The Leadership Year: Month Four

It’s a new quarter! And there is always something about our calendars that can spur us to take action. In reality there is nothing new about a new month, but somehow, we feel it can be a fresh start and reason to pursue our goals, so let’s maximise this feeling and get the most out of the month.

As leaders there are key interactions, we need to have with others to grow our relationships and abilities. It is incredibly difficult to be able to be a successful leader unless we know how to engage with others. A lot of our skills are learned socially through early family experiences, education, friendships and of course work, but rarely do we receive training in how to better share information to improve these interactions. Feedback, both given and received, is vital and should be a focus of any leader’s development.

Back in the Fifties, 2 psychologists (Luft and Ingham) developed a model known as Johari’s window that can really help frame the need for feedback. It is simple to use but has real impact. It asks us to consider what information is known by us and known by others, and to map this in a 2 by 2 grid (hence the old school ‘window’). To bring this to life let’s use an example of someone who lacks confidence with budgeting.

We can see issues with windows 2 and 3 quite clearly. In window 2 the lack of awareness by the individual means they are blind to the issue and not taking any steps to address their weakness. In this example we have used a lack of confidence in budgeting, but more common blind spots may be how someone comes across in meetings or even annoying habits! We should all be endeavouring to reduce window 2 by becoming more aware of how we come across. This means we need to invite, and be truly open, to hearing the thoughts of others. As leaders we can ask for feedback, and perhaps this is already part of an established feedback process, but people rarely feel comfortable telling people about their weak points. To create a culture of feedback, we need to create a high level of trust and make the giving and receiving of feedback a frequent occurrence. This may begin with us giving more feedback to others, but in a considered and authentic way. Often leaders say that they ask for feedback but don’t receive anything concrete back. This can be especially true of direct reports who may nervously provide a classic “Everything is fine” for fear of upsetting their line manager, or worse still for fear there will be repercussions in their career. To counter this, we need to ensure feedback is exchanged in supportive and trusting setting and continue to ask for feedback time and again. If the environment is right and we persevere you will eventually hear “there is this one thing…”, and that will allow a more open exchange.

In window 3, we see that in concealing the issue from other people we also stop ourselves from finding avenues to make improvements. In doing this we can feel increasingly alone and isolated from others, who may not share this same weakness. Imagine yourself in a room where everyone is talking about budgets with confidence, and you feel weak in this area but conceal it – this is a difficult social environment, and you are unlikely to feel like you belong. Over time you may even find this drifts into a lack of confidence in other areas due to imposter syndrome setting in. We need to be brave enough to be open about where we need to improve, but this requires us to feel safe enough to do so. Finding an individual, you feel will support you may be a good starting point. You don’t need to disclose your weaknesses to everyone, but finding someone who can help, or even just to share your thoughts with is a great first step. As we tend to magnify our own weaknesses, they may also help you put them into perspective. Do you feel you’re terrible at budgeting whereas actually you’re only a little behind the level of everyone else? Continuing to slow our thinking down and be conscious that we magnify the issue, or repercussions of our weaknesses, can make us feel more likely to be open about them and actually seek to improve them.

If we worked on decreasing window 2 and 3, overtime we’d find we’re mostly in window 1. This allows us to discuss ourselves freely with others and is the perfect space for self-development and open, healthy relationships with our teams. Whilst Johari mostly focuses on ourselves, I actually think as leaders it sets a good role model to others about being able to accept feedback and make changes to improve. But how do we go about that being part of our leadership style with others too?

Giving feedback is something we are all asked to do at points in our career. We may also see opportunities to give people feedback in our team to highlight where they need to improve. But even though we may have good intentions about giving feedback to see meaningful change, it doesn’t always end up with the result we intended. How we give feedback is just as important as the intention behind it.

Personally, I found giving feedback hard. Even though I have generally had good working relationships with my team whenever I’d have to point out something negative, I’d find the conversation awkward and I’d either deliver the information in a way that created an emotional response, or I’d waffle through the key points to such an extent that the message was lost. This was not helpful to anyone. Although my ‘waffling’ may have come from a place of not wanting to upset someone or magnify an issue, by not delivering feedback with clarity I was also denying my team the opportunity to make change. When I heard about feedback mechanisms it was a gamechanger for me.

BEAR is a classic example of a feedback mechanism. It stands for Behaviour, Effect, Alternatives and Result. It is simple, easy to remember and can help you to prepare and deliver feedback without the emotion (but with great clarity). A classic example is someone being late:

·       Behaviour: You were late into the office 6 times this month, arriving after the 9am team briefing

·       Effect: This has meant that the rest of the team are having to catch you up on what’s been said

·       Alternatives: In future I really need you to make an effort to be on time for those briefings, or to at least let me know you’re late so we can catch up separately

·       Result: If you continue to be later the team are going to start to feel it’s really unfair on them

In delivering information in this mechanism, it can take the feedback down to the facts. You should only ever have the discussion if you are certain about the behaviour (no hearsay) and can make the effects really clear. Some people may be blind to the impact of their behaviour, so making this link really clear helps them to see why they need to make a change. In the above example I’ve given some alternatives to the person, but it is also something you can discuss together to make the feedback feel less ‘instructed’. For the usual improvement-based feedback this is a good option, but if it’s something more serious (IE unacceptable behaviour) then you may need to be firmer about the alternatives, and spell out the results, or consequences, of continuing their behaviour.

It may feel formal, but in reality, I have actually found that thinking about each stage of BEAR can ensure I put it into words that still feel natural, but crucially are succinct and without ‘waffle’. I can go into the conversation feeling prepped, and because I’ve kept to the BEAR model, I’m talking about facts not making it personal. I saw better results from the very first time I used it.

But even as I talk about feedback, I still find myself instantly thinking about the negatives, whereas actually we should continue to reinforce positive feedback.

·       Behaviour: I saw that great piece of work you designed last week

·       Effect: The response from the client was really positive!

·       Alternatives: Let’s look at ways you can work on more projects like these…

·       Result: …as it would show how you’re ready to work in more senior/exciting projects

We often only use feedback when we need to address a problem but creating a culture where the positives are shared regularly is a boost to everyone involved and reinforces best practice for your team.

So, let’s recap on how we can use feedback as part of personal development. We can use the Johari model to identify ‘window’ 3 behaviours, where we are hiding our weaknesses from others and find individuals who can help support us in tackling them. We can also reflect on why we are concealing our flaws and try to put them into an accurate perspective.

We can also use feedback to hear about our blind spots – those areas we wouldn’t tackle without someone telling us about them! And to be able to create an environment where people feel comfortable giving us this feedback, we need to instil a culture of regular feedback to each other so that it feels like the norm. Practicing BEAR on a regular basis, planning out the model in advance and delivering both good and bad feedback shows our investment in supporting others, and being open to hearing feedback ourselves