One of the strongest skills you can develop as a CEO is how to handle criticism and feedback from your team.
Navigating this obstacle to growth makes up a significant portion of my time when I open up relationships with businesses. In many cases, CEOs surround themselves with strong coworkers, advisors, and employees.
But if you don’t foster an environment that will give you honest and timely feedback, you could be stuck in an endless loop.
It’s likely not your employee’s fault. Plenty of CEOs directly or indirectly create an environment of “yes men/people” by responding defensively or even aggressively when they hear unflattering feedback. And even if that doesn’t sound like you, the stigma created by most businesses is already in place.
It’s up to you to break the mold for the good of your organization. Once you create a healthy feedback pipeline, your business will grow faster. Soon, new ideas and fresh opinions will propagate, drastically reducing research and planning hours and reinforcing a collaborative nature in the workplace.
Promote Healthy Feedback
Let’s examine what healthy feedback looks like.
In its purest form, healthy feedback occurs naturally whenever new ideas are floated – before they’re put into action. Whether you’re in team meetings or receiving an email from a hardworking employee after a weekly update, good feedback can occur wherever you allow it. Eventually, this shifts the culture of your organization to a more pro-feedback style.
“Good” feedback doesn’t just hinge on your response; tone and word choice go a long way to delivering solid, substantial feedback that is easy to hear. Ultimately, once your team knows how to respond constructively and not just critically, good feedback sounds a lot more like the sharing and building of ideas. Collaboration. Ideation. Whiteboarding.
And this works doubly for your leadership. Confident, capable CEOs receptive to feedback have immense confidence in not just their business, but in who they are as people. They can remove themselves from the equation and see feedback for what it is, not as a judgment of their character.
Once you shift your mindset like this, you can see ideas for what they are (good or bad) and start making the right moves toward growth. Besides just being inefficient, failing to accept feedback will leave you mentally exhausted, as just about any positive idea perceived as a slight will feel like it’s undermining your authority. But there’s nothing to worry about: you created this robust team because they’re gifted, talented, and driven. You trust them, and you need to start trusting their feedback to see results.
Signs Someone is Not Receptive to Feedback
Think about your personal life. You might have some friends who can’t take a joke, let alone a valid point that contradicts how they operate. People like these are easy enough to spot, and you might even resort to walking on eggshells around them.
Now compare this to the atmosphere at weekly team meetings. Sometimes it’s hard to see when the shoe’s on the other foot. But if no one speaks up to challenge or support new ideas, it might be a clue that they don’t feel comfortable speaking up.
Ask for criticism. Now look for body language tells. If people seem to shut down when you ask for their opinion, you may have directly or indirectly created an environment where feedback is shunned.
Get Better at Receiving Feedback
First, remember that all feedback is beneficial. You don’t need to take their advice to garner new perspectives. However, you need to reframe feedback: it’s not a personal attack, but rather more information from the diversity of the minds you surround yourself with. The larger your team, the more likely someone is to arrive at an independent thought you might not have immediately thought of.
But you do need to discern. It’s human nature that some people like pointing out mistakes. But you’re not filtering for baseless or empty criticism – locate feedback that includes what will work instead, and keep your mind open until your employee or advisor finishes their thought. Take a moment to think before you respond, and ask questions to learn more about their insights.
Finally, if you’ve unknowingly created a workplace where employees feel they cannot give feedback, this process starts with you. This includes changing your tone in meetings, and even opening the floor to voices you might not hear regularly. This can bleed into personal, casual interactions around the office, eventually communicating to everyone that they won’t be shut down for their words, but rather listened to and rewarded.
Sending an email or speaking up at the start of your next meeting is a good way to directly combat it. You don’t have to admit fault or beat around the bush. Just open the door for communication directly – say that the success of your next few initiatives hinge greatly on the fresh ideas and feedback of your entire team. The more you promote these efforts, the quicker they will become routine.
Let’s Talk the Hard Truths
At the end of the day, you hold the power to hire or fire everyone. For that reason, the feedback loop can constrict over time if you don’t nurture it, even if you aren’t actively holding it back.
Working with a Growth CFO can help you get to the bottom of this fast. While every team is unique, there are some strategies we employ together to accelerate the feedback process and get your team set up with a Growth mindset.
Foresight is here to help, if you would like to begin a discussion Schedule a 25-minute Discovery Consultation with me
