cgio 5 days ago

As a senior leader myself, that was my initial reaction. Then, I thought about myself and cohort and I would say, unfortunately, the advice in the article is required. There are challenges in feedback in both directions. E.g.the people who are best at receiving it are the ones who usually don't, either because they are strong in many other things than the feedback domain, or because they seem so self confident that people are intimidated. On the other hand, people who are not good at receiving feedback are also the ones who would be vindictive and their reactions may poison feedback as a practice. And also people may switch from one category to the other transiently, because of other pressures etc. In summary, in my own practice, while I am opinionated, I have never given negative feedback either to managers or subordinates. Not that they were all perfect, but I found it is usually up to me to work with the people and their strengths and weaknesses and by focusing on strengths I have not corrected any weakness, but have often made them irrelevant to me. Some may say this is a weakness for a leader, and I would agree but still focus on my other strengths.

Edit: an additional consideration as I am digesting my response. People are more open to discussing how to improve a process or a system rather than a person or even more so themselves. Feedback is sometimes personal, that's why things like post mortems, process reviews etc. can work miracles when we manage to keep them about the process or framework rather than the people who are assigned to them.

An additional slightly cynical point on feedback received as a subordinate (no matter how high up you most probably report to someone unless you are at the top). If someone gives you feedback about what you should do to get promoted/a raise etc , you are 90% not going to get those even if you heed to the feedback. These things happen for things you do, and the broader perception of yourself not on the basis of a checklist, and if they use a checklist against you, they don't really care about You. If someone mentors you, you will get it. Learn to read the difference between the two.

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zabzonk 5 days ago

Well, "senior leader", if this is the kind of incomprehensible stuff you routinely come up with, I'm amazed your teams produce anything.

ctxc 4 days ago

Formatting/phrasing could be improved, but incomprehensible? I don't think so.

cgio 4 days ago

Well, I must be good in other things right? Not known for being very comprehensible indeed. We all have to play to our strengths.