah, starting to believe in myself rather than comparing myself to Dr. So-and-so who's written 27 books and is presenting at all these international conferences, which is what I was doing. Hang on, I do have this unique skill set and I can get results. Right. I think that's really helped me value myself.
And even little things like writing the weekly newsletter. I used to just not write it. And now I'm like, I've got things to say.
Is it fantastic every week? No, but I feel like I'm keeping my finger more on the pulse. For example, there's a lot of talk at the moment around psychological safety.
Well, I can link feedback to psychological safety, whatever's going on. So the weekly newsletters, I'm doing a weekly mini masterclass as well. It's just half an hour every week.
But that's about getting in front of more new people. And I even picked up the phone recently and started ringing people, which I've been avoiding. So the other thing that's probably changed is I'm starting to get known for knowing something around feedback.
So especially, you know, local councils, they talk to each other. They're starting to recommend me and they move. So I've had one lady, she's now up to her third council.
She's got me in at every council. She's got me. Yeah, you come as a package with them.
Yeah. The other thing is I find people negotiating their new position. I've had a few in state government negotiate a coaching program with Sue Anderson as part of the package, if you like.
So that's yeah, that's felt really good. So I think what's changed is I've got more organized, starting to value myself, getting more feedback. Yes.
Even things like looking at my calendar and seeing I do have workshops booked in. I think it's all just building my confidence.
[Speaker 2] (21:29 - 21:46)
And so what does this mean in terms of your growth, Sue? Has it stabilized? Is it sort of going backwards or what are you finding as a result?
Because you put systems in as well. What are you finding? What's the type of growth you're experiencing now compared to, say, two years ago?
[Speaker 1] (21:47 - 23:36)
Oh, amazingly, I'd say at least double two years ago. Well, close to double. Yeah.
So that's sales. Yeah. Slowly putting my prices up.
I'm still working on that. I'm not going to lie, that's still an area for improvement. So putting the systems in place.
So I've got a business manager seven hours a week. We've worked together for about five years. But recently I also put in a VA for 20 hours a week, which has really what's happened is the systems, you know, we've set up Asana, the three of us working well together.
It's just freed up my brain to be creative. It's just been incredible. So I think you called me in a nice way, Jane, a working to-do list in one of our mentoring sessions.
I did that in the kindest way. You did. And I thought, yes, my brain was so full of what I need to do.
I was having trouble finding the space to create and setting up the systems, getting it out of my head and into things like Asana. I'm sleeping better because I used to lie in bed going, oh, did I reply to them? Did I send the proposal?
I can't remember. I better check. Whereas now I just jump on Asana and it's all there.
So what's happened is my creative brain has just woken up. And I feel like every day I listen to a lot of audio books and I walk along and I hear something and I can just, it's almost like I'm filtering everything I'm hearing through feedback and going that relates to feedback. And then I send a little message to myself on my phone to write a newsletter about this topic.
Yeah. So the creative juices are definitely flowing.
[Speaker 2] (23:37 - 24:52)
And that's exciting. That's all your genius, isn't it? And that's why we've gone down this path, really, to have that sense of fun and fulfilment and that joy in your work, because we just need more of that because we get so bogged down in those tasks.
We need you to play out the front, playing your genius, take that weight off you. Like you said, I think that takes where you've set around valuing yourself enough, seeing that your clients value you, being able to get that price point to move. But also it's not just the value in the pricing, it's the value of your time and starting to see the value of your expertise.
So that's an incredible shift, Sue. If you had your time again in your practice, you're thinking about how far you've come. So it's meant I've put here a shift in charging enough and all still works in progress in that sometimes.
You talked about valuing yourself, which is what I'm hearing about now, developing the creativity and the thought leadership, like you said, about not being known for knowing something, which is not just knowing something. You're now known for that. People are knowing that you work in the feedback space.
If you had your time again on Flexion now that you're going through this incredible growth phase now, if you had your time again, is there anything you'd change or do differently?
[Speaker 1] (24:53 - 25:29)
Oh, lots. Lots. So probably the biggest game changer has been working with you, Jane.
And I'm not saying this just to promote you or suck up to you or anything like that. I wish I had started with Jane Anderson sooner. And I have had some fabulous mentors along the way and you learn different things from different people.
So whether I was more ready now, so in regards to what I would do differently, I think for the first six months of working with you, Jane, I just didn't do what you told me to do. I don't know. I don't know.
