3 Ways to Encourage Employees to Give You More Feedback. When you're the boss, bad news, unpleasant as it is, can be incredibly valuable... and incredibly hard to come by. Without knowing what's going wrong in your business, you can't fix things, but employees are generally hesitant to be the bearers of bad news. And as Claire Lew, CEO of Know Your Company, pointed out on Signal v. Noise recently, they're often even more reluctant when they suspect that you might not exactly welcome this sort of negative feedback with open ears. "The biggest reason I didn't give my boss feedback is I believed that even if I did speak up, nothing would change. I believed my boss wouldn't do anything with my feedback. No action would be taken. "Futility has been found to be 1.8 times more common than fear as a reason for employees not speaking up to their managers.
So what's the remedy for this fear that negative feedback will simply be ignored? 1. 2. "Expose your decision-making process," advises Lew. 3.
To Create Change, Leadership Is More Important Than Authority - Greg Satell. By Greg Satell | 12:00 PM April 21, 2014 Aspiring junior executives dream of climbing the ladder to gain more authority. Then they can make things happen and create the change that they believe in. Senior executives, on the other hand, are often frustrated by how little power they actually have. The problem is that, while authority can compel action, it does little to inspire belief. It’s not enough to get people to do what you want, they also have to want what you want — or any change is bound to be short lived. That’s why change management efforts commonly fail. In the 1850’s, Ignaz Semmelweis was the head physician at the obstetric ward of a small hospital in Pest, Hungary. In 2005, John Antioco was the eminently successful CEO of Blockbuster, the 800-pound gorilla of the video rental industry.
Things ended poorly for both men. While today the insights of Semmelweis and Antioco seem obvious, they did not at the time. We tend to overestimate the power of influence. Ten top blind spots for today's leaders. This column is part of Globe Careers’ Leadership Lab series, where executives and experts share their views and advice about leadership and management. Follow us at @Globe_Careers. Find all Leadership Lab stories at tgam.ca/leadershiplab If you’ve ever watched one of television’s popular singing competitions, you no doubt have marvelled at the number of obviously untalented individuals who go on stage anyway, thinking they can sing. Didn’t anyone bother to tell them they have a tendency to veer off-key? Many leaders also have shortcomings they don’t know about, and these can diminish their effectiveness – or even derail their careers.
Over the past decade, our company has compiled a significant database on leaders and their behaviour, specifically related to practices that achieve superior results and create high-commitment cultures. Analysis of our data has revealed the following top 10 leadership blind spots: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. Fifth, repeat this process. Report Typo/Error. To Get Honest Feedback, Leaders Need to Ask - Jim Kouzes , and Barry Posner. By Jim Kouzes and Barry Posner | 8:00 AM February 27, 2014 “The only way to discover your strengths,” wrote Peter Drucker, “is through feedback analysis.”
No senior leader would dispute this as a logical matter. But nor do they act on it. Most leaders don’t really want honest feedback, don’t ask for it, and don’t get much of it unless it’s forced on them. At least that’s what we’ve discovered in our research. We have the benefit of rich data thanks to the more than one million individuals who have completed the Leadership Practices Inventory, our thirty-item behavioral assessment, over the years. The point of this tool is to help individuals and organizations measure their leadership competencies and act on their discoveries. When we related this finding to the director of leadership development for one of the world’s largest technology companies, he admitted the same was true for his organization.
Why is this? What’s true for writers is equally true for leaders. 10 Habits of Remarkably Giving People. Think about people you truly respect. Think about people you truly admire. Think about people you love to be around. They may not be rich. They may not be highly accomplished. They may not be household names. Yet you love to be around them--and you would love to be more like them. What sets them apart from everyone else?
They give: generously, selflessly, and without expectation of return. Here's what they give: 1. Relatively few of us work hard to find reasons to praise the person who simply meets standards. Remarkably giving people can often see the good in another person before that person sees it in herself, providing a spark that just might help her reach her true potential. 2. While it's relatively easy to ask for help, it's harder to ask for help when the assistance is personal. I once went to a meeting to talk about layoffs; by the time I got back to the plant word had already spread that cuts were coming. He thought and said, "Just tell everyone you tried. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.
5 Ways A Legacy-Driven Mindset Will Define Your Leadership. Develop the Leaders You've Been Overlooking - Jack Zenger , and Joseph Folkman. By Jack Zenger and Joseph Folkman | 12:00 PM February 13, 2014 Say the word leader and most people immediately think of those with business cards that says “manager,” “director,” or other such lofty title. That is, the people who hold positions of stature within a company’s hierarchy, to whom several individuals report, and whose influence comes in great measure from the positions they hold. But anyone who has worked in organizations knows that there are also people without managerial titles, and who have no direct reports, and yet wield great influence and make critical contributions to the firm. These are the highly professional individual contributors. In some organizations (like, say, the National Football League), their importance is obvious, and rewarded.
We submit that every organization has such people. We think there’s a huge opportunity to provide this group with much of the same development experiences their managerial colleagues receive. Making Yourself Indispensable. Idea in Brief Good leaders can become exceptional by developing just a few of their strengths to the highest level—but not by merely doing more of the same. Instead, they need to engage in the business equivalent of cross-training—that is, to enhance complementary skills that will enable them to make fuller use of their strengths. For example, technical skills can become more effective when communication skills improve, making a leader’s expertise more apparent and more accessible. Once a few of their strengths have reached the level of outstanding, leaders become indispensable to their organizations despite the weaknesses they may have. Artwork: Vincent Fournier, Space Project: MDRS #04, Mars Society, 2008, U.S.A. A manager we’ll call Tom was a midlevel sales executive at a Fortune 500 company.
After a dozen or so years there, he was thriving—he made his numbers, he was well liked, he got consistently positive reviews. As far as Tom could tell, nothing. But how? The Interaction Effect.
The Focused Leader. Idea in Brief The Problem A primary task of leadership is to direct attention. To do so, leaders must learn to focus their own attention. The Argument People commonly think of “being focused” as filtering out distractions while concentrating on one thing. The Solution Every leader needs to cultivate a triad of awareness—an inward focus, a focus on others, and an outward focus. A primary task of leadership is to direct attention.To do so, leaders must learn to focus their own attention. Grouping these modes of attention into three broad buckets—focusing on yourself, focusing on others, and focusing on the wider world—sheds new light on the practice of many essential leadership skills. Every leader needs to cultivate this triad of awareness, in abundance and in the proper balance, because a failure to focus inward leaves you rudderless, a failure to focus on others renders you clueless, and a failure to focus outward may leave you blindsided.
Focusing on Yourself Self-awareness. How Managers Become Leaders. Artwork: Adam Ekberg, Country Road, 2005, ink-jet print Harald (not his real name) is a high-potential leader with 15 years of experience at a leading European chemical company. He started as an assistant product manager in the plastics unit and was quickly transferred to Hong Kong to help set up the unit’s new Asian business center. As sales there soared, he soon won a promotion to sales manager. Three years later he returned to Europe as the marketing and sales director for Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, overseeing a group of 80 professionals. Continuing his string of successes, he was promoted to vice president of marketing and sales for the polyethylene division, responsible for several lines of products, related services, and a staff of nearly 200.
All of Harald’s hard work culminated in his appointment as the head of the company’s plastic resins unit, a business with more than 3,000 employees worldwide. Specialist to Generalist What is “enough”?