One of the key responsibilities of business leaders today is to seek regular and honest feedback from their team members. Contrary to the popular belief about the process being just limited to making the team members answer a pre-determined set of questions, it involves much more. In fact, the professionals from the top leadership coaching firm in Canada understand that seeking such answers is just one aspect of taking feedback. The other, and perhaps the more important aspects of taking feedback includes, proper assessment of the results and initiating a conversation with the team members about the same. Given that these conversations are extremely important and delicate, they need to be conducted with utmost care and full attention. In addition, the leaders need to avoid making the below listed 10 feedback mistakes that can negate the whole process and result in their failure.
1. Waiting Far Too Long
Many times the executive leaders wait too long before holding feedback conversation with their team members. This makes the whole exercise pointless as most team members have either forgotten their responses or consider the process to be a mere formality.
2. Failure to Gain Employee Trust
The leaders need to assure their team members about the clarity of their intentions at the very beginning of the feedback conversation. According to the experts from the top leadership development firms in Canada, failure to do so minimizes the chances of a frank conversation with the team members.
3. Overlooking The Need To Outline Ideal Outcomes
The business leaders need to make sure that they outline the ideal outcome of any feedback conversation at the very outset. This is essential to eliminate any feeling of prejudice, reproachment or even embarrassment that the feedback respondents might have.
4. Preventing Two Way Communication
A healthy conversation is one where everyone involved is not only given ample time to speak but also has good listening skills. Failure to establish a two-way conversation with the respondents is likely to turn it more into a session called to chastise the respondents rather than analysing their responses.
5. Assumption Of Knowing It All
One of the biggest feedback mistakes that business executives tend to commit is assuming that they are aware of the full picture. This can make them biased and judgemental besides rendering the feedback conversation completely futile and a waste of everybody’s time.
6. Assessing The Behaviour Of Respondents In The Wrong Way
Many times the executives in leadership roles believe that they know the reasons that make the respondents behave in a specific manner. This is clearly a sign of prejudice and can make the feedback conversational uni-directional even before it is initiated.
7. Not Having An Open-Minded Approach
It is extremely important for the business leaders to have an open minded approach while carrying out a feedback conversation with the respondents. This is especially true in case of conversing with respondents who might have provided negative feedback or might have criticized some aspects of the organization.
8. Providing Vague Or Unverifiable Information
Many times the feedback conversations might involve passing information or educating the respondents through examples. In such cases, the leaders need to make sure that they provide accurate and verifiable information and use only specific examples.
9. Not Being Candid With The Respondents
The experts from the top executive coaching firms in Canada have always laid great stress on being candid with the respondents. This is because sugar coating the message is likely to send the wrong signals.
10.Failure To Establish Clear Commitments
The whole idea of carrying out feedback conversation with the respondents is to understand the perspective and establish clear commitment objectives accordingly. For this the leaders need to be willing to extend their support and guidance to the respondents to clear a positive work environment.
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