Feedback: Your navigator to becoming the leader you want to be
I’ve just come out of a two week period that’s been mostly taken up exploring 360 feedback with a cohort of leaders I’m about to start some work with. I always find it a real privilege to be given insight into how people see themselves, and how the people around them experience their leadership.
The standard comment as we started each 1:1 debrief was that people were feeling some angst about what might be in the report. Fair enough. Asking for feedback about something as complex as leadership, where we don’t have all the answers, where we only ever make progress rather than reach the destination, and where what worked in one environment may be tipped on its head in another…that’s a place of real discomfort for most of us.
Here are some interesting things I either learnt or was reminded of from working with the 16 leaders who took part:
The people you lead are on your side and want you to be awesome at leading. It makes their lives better. When they give feedback, they are generally effusive in their praise and specific in their suggestions for being better.
Everyone knows you are human. They don’t expect (nor do they want) perfection.
Your strengths are the most solid foundation to work from if you want to grow. Own them, amplify them, and use them to give you momentum in other areas. As a concrete example, one leader I worked with reported highly for engaging others, building relationships, clarifying expectations and coaching people. One of their lower rated areas was how they balanced delegation and doing the work themselves. For them, that ability to develop strong relationships and help people grow is a great launchpad for letting go of a bit more of the work. They hadn’t realised their people wanted them to delegate more, but the feedback was loud and strong from their people – you’ve helped us develop our capability, now let us use it.
Ask for feedback more often than a 360. There were some leaders I worked with who were pretty sure they knew what would be in their report (and yep, even then they were still nervous about potential surprises); for others, it was the first time they had really gone and sought feedback. If you’re not finding ways to get feedback, you can’t know whether you are on course or not. Knowing we are on course helps us sustain our energy and deepen our impact. And if we start to drift off course (that’s all of us), the earlier you discover that the easier it is to nudge yourself back in the right direction. When we find we are off course and have been for a long time, it can demand a massive amount of energy to get back where we want to be.
Working with leaders on how to create a feedback environment is one of the most common things I get asked to do. One of the challenges I lay down every time is to set the environment by setting the example. A 360 is one way to get that happening. If you want to make it more of a cultural and embedded ‘way we get better’ in your team though, make it a habit. Start asking for feedback, appreciate it when it’s given, take action on the stuff that matters, and regularly assess with your people how your nudges are landing.