'The World Underestimates Positive Reinforcement'

For decades, Frances Frei had heard that trust took a lifetime to build and an instant to break.

But she was always skeptical.

Frei had observed countless companies repair seemingly irreparable relationships with stakeholders — and ultimately concluded that trust really boiled down to three critical components that could, in fact, be restored.

“If we’re going to trust each other, we have to experience each other’s authenticity, logic and empathy,” she said.

Frei got to test her beliefs firsthand when Uber, a company long considered to have a toxic culture and poor reputation, hired her away from Harvard Business School in 2017 to help restore trust and re-shape its workplace environment.

Her time at Uber ultimately led her to give the popular “How to build (and rebuild) trust” TED Talk a year later.

The Daily Coach spoke to Frei about lessons from her time with the ride share giant, the difference between positive feedback and constructive advice, and why it’s so important to routinely give “Scooby Snacks” to team members.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Dr. Frei, thanks a lot for doing this. Tell us about your childhood and some key lessons from it.

I grew up on Long Island, a town called Shoreham. The earliest lesson I can recall is my mother used to take me for a walk with her best friend and her best friend’s daughter. The best friend, Mrs. Hapgood, used to ask me word puzzles. If I got one right, she rewarded me by asking me an increasingly difficult puzzle.

I like hard problems. I don’t like easy problems, and I think it came from there. If it’s an easy problem, someone else should do it. I want to do the things that uniquely require me, and I gravitate toward hard. It’s a direct line back to Mrs. Hapgood.

You were a pretty good basketball player growing up. What impact did your coaches have on you and your leadership style?

I was sure basketball was going to be my life’s pursuit and always thought I’d end up coaching in college. How I found my way into a Ph.D program is a different story, but even while I was there, I thought I would go and be a coach afterwards.

I had a different coach every year of high school. That meant I didn’t get any institutional guidance, so I went to camps instead for up to six weeks over the summer.

Some people learn to teach or get a love of learning from great teachers. I think I got a love of learning through not having all that effective teachers. I always wanted to give students a compelling reason to come to class because I never felt like I had it. When I teach, I’m just obsessed with making it a total value-added activity because I never experienced that.

How did you come up with your three trust components of authenticity, logic and empathy?

I had been working on it and seeing it, and I was pretty obsessed with everyone telling me trust takes a lifetime to build, a moment to lose, and you can never rebuild it. Yet, being drawn to hard problems, I watched trust get rebuilt very quickly. I started thinking, “Is what I’m being taught wrong? What’s going on?”

There wasn’t something inherent about trust that meant it must take a long time and that it can’t be re-built. But what was true was some people were doing it better than others. I tried to figure out what they were doing.

Where I tested it on a big public stage is when I left Harvard and went to Uber. They had a crisis of trust, and we rebuilt it very quickly. It was because of that I was asked to give the TED Talk.

What were your main priorities when you got to Uber?

One of my principles is leadership is about making others better as a result of your presence and having it last into our absence. I knew my job was to provide guidance, but the way to test if it was done well was how they behaved in my absence.

Education, in my mind, was a very big part of the fix, and I had to see if the way in which I thought could mix well with the way in which people at Uber learned. It happened to be a beautiful mix.

I’d go in and teach a case and a lecture. The case would be about a company that had an amazing turnaround. They got to learn some useful things about how to communicate in a crisis, and we got to see trust being developed quickly and absolutely. I would do the case, and I would do the interactive lecture on trust so that they could learn about it. I’d say, “Now, apply trust to our stakeholders.” What happened in that education was people felt they had a new lens. They had broken trust with almost everyone, but now instead of feeling bad, they were now like, “Oh, trust can be re-built.”

These were great learners and great doers. They set out to rebuild it everywhere they could and did an amazing job.

Can you tell me a little about your Scooby Snacks?

If I want to help someone improve, which is my life’s work, there are two types of feedback I can give. One is constructive advice, which is what should you do differently? The other is positive reinforcement, which is what should you do more of?

The world has misunderstood feedback to mean constructive advice. The ideal ratio of positive feedback and constructive advice is five parts positive reinforcement to one part constructive advice. The world underestimates positive reinforcement.

The second thing is positive reinforcement is only helpful if it’s very clear and very specific. If I just say, “Great job,” you’re not going to get any better. What I call sincere and specific praise is giving someone a Scooby Snack.

It doesn’t make us look soft or weaken other people. It’s the complete opposite. It is the superpower of improvement.

In a sports context, how do you think a coach does that?

My favorite thing to do now is watch the press interactions after a game. I’m watching women’s college basketball now, and it’s must-see TV, as are the postgame press conferences. Kim Mulkey, Dawn Staley, Geno. If you listen, they’re giving Scooby Snacks all the time. Geno’s known for being hard on players, and I went and watched thinking is he the exception to the rule? But go watch any video of him coaching and it’s littered with Scooby Snacks. I counted. He’s got the 5:1 ratio. Watch Steve Kerr, any of them.

I’ve had the opportunity to be up close with five NBA teams. All of them, no matter the reputation of the coach, were giving 5:1 advice. I never had the chance to be around Bobby Knight. I would imagine it wasn’t 5:1 there, but I don’t know. Scooby Snacks are the greatest learning manual.

If I catch you doing something right and I say it in front of others, they too get to learn how to do it. It improves performance, it improves sentiment, it improves culture. Yet, so many of us think it makes us weak. I don’t know who published that false memo.

In your time around coaches, what have been your key takeaways from the most effective ones?

People thrive in the presence of high standards, and people thrive in our deep devotion to their success. If we’re not careful, we’ll set high standards but shield you from our devotion — and insidiously lower the standards. The best coaches do both simultaneously.

Sometimes, when I work with coaches, I’ll help them learn when they tend to be on the off-diagonal, when they’re emphasizing one at the expense of another. I’ll help give them a new prescription to their glasses so they can see how to do both at the same time so they don’t have to trade off against each other.

The other is that coaches are pretty good at training and coaching people who are pretty similar to them. The example is Steve Kerr and Stephen Curry. But if Steve Kerr could only bring out the best in Stephen Curry, it would only make him human. Steve Kerr can also bring out the best in Draymond Green. Now we’re talking.

Another thing I try to teach people is not how to bring out the best in people who are like you, but how do you bring out the best in people who are not like you? That makes you extraordinary.

It's hiring season now for a lot of coaches and leaders in general. What advice would you give to someone taking over a new team or organization?

One is honor the past, wherever you’re showing up. People were there before you, and you don’t want to come in and say, “I’m the savior.” You have to convince people that yes, you’re going to change some things, but there are a whole lot of things you’re not going to change. Honor the good and the bad of the past. Otherwise, the past will keep trying to pull you back.

What you have to do in general is give a clear and compelling change mandate. When you talk about how you’re going to do things, you have to do it with enormously optimistic language, and you have to do it with deep rigor. We have to have a rigorous and optimistic way forward. Some people thing rigor makes optimism obsolete. It doesn’t. And some people think optimism makes rigor obsolete. It doesn’t.

I would say honor the past, have a clear and compelling change mandate, and a rigorous and optimistic way forward.

Q&A Resources

Dr. Frances Frei ―  Website | Twitter | Books | Podcast: Fixable | TED Talk | LinkedIn | Instagram

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