BMA eBook - Manual / Resource - Page 262
What to Ask the Person in the Mirror
While your direct reports
know what you are doing
wrong, most of them are
not dying to tell you. It
takes a concerted effort
to cultivate subordinates
who will advise and
coach you.
harvard business review • january 2007
As hard as it is to give effective and timely
feedback, many leaders find it much more
challenging to get feedback from their employees. Once you reach a certain stage of your career, junior people are in a much better position than your boss to tell you how you’re
doing. They see you in your day-to-day activities, and they experience your decisions directly. Your boss, at this stage, is much more removed and, as a result, typically needs to talk
to your subordinates to assess your performance at the end of the year. In order to avoid
your own year-end surprises, you need to develop a network of junior professionals who
are willing to give you constructive feedback.
The problem is that, while your direct reports
know what you are doing wrong, most of them
are not dying to tell you. With good reason—
there’s very little upside and a tremendous
amount of downside. The more senior and the
more important you become, the less your subordinates will tell you the “awful truth”—
things that are difficult to hear but that you
need to know.
It takes a concerted effort to cultivate subordinates who will advise and coach you. It also
takes patience and some relentlessness. When I
ask subordinates for constructive feedback, they
will typically and predictably tell me that I’m
doing “very well.” When I follow up and ask
“What should I do differently?” they respond,
“Nothing that I can think of.” If I challenge them
by saying, “There must be something!” still
they say, “Nothing comes to mind.” I then ask
them to sit back and think—we have plenty of
time. By this time, beads of sweat begin to become visible on their foreheads. After an awkward silence, they will eventually come up
with something—and it’s often devastating to
hear. It’s devastating because it’s a damning
criticism and because you know it’s true.
What you do with this feedback is critical. If
you act on it, you will improve your performance. Equally important, you will take a big
step in building trust and laying the groundwork for a channel of honest feedback. When
subordinates see that you respond positively to
suggestions, they will often feel more ownership in the business and in your success. They’ll
learn to give you criticisms on their own initiative because they know you will actually appreciate it and do something with it. Developing a network of “coaching” subordinates will
help you take action to identify your own lead-
ership issues and meaningfully improve your
performance.
Succession Planning
Another question that managers know is important yet struggle to answer affirmatively is:
Have I, at least in my own mind, picked one or
more potential successors? This issue is critical
because if you aren’t identifying potential successors, you are probably not delegating as extensively as you should and you may well be a
decision-making bottleneck. Being a bottleneck invariably means that you are not spending enough time on vital leadership priorities
and are failing to develop your key subordinates. Ironically, when leaders believe they are
so talented that they can perform tasks far better than any of their subordinates and therefore insist on doing the tasks themselves, they
will typically cause their businesses to underperform, and, ultimately, their careers will suffer as well.
The succession question also has significant implications that cascade through an organization: If leaders do not develop successors, then the organization may lack a sufficient
number of leaders to successfully grow the business. Worse, if junior employees are not developed, they may leave the firm for better opportunities elsewhere. For these reasons, many
well-managed companies will hesitate to promote executives who have failed to develop
successors.
It is sufficient to identify possible successors
without actually telling them you’ve done so—
as long as this identification causes you to manage them differently. In particular, you will
want to delegate more of your major responsibilities to these professionals. This will speed
their maturation and prepare them to step up
to the next level. By giving demanding assignments to these subordinates, you strongly signal an interest in their development and career
progression—which will encourage them to turn
down offers from competitors. Leaders who do
this are much better able to keep their teams
together and avoid losing up-and-coming stars
to competitors.
A loss of talent is highly damaging to a company. It is particularly painful if you could have
retained key employees by simply challenging
them more intensively. I spoke with a division
head of a large company who was concerned
about what he perceived to be a talent deficit
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