Leadership Problems with Feedback

I am sure you have heard it said, “Feedback is the breakfast of champions,” right? Every Leader has an important responsibility to provide quality feedback to those they lead. Not just when it comes time to deliver the annual performance review. Feedback should be a regular part of your meetings with staff. However, the biggest problem with feedback, for most leaders at the top of the organization, is not poor practices when delivering feedback, no, the biggest problem is that leaders do not ask for feedback themselves and miss opportunities to improve.

It is not easy to seek and receive constructive feedback. Criticism hurts and no-one wants to be told what wrong they are doing or things they can improve. It is easy to get defensive, resistant, silently object, or ignore what is being said. It takes real intention, openness, and skill to listen well to the feedback you hear and learn from it.

Some of the best feedback I ever received, I resisted at first, but after reflection, the parts of feedback I was reluctant to hear, empowered me to improve.

Here are five tips for leaders to encourage, receive, and learn from constructive feedback.

Ask! “You have not because you ask not” (James 4:2). When was the last time you sought formal feedback from your staff and key stakeholders? I was speaking to a room of Pastors recently, and I asked them, “How many of you had a formal feedback process evaluating your leadership in the past 2 years?” Not one hand was raised. That is not good. The first step in getting better is to ask for feedback.

Be specific When asking for feedback have a focused approach. This requires identifying the specific areas you want feedback and asking direct questions. You might want to ask about your leadership presence in the room. Or how you handle stress. Or ask about your strengths and weaknesses in running meetings. Ask how you are doing in vision casting or decision-making or delegating or accountability or coaching or planning or budgeting. There are several areas to seek feedback, be specific. If you do not know where to begin, ask a few of your closest collaborators, “I’m thinking of asking for feedback, what areas of my leadership should I start with?”

Listen well All feedback is a gift and can be applied to your leadership. Even if it appears negative, there is something of value being communicated and the feedback should be received as a gift. During the feedback session, maintain an open posture, present warm body language, keep eye contact, and affirm what is being said, “Thank you, that is helpful, can you tell me more?” The more you encourage your people, the more convinced they will be that you are sincere in your desire to learn from them and that will encourage them to provide even more feedback.

Use it to get better Every feedback session should include time dedicated to ‘ideas to improve.’ Most constructive feedback provides information about deficiencies or weaknesses. Once that is understood, turn it into a positive by asking, “What can I do differently that would be better?”

Learn the lessons See feedback as an opportunity to learn rather than a threat. Take it in the spirit it is intended, which is to enable you to be better and improve your skills and competence in the workplace and make you a better Leader. Once you have finished all your formal feedback sessions, and you have synthesized all that has been said, consider formulating a Lessons Learned document and present this to your key people. The format is simple: 1) This is what I asked; 2) This is what was said; 3) This is what I learned and, 4) This is what I will do differently moving forward. Doing this will show that you take feedback seriously and you are passionate about getting better. Also, you will validate the individuals that participated.

Leaders miss out on significant opportunities to grow and develop when they refuse to get feedback or forget to ask for it. Here is a way forward:

• Ask for it
• Be specific
• Actively listen
• Ask how to improve
• Learn from it

I will finish with a quote from Stephen Covey, “It takes humility to seek feedback. It takes wisdom to understand it, analyze it and appropriately act on it.”