True intuitive expertise is learned from prolonged experience with good feedback on mistakes.”
– Daniel Kahneman
Feedback. This word can trigger such a visceral reaction that some organizations are experimenting with other names. At GE employees now provide ‘insights’ to their colleagues. Leadership guru Marshall Goldsmith is a proponent of using ‘feedforward’ to inspire positive change.
And yet, we get feedback all the time. Many of our cars have back up cameras and ‘blind spot detection’ that let us know when we get to close to another object. We have a new washing machine that plays a song longer than many of my selections on Pandora to let us know when a cycle is complete. At a high level, we tend to like feedback. More information is good. It can even be motivating. Am I the only who has walked around my bedroom before going to sleep at night to make my Fitbit goal and see the fireworks on my Alta?
As a leader, it is easy to say how much you value feedback. And I would bet you do, when it comes to understanding how the market is reacting to your latest scientific findings, or when you are trying to understand what might be impacting employee engagement or retention. But what about when it is about your personal leadership style? How much do you want it then? [Read more…]