Focusing Feedback on What Others Are Capable Of

Leaders are in the business of evaluating and judging others. 

In order to achieve great team results, leaders must continually assess team member performance and provide the feedback necessary for improvement. On most teams, it is painfully obvious what leaders should be assessing. Whatever tasks, skills, and qualities most impact results get the most critical attention. 

Unfortunately, most leaders rarely stay in this lane. Because they think long-term and want people to be ready for the future, they judge and assess team members on a plethora of issues and attributes that are only peripherally connected to temporal outcomes. 

For instance, leaders often assess the broader issues of team collaboration, personal style, continuous improvement, and relationship skill, among many others, when completing their evaluation. 

This makes perfect sense until leaders assess a feature the team member is entirely incapable of. 

People are capable of making big changes on many issues. Good leaders expect them to. That said, there are an equal number of qualities those same people will never change. 

Do you know the difference? 

The truth is that some team members will never be highly strategic, visionary thinkers, or emotionally intelligent. While leaders can expect team members to communicate their ideas clearly, many will never be highly polished speakers in large groups. 

Skills like facilitating meetings, planning for events, selling services or products, and analyzing complex data may be out of reach for some colleagues. Similarly, personal qualities such as resilience, creativity, and high energy may elude some people.  

The point is that when leaders make judgments and offer feedback about qualities and skills others are incapable of, at least for the foreseeable future, they potentially cause real damage. 

We are not describing weaknesses here. We are speaking of those features some colleagues are not equipped to improve upon. If you’re being honest, you might be surprised at how big that list of qualities really is. 

Judging people and giving them feedback on skills and qualities they are unable to achieve is both deflating and debilitating. Instead of capitalizing on the strengths they do have, team members who are judged harshly on those areas they are incapable of will spend endless hours driving down a dead-end road or give up in despair. 

Good leaders know exactly what team members are capable of and concentrate their efforts on assessment and feedback that matters. They do their best to eliminate judgments about qualities and skills that team members are unlikely to make progress on. This same commitment applies to family members, friends, and peers, as well. Stop expecting people to make changes they never will. 

An old saying makes this point in an unusual way: “Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.” The best leaders assess strengths and weaknesses. They leave unrealistic aspirations to others.