Feedback – Dan Greer

Two Common Mistakes Leaders Make About Developing A Healthy Feedback Culture

Dan Greer — Mon, 06 Jun 2022 14:56:03 +0000

My leadership development taught leaders that they should be giving ongoing feedback to team members based on performance. This almost one way conversation almost always felt like an audit rather than a conversation. The missing piece in setting the right culture is to let the team member have the primary responsibility for asking for help.

This Forbes post is an excellent read for all leaders: “All healthy companies strive to create a culture where well-intended feedback is continuously provided and received at all levels of the organization. Few things accelerate individual and organizational performance as much as receiving constructive feedback about how actions and behaviors can be more effective toward accomplishing desired goals. Today’s working environment is complex, fast-moving, and matrixed, making it necessary to quickly understand when behaviors and actions are causing unintended issues.”

Good Feedback Is A Two-Way Conversation

Dan Greer — Fri, 19 Jun 2020 20:05:17 +0000

Great leaders know that simply telling someone what they did wrong is not leadership. Taking the time to ask good questions and more importantly listen to the answers are critical parts of good feedback. Many times team members suffer from poor communication and that is the reason mistakes are made. Ask the question, what is your understanding of the goals of this project?

The more feedback you get from them the more you can help them reach their potential. This HBR post is excellent: “Getting others to accept our feedback can prove challenging, especially when it’s critical. Worried that their feedback may lead to hurt feelings or diminished productivity, managers resort to face-saving techniques like the “praise sandwich” that end up doing more harm than good. The result is a tenuous feedback culture built largely upon evasion, confusion, and self-delusion.”

Why Constant Feedback Beats Annual Performance Reviews

Dan Greer — Sat, 15 Feb 2020 16:17:35 +0000

I have experienced the pain and the pleasure of annual performance reviews. The pain is when some passive-aggressive leader drops the bomb on you that your work was not up to expectations. I clearly needed to own some of those issues. However, many times these leaders lacked the courage to have difficult conversations or were looking for someone downstream to blame. This post by Chris Lima is a must read:

“In those days we were all told that the way the world worked was to wait until a review to talk about roles, responsibilities and salary.

And more importantly, our expectations were managed that it might take several years to grow into the role we felt we could do right away. Several years!

I don’t know why we didn’t rebel back then. We put up with it. We waited. And because we did it back then, we can easily fall into the trap that people should put up with it now. But it was insane then and it’s still insane now.

No one wants to wait for a yearly review to get feedback.
No one wants to wait for a yearly review to talk about their current and future role.
No one wants to wait for a yearly review to talk about their salary.
And no one wants to wait for a few years to get recognized for their meaningful work.”

Ten Behaviors Sabotaging Your Leadership

Dan Greer — Fri, 06 Sep 2019 06:00:03 +0000

In this day of a major priority being placed on collaboration and empowerment, the question that still remains is how do great leaders stay engaged? Collaboration is not just group think and delegation is not abrogation. This Forbes post is a great read to help know where the lines are:

“Have you ever been in a situation at work where you felt like you lost your cool? Maybe not in that wildly out of control way, but enough to where you felt bad about what you said or did and wished you’d handled yourself differently?”

What Good Feedback Looks Like

Dan Greer — Thu, 05 Sep 2019 06:00:48 +0000

There is a major debate in the corporate community about how to use feedback and is it really effective. Clearly, there are very negative outcomes if it is done for the wrong reason or even the wrong way. However, if done well it becomes the alignment cultural platform for the entire organization. This HBR post is excellent:

“Our research and experience at the Center for Creative Leadership (CCL) lead us to a different conclusion: Feedback — both positive and negative — is essential to helping managers enhance their best qualities and address their worst so they can excel at leading.

There are several ideas in the article with which we agree:

Make Your Meetings A Safe Place For Honest Conversation

Dan Greer — Mon, 02 Sep 2019 06:00:49 +0000

Great leadership knows how to create a culture where the truth can be told and they can hear what they need to know from their key people. This involves meeting effectiveness, great teamwork and a very high level of trust. This HBR post delivers on all fronts:

“I recently met with a group of managers to discuss ways to improve meetings. Our goal was to figure out how to create a space that people actually look forward to being in. We each began by describing a meeting we remembered as especially powerful.

One story stood out. My colleague told us about a time when he was a young engineer working on several project teams in a manufacturing facility. He said, “Josh, my manager, would take everyone out for pizza when he came to the factory, and we’d have a ‘no secrets’ meeting.”

How To Work With Someone Who Thinks They’re Always Right

Dan Greer — Sun, 30 Jun 2019 20:46:45 +0000

Leadership theory today acknowledges that there will always be times for directive leadership where the positional leader must make the call. However, if you find yourself working for someone who does it all the time, then you have to find a way for your voice to be heard. This HBR post will help:

“We recently watched a heated debate between our client and two of his direct reports. Our client, a leader responsible for a $350M division, and one of the direct reports, the head of marketing, were ready to extend an offer to a candidate for a new position: VP of analytics. But the head of HR was adamant that they had the wrong candidate.”

How To Handle Your Critics Like A Pro

Dan Greer — Thu, 09 May 2019 20:27:39 +0000

One of the greatest indicators of mature leadership is when we are willing to learn from those who oppose or criticize us rather than blowing them up or off. I have developed a minority offender concept that I use in all executive coaching. This simply means, find the truth in what they are saying and assume responsibility to apologize and change. This Carey Nieuwhof post covers that and a lot more:

“Criticism is an almost daily staple for most leaders. You get everything from side comments, to direct challenges, to people who walk out the door, to anonymous notes sent to you by people with no courage.

You dread it. I dread it. Who doesn’t? In fact, it can completely derail your day, your week, and your work.

I can’t tell you how many times I have a completely sarcastic, immature and emotional response ready for my critics as soon as they sting me.”

How Leaders Can Open Up To Their Teams Without Oversharing

Sun, 10 Feb 2019 09:31:36 +0000

I always tell the truth but I often don’t tell everything I know. Why, because it is either not needed or potentially could be harmful. Leaders must have the emotional intelligence to know themselves extremely well and then share what they know to the degree they are transparent but not ineffective. This HBR post is a great read:

“In the age of social sharing, people who work together know more and more about each other. In general, this is a good thing for peers and leaders. Research shows our brains respond positively to people when we feel a personal connection with them. We try harder, perform better, and are kinder to our colleagues. Command and control management is on its way out, and bosses who practice empathy and make an effort to connect with their subordinates are in.”

4 Things To Do Before A Tough Conversation

Wed, 23 Jan 2019 09:46:18 +0000

One of the hardest things to do as a leader is to talk to people when you have to deliver bad news. It could start out at the beginning as a quality of work issue that eventually leads to a chronic lack of performance. Eventually, you begin to ask yourself the real question, Does this person really belong on our team? This HBR post is very helpful:

I was in denial for about a year and a half before I admitted that I needed to fire Randy.

His work performance had made the conclusion inescapable for years, but he was so darned nice and likeable that I gave him the benefit of the doubt. Not only did I like him, I also knew his income was crucial to his family. Furthermore, over the nine years he worked for me, his income had grown to the point that he would find it difficult to get comparable compensation.