[Speaker 2] (25:31 - 25:35)
Thank you for that, Jane. Thanks for that this week. I'll go do this.
Yeah.
[Speaker 1] (25:36 - 28:58)
So whether I was mismatching myself or whether my head was just so full of to do, to do, to do, oh my God, I haven't done that, I get a bit paralysed. So doing what Jane Anderson tells you to do would be something I would have done sooner. The other big thing for me is I haven't been good at keeping relationships going.
I've got people in my database that I might have sold a workshop to eight years ago. I never kept in contact with them. So now it's that, do I reach out and say, Hey, it's been so long since we talked.
So my relationship maintaining, I think I could have done that a lot better. All those parents whose children I coached 15 years ago, I don't even have their details and that they will all be working somewhere, but I didn't see the value in maintaining a good client list, keeping records of conversations. So I think if I had stayed in contact more, cared more, kept more notes around where they're up to and what are their challenges.
I started to do that in the last year or so, but I regret that. So that would be one big thing. Maintain your relationships.
What else? I think, yeah, as we said before, value and back myself. Yeah.
The other probably big thing is I think I just was very relaxed about my practice, partly because my husband's got a business and we can pay the mortgage. So I had the luxury of I'll leave my, you know, work secure role in state government, set up my own business. There was really no pressure financially for me to make it work.
And now that my husband's talking about retiring, I'm like, Ooh, I'm excited. I'm like, I can work more hours because I was still doing, you know, the school drop off and the school pick up and the orthodontist and the netball. Anyway, so I think as you can take on more things with the kids, I think that's really freeing up my mind.
But it's been a mind shift from my practice is a bit of a hobby to hang on. I've now got two people, have two people who work with me. I want to really treat it more as a practice and other people would call it a business, but just to take it a bit more seriously.
I used to write every January in my calendar, write book. I wouldn't write my book. I would just have January off.
So that was a big change for me this year. I actually started working, I think in the first week of January and was amazed at the meetings I got. I ran busking outs and I was amazed at people.
I just assumed everyone had January off because I was. So I made some really good sales and ran some, I think three busking outs in January, which I'd never done before. So building that mailing list.
So that was probably something I've done differently this year, but I enjoyed it. Maybe because the kids are a bit older. I could just say, off you go, leave me alone.
But I think because I'm really passionate about the feedback topic, it was a pleasure to work in January. That's a real shift.
[Speaker 2] (28:58 - 31:07)
Isn't that great? You can see the smile on your face and just the joy this work brings you. And it's been an evolution to get to January and a big investment that you've been able to go, okay, well, I'm actually going to invest in this time.
And I love that is that we often have that assumption that, oh, no one's around in January. No one's buying. That's an assumption every year that we hear in December.
Sometimes people bring that one out as well. But January, you had a really great month and you've also set it up really well because based on the work you've done is that you had everybody ready for closing in January. They're often rethinking their budgets.
We're also going through a lot of change still at the moment. So just people, I was listening to the CEO of Sri Lankan Airlines the other day, and he has come in to help the airline privatize because it was a government airline. And he said, you know, we used to do quarterly planning.
And he said, now we do weekly planning because everything's changing so fast. So I think a lot of those old assumptions that we have about how people buy the clients, that people are hitting different challenges quicker. And it's being in the right place, right time, all the right messaging.
You've built up all the connection, the list. So you go to top of the class, I think for consistency with your, Sue does this amazing work with her weekly webcast that she does and invites people to it. Because a lot of people would say, I live in a real rural area.
I can't do a business like yours, but you're a real testament to that. It is possible. You can charge what you're worth and people will still continue to buy.
And the other thing, what was it, is realizing that you're running a practice or a business as opposed to a hobby. Getting serious about, is this what you really want? And now you're coming into this really exciting phase.
-
You've got a new team on, hubby close to retiring. Chris has been such a great support of yours and cheerleader of yours. So for those who might be thinking about starting a practice, Sue, or if they're in this growth phase, what advice would you have for them?
[Speaker 1] (31:07 - 33:41)
Oh, it's such a big question. I would say, this is my all or nothing thinking. I say, if you're going to do it, do it all in and take the time to set up the systems right from the start.
That would be my number one. And I understand some people have to, they're still working. So they want to just go into their practice for two days a week until they build up enough.
