Feedback as Your Leadership Growth Strategy

Leadership is dynamic. Numerous factors affect the effectiveness of your leadership. The external environment may present challenges for growth, but growth in your leadership depends on you more than anything else.

In moving your enterprise forward embrace the fact that it is not only dealing with your external environment that will give you the edge, but yourself. To beat adverse circumstances a leader must not only focus on the circumstances per se, but on growing himself.

Leader, the level of maturity of your leadership depends on no one but you. Instead of beating the outside factors affecting your enterprise negatively, focus on growing yourself as a leader. Some leaders fail because they never focus on getting better as people and leaders. It is important that you embrace feedback as your leadership growth strategy.

feedback listen

feedback is a tool that can be used for growing yourself as a leader

 

Leaders who never get and or accept honest feedback about their leadership are guaranteed to fail. Getting honest feedback when it comes to areas of possible growth is not always an easy thing, yet helps makes you, leader, better.

When was the last time you asked for honest feedback on your leadership from your colleagues, those that serve under you and your superiors? If people, especially your colleagues, hardly give you any feedback, have you considered why? Do you have any systems and indicators that serve as feedback about your leadership?

Not only focus on building a feedback system for processes in your organisation but also focus building a feedback system that gives honest feedback about your leadership. I am not suggesting a means of making leadership a punching bag but one where leadership can hear what is important to better themselves as leaders and ultimately their enterprise.

How you can build a feedback system:

Your Team 

One of the best sources of feedback are those who serve under you. Most leaders default to being guarded. Being vulnerable, is necessary to get feedback from those you lead. In a controlled environment, engage your team to find out what you could do to lead them better.

Being vulnerable will also challenge your team to vulnerability and more open to feedback. If you model it, your team will follow. Some of the questions (not comprehensive) you could use:

What do you think I could do to better serve you?
What do you feel I do well?
What would you do differently if you were in my seat?
What do you feel I need to start, stop and continue doing?
How can I help you do your job better

Close to You

One of the most significant things I’ve done is marry Ingrid. Being close to someone does not only allow you to know others better, but yourself as well. There are things that Ingrid points out and can say that not many people can. Also, she has pointed out things about myself very few people have. Take a poll in your household or among your closest friends.

Create a platform where they can be honest with you and you will be surprised how well they know you and what you can learn about yourself.

The Point

With all the above out of the way, I need to point out that feedback does not mean finding out the negative only. Good feedback is honest with what you are doing well and possible areas of growth.

Feedback is not a stick that you use to beat yourself, but a tool or platform to better yourself. Without feedback as your leadership growth strategy you will fail. Therefore, embrace what you are doing well and figure out ways of doing it even better. Let the possible areas of growth be a reminder and celebration that you can be a great leader.

The first step to becoming a great leader is being aware of areas of possible growth. The second, seeing them as enablers and not obstacles. Third, acting on them. 

[image by Orange_Beard | cc]

Question: What other measures can leaders take in building effective feedback system for their growth?

What Having Different Perspectives In A Team Means

Having different perspectives in a team means a lot of things. People will never always see the same. Resolution on a particular matter is not the same as having the same perspectives. You can reach consensus by working through differing perspectives. With different perspectives being inevitable, it is worth exploring what having different perspectives in a team means:

Continue reading “What Having Different Perspectives In A Team Means”

When Teams and Leadership Do Not See the Same – Part 2

What To Do When Teams and Leadership Do Not See the Same Issues as Most Pressing and Pertinent

when teams and leadership do not see the the same issues as most pressing and pertinent leadership must take responsibility to deal with the different perceptions

In the previous post (part 1), I wrote about what leadership should do when the team and leadership do not see the same issues as pertinent or most pressing. It is easy for teams to end up feeling the victims of leaders’ decisions if the leaders are not careful in how they manage the different views.

While leadership has responsibility to ensure that there is forward movement, the team also has a role that must not be ignored. In this post, we look at few things that the team must do.

 Like leadership, the team must take some responsibility. Here are some suggestions:

The Leader

Teams must embrace that the buck stops with leadership. When strategies or initiatives fail, picking up the pieces starts with leadership. I am not saying that teams are not involved in whatever turnaround, but leadership has a greater responsibility in ensuring that solutions are manifest.

