Seeking Feedback About Your Feedback

Leaders are in the business of improving individual performance through their advice, criticism, and recommendations. The best leaders maintain a continual flow of praise, encouragement, and critical feedback all with the goal of making people better. 

How that feedback lands, however, is often unknown by even good leaders. Too many leaders fail to adjust their feedback in the ways others want and need it. This is a big mistake, especially considering how easy it is to correct. A best practice every leader should engage in, now and again, is to seek feedback about their feedback.  

Having a conversation about the rate, quality, and substance of the feedback you offer to those who receive it makes good sense. People respond very differently to subtle changes in the style and timing of feedback. 

Knowing whether your feedback is direct enough, frequent enough, and actionable enough can make a world of difference to those who depend upon it to grow and improve. Calibrating your choices to match what others need from you sounds like a no-brainer, yet most leaders don’t do it. 

Change that. 

It isn’t a long or complex conversation. It usually goes like this: “I give you lots of feedback focused on helping you to reach your highest potential. How am I doing? What would you like to see differently from me? Stylistically, does how I deliver feedback bother you in any way? What can I do to make it so you get what you need in the way that you need it?” 

Fine-tuning how you give feedback to others to accommodate their unique differences is typically quite easy. But a leader first must know how they are doing at the job. The only way to accomplish that is by asking the question and exploring the answer. Good leaders give others a lot of feedback. Great leaders give others a lot of feedback in the way they want to receive it.