I guess it's that make the decision that this is what you want to do. So you're committed to it and you take it seriously. I know that's probably not explaining it very well, but treat it as a really important thing.
It's such an investment in you. So even if you are only two days a week, treat those two days a week as highly valuable as an investment in setting up yourself for the future. Because I never would have dreamed that I could have a practice like this when I was back working in state government.
It's amazing. And it's that freedom to go, you know what? In a fortnight, it is my kids' athletics sports day.
We're an athletics family. I can choose to block that out of my calendar if I want to. If a very important client said, we can only do the workshop on that day and we're going to pay you whatever, then I still have the choice.
So that's what I'd say. Take it seriously. Value it for what it can bring you.
Like it can be amazing. Amazing. Get the right people around you.
So as I said earlier, I've had some great people. Whether the timing's right now, I've got so much from you, Jane. I just find you're so generous.
And for me, it's a bit of a safety net. I can always just text you or ring you. And I know that you'll have an answer for me or you'll ask me a question.
And having my amazing two people who work for me, getting that right has also just been a game changer. So yeah. If I was to summarise what I just said, set it up properly right from the start.
Even though you might be tempted to jump ahead and write your book or do a podcast. A few times I would want to jump ahead and do exciting, shiny new things. And I'd tell you, Jane, this is what I want to do.
Hang on. Let's go back to basics. Have you written your...
Have you got other things set up? And I'd be like, no. I don't want to do this.
I go, yeah, we can do that. We'll just get the newsletter first.
[Speaker 2] (33:42 - 33:42)
Yeah.
[Speaker 1] (33:43 - 34:17)
And do what you love. I do love the high conflict team stuff. And I still do a bit of that now.
I did love it, but it's morphed into other stuff. And I think if you're doing what you love, like I said, I was happy to work in January. I was excited to sit there and write some stuff.
So do what you love. But if you're going to do it, do it properly right from the start. It'll save you a lot of heartache.
I'm still at the moment having to go back and set up some things that I wish I had set up earlier.
[Speaker 2] (34:17 - 35:50)
Yeah. And I love what you just said about what I'm hearing is sustainability, like even in the messaging or like you said, you loved working with the high conflict teams. But what I love about that is that you start somewhere.
You start with something that they're understanding how to buy. But what you've been uncovering, I think, is around what creates a sustainable practice for you, which is the evolution of the messaging and finding what is the specific problem that they've got. They understand how to buy it.
You've been able to not only just help them on putting fires out, but how to build an aspirational capability in the organization, not just for an individual team member, not just for a leader, but actually to start to transform an organization. And that is powerful. That's where you start to really go that actually this is an organization is how we operate.
And that's when from their perspective, even though they might not be private enterprise, even as government, we still want to grow. We still got to achieve our potential. We've still got to achieve our strategic plan.
We're not going to get there if we haven't got this feedback loop going. So thank you so much for sharing today. So you are a wealth of knowledge.
And for those who are aware of your journey and the work that you're doing, it's really inspirational. And we're really excited for you to see you in the next phase of your journey. So thanks so much for joining us today.
Where if people want to go, oh, my God, I want to be Sue when I grow up. I love her. If they're thinking about if they want to learn a little bit more about you, where would you like them to go?
[Speaker 1] (35:51 - 36:29)
Yeah, they can, of course, find me on LinkedIn. That would be fine. They can also, I've got a bunch of resources available.
So if they can go to sue-anderson.com.au backslash resources, or of course, just go to my website as well. Yeah, be happy to hear from anyone, especially if you've had some really interesting feedback offering or receiving experiences. I'm writing the next book.
I think it's going to be called Feedback Fitness. So I'm always interested to hear from people if they've got juicy feedback stories.
[Speaker 2] (36:30 - 37:04)
Great. Well, thank you, Sue. We're really excited.
We look forward to seeing the book come out. For those who are listening to the podcast, you'll see in the show notes and the links, we'll send you off to sue-anderson.com.au backslash resources. She's got some really great things there that you might find even useful, even in working with your own teams and working, even if you have your own consulting practice, this isn't necessarily just for organisations, but to be able to get the most out of your own practice as well.
So thanks again, Sue, and make sure you jump on and download those resources. Follow Sue everywhere. She's doing an amazing job.
Thanks so much.
[Speaker 1] (37:04 - 37:05)
Thanks, Jane.