While teams can be involved in the decision making process they must remember that it is ultimately leadership’s responsibility to make certain decisions.The team being a part of the ‘decision making process’ is overrated at times. The team must own decisions even if they are not actively involved in the decision making process.

When the team and leadership do not agree on what the pertinent and most pressing issues are, the team can raise concerns and views in a constructive way, but own and act on decisions as if they were their own. Team, let leadership lead.

Agree, Really?

It is rare for everyone in an entire enterprise to agree on every course of action. When everyone on the team always shares the same thinking in everything it means someone is not thinking. A different perspective is not synonymous with division.

When the team and leadership do not see the same issues as most pressing and leadership makes a call that the team does not agree with, the team must learn to embrace the decision as their own. Success for decisions that leadership makes is ultimately everyone’s success.

Unity

When teams and leadership do not see the same issues as pertinent and most pressing, teams must be careful not to create a rift between them and leadership. Doing so is counterproductive. If perpetuated, the “us and them” syndrome destroys unity, sabotages the mission and ultimately the organization and valuable, productive energy is lost.

Choose to fight battles that will benefit the enterprise not your ego. When it comes down to it choose unity and rally behind leadership.

Question: What are some of the worst or best ways you think teams can handle situations of differing perspectives with their leadership?

Related Posts:

When Teams and Leadership Do Not See the Same – Part 1

What Having Different Perspectives In A Team Means

[illustration by Sasquatch I cc]

When Teams and Leadership Do Not See the Same – Part 1

Often tension arises when teams and leadership do not see the same issues as pertinent & most pressing. Both the leader and the team have responsibilities to bring their perspectives to the table and to reach a consensus on the way forward.

When teams and leadership do not see the same issues, there is possibility for division. We need to approach this from both the team and leadership perspective. Let us start with leadership…

Without falling into the trap of chasing every rabbit, the leader cannot afford to ignore the issues that the team sees as obstacles to deliver what they should. He can either do this by making team realize that the issues they see as obstacles are not the main issues.

What To Do When Teams and Leadership Do Not See the Same Issues as Most Pressing and Pertinent

In addition, for the sake of the bigger picture the leader must deal with those things in the way so that his team can focus on what matters. A key part of leadership is addressing issues that get in the way of the team, negatively affecting the mission of the enterprise. Many leaders fail because they just bulldoze “their issues” to the fore.

This can be frustrating to the team. Leaders can fail to get buy in from their team by not first ‘buying in’ to deal with the perceived challenges of their teams.

Before you discredit the perceived obstacles of your team, from their perspectives, have you really listened to them? Have you looked into their validity and implications to the team and your enterprise?

Have you taken any tangible steps to address them? Have your actions given your team substantial confidence that you are addressing the issues they have raise, to enable them to pursue the mandate you may be about to give them?

Some issues might not actually be worth much attention in the greater scheme of things. However, how leadership handles them communicates a lot to the team. Brushing off perceived challenges by your team can have detrimental effects on fulfilling mission and subsequently on the enterprise.

When leadership and teams do not share the same perspective, leadership still has a responsibility to create a platform to listen. Leadership does not always know it all and must not find it a threat to admit ignorance. This can help build trust and confidence of the team.

Leader, whatever you do, deal with the teams’ perceived challenges in a way that will enable them to focus on what they need to. Failure to handle these instances can build issues onto other issues, resulting in a blur of what the challenges are. Instances of different perspectives can be both divisive and uniting based on how leadership handles them.

Question: What are some of the worst or best ways you think leadership can handle situations of differing perspectives with their teams?

illustration by Sasquatch I, (cc)

What To Do When Those You Look Up To Let You Down

Sometimes we epitomise our dreams in people. We set them as our benchmarks. Though we know that everyone has flaws or shortcomings, we somehow overlook that when we look at those we highly esteem.

However, when they falter or act in a way below our expectations and standards they normally have we are shocked and might give them little, if any grace.

Continue reading “What To Do When Those You Look Up To Let You Down”