Do you look forward to your annual review with your manager? If you are like me, the answer will probably be a resounding NO. Receiving feedback can be scary.
Feedback can come from a variety of sources, such as a manager, coach, family member, or friend. It can be tough to hear about deficiencies. Your first instinct may be to get defensive, deny, or even ignore the feedback.
I would encourage leaders to fight this urge. Listen intently, keep an open mind, and thank people for their feedback. Even go as far as asking for feedback on a regular basis.
Benefits of asking for and receiving feedback include:
- Provides opportunity for personal growth. Servant leaders should always be on the lookout for ways to improve themselves in order to better serve their followers.
- Encourages open and honest communication with your team.
- Promotes a culture of continuous improvement. Taking action on feedback from your team may move you from good to great.
We want to practice what we preach at Triune Leadership Services. We have recently made some changes to the website to make it more user friendly. We are planning on starting a weekly newsletter to provide additional helpful information on servant leadership. We are also building a tool to facilitate an on-line community for participants in the 2014 Leadership Roundtable Groups.
We would love your feedback over the next couple of months on any of the following:
- Website improvement ideas
- Newsletter improvement ideas
- LRT on-line community improvement ideas
- Specific topics you would like Mark to blog about
All is fair game. Leave a comment; send Mark Deterding an email, tweet, or Facebook message at any time. We can’t wait to hear from you!
Disclaimer: Dan Deterding is the youngest son of Mark. He has decided to join the “TLS Blogging Team” and will be contributing twice a month. You can follow him on Twitter @DanDeterding.
Mark you are right on with this post. We have found that managing the process of giving and receiving feedback by having good open conversation on what feedback actually IS during our Leadership training is a great way to go. We start with calling out a difference between “criticism” and “feedback.” Criticism is often viewed as negative, after all, we learn over time that being “criticized” can be painful! We try and get in front of these feelings by teaching that feedback is a GIFT! And as you state, an opportunity for improvement, and positive relationship building! A nice set up for delivering and accepting this gift is when the offering party asks, “May I offer you some feedback on this subject?” The inevitable response is “absolutely!” When feedback training has taken place, the receiver is normally going to think how awesome it is that someone cares enough about them to offer them an opportunity to improve. And THAT is a GIFT. Have a great day Mark!
Brian – Often I hear it referred to as “constructive criticism” but I think I agree with you that no matter how you dress it up “criticism” in general can still be perceived as painful. I love the idea of training the team to think of feedback as a GIFT instead. Great insights, Thanks.