I have recently had to face some hard truths about myself, not something I sought, but was given. With hindsight I really should have sought this insight from the outset to enable personal change, long before I was told. It got me thinking about how often do leaders go on the front foot and overtly seek the ‘truth about their leadership’. How often do they deliberately seek feedback, insight, opinion, experiences, learning from others about them as leaders?
As with communication, often many leaders are always on ‘transmit’. Always doing their leadership to, with and for others. When challenged about seeking and discussing feedback and getting insight, the frequent response is that little or no consideration is given to it. It isn’t on their daily leadership radar. Yet you as people leaders, are performing as people leaders every day, therefore feedback, which is information on performance is critical.
Impact of not seeking this insight.
If you as a leader don’t frequently seek feedback you are missing out on highly valuable information. At the very least, this means you are missing out on the opportunity for personal growth and change. You are also missing the opportunity to role model feedback for your own reports and team. Additionally, you are only seeing a very small one-sided view of yourself. You on you. I might argue that if you don’t seek feedback from others, it is highly likely that you are not someone who deliberately reflects on themselves and their leadership. A one-sided view is almost as bad as no view.
It goes further though. By not seeking feedback on your leadership, you are not investing in personal relationships, trust, accountability, the culture of your team and peer relationships.
This absence of self-awareness, doesn’t go unnoticed. Senior leaders and stakeholders will quickly pick up on leaders who, are more them centric and don’t seek insight from others. They will also directly or indirectly pick up on positive or negative vibes which emerge from teams or peer groups. This can affect promotion, new jobs and personal credibility within an organisation.
Changing perspectives – becoming an information ‘sponge’
The sad thing in all of this is that it doesn’t have to be this way. Readily, you as leaders can become information ‘sponges’, collecting, listening, exploring, understanding and using information on your own leadership. Almost overnight.
The leader who seeks and embraces feedback, transforms all that is around them – people, situations, relationships, perspectives and experiences. All simply by asking basic but meaningful questions, with genuine intent. New leader or established leader equal impact. It’s about creating and setting new leadership habits at a leadership DNA level. Fundamentally, as a leader, how do I operate?
Making it real
There are different ways to go about this, all of which benefit from the use of questions, it’s just the approach that is different:
- Simply asking for feedback on an everyday basis or during 121s. Generic insight and experiences from others on how you work and interact with them
- Focusing questions on specific behaviours, mindsets and approaches the organisation believes are important.
- Similarly, from leadership development, identifying core leadership skills, behaviours and people practices as part of your role. How do they come across from you?
- Understanding the leadership, brand and impact you want to have on others, trying to display and seeking insight on your successes and not so.
- Knowing the needs of your team and how much you are meeting these is another perspective and entry point around seeking feedback, to consider.
- Feedback bench marking self against others, role models for you inside or outside of the organisation.
- Priming a few people – reports, peers and seniors, and asking them when they experience leadership from you to share and discuss their experiences with you.
Set yourself up for success
Be deliberate about your leadership. Not just in everyday activities, that is the absolute minimum. Be deliberate in determining the leader you want to be. Understand and explore what your leadership values and beliefs are. What does the ‘mechanism’ of your leadership need to look like? How do you measure your leadership against organisational expectations or competencies? What do other ‘good’ leaders do and how do you measure up against it?
Stephen Covey in his famous book ‘7 Habits of Highly Effective People’ calls this approach ‘sharpening your saw’. Every day, and every week honing your own development, learning, skills and abilities. This is what separates out great leaders from average leaders. The ability to keep deliberately developing self
Nick Howell is an executive coach, facilitator and author of ‘Great Coaching Questions‘. Passionate about developing people and teams, bringing personal change and growth to enable individual and team performance. Contact him today on 07867 785314 or nick@abintus.co.uk to discuss your people development and leadership needs.