The Hindu Business Line : CEO’s secret weapon: Feedback

Feedback sessions are important to building the connect between the boss and his direct report. However, most leaders miss the opportunity by taking off at a tangent.

V. K. Madhav Mohan

Sometimes we may wonder how the CEO manages to juggle his myriad priorities and indeed, himself. In between seminars, newspaper interviews and TV sound bites he also needs to put in the necessary effort to lead his organisation to results. Balancing all aspects of life is a consummate challenge and many CEOs fall short. The glitz and glamour can prove to be highly distracting and ultimately disastrous.

Organisationally, the disaster takes a while coming but when it does, irreversible and massive damage occurs. This is how it happens. The CEO’s time is the scarcest of all resources. So meetings and discussions are measured in minutes and fractions thereof!

The CEO and his team train themselves to be brief; they eliminate every last bit of finesse, courtesy and understanding so that they can shave off seconds from each interaction. This is much like a champion swimmer shaving off his hair to save microseconds from the water resistance offered by hair.

Naturally, discussions are short and superficial. Depth of analysis and long-term organisation building are casualties in the race for speed amidst the shortage of time. Ideas are not fleshed out to examine substantive content; nuances of logic, implications and behaviour are missed. Differing points of view are ignored, steamrolled and marginalised; feelings are assumed not to exist.

Team members and colleagues feel incomplete and unfulfilled after every interaction with the CEO. Worse, people start feeling that they’ve been in an “encounter” with the leadership. In such a scenario, performance is bound to slow imperceptibly and then fall precipitously just like an aircraft nose diving after a stall.

Need to connect

Every leader must recognise that performance and results don’t happen by default; neither does it occur by merely matching physical resources with warm bodies comprising skill sets. People need to connect emotionally and intellectually with their bosses. Only then can they convert their motivation, attitudes, knowledge and experience into results. That’s why every CEO must necessarily allocate time for his direct reports.

The old concept of span of control is still extremely relevant in today’s corporate environment. I know of CEOs with 50 direct reports; the other name for such a structure is centralisation of power and empire-building!

When you have so many direct reports, how can you connect with each member of your team? Personal attention is vital to ensure performance; a span of control with more than 10 direct reports makes it impossible to bestow personal attention.

Feedback builds the connect

With the optimum number of people reporting to you the secret weapon can be deployed with devastating effect; and that weapon is personal and performance feedback every month for every direct report. Feedback sessions are crucially important to building the connect between the boss and his direct report. However, most leaders miss the opportunity by taking off at a tangent and converting the feedback into unbearable noise!

Feedback session is not a review: Reviews assess performance and so are evaluations. Feedback provides input to improve performance; the idea is to learn together so that both parties, the leader and the direct report, build a bridge that they cross together to improve results. Feedback has to be both ways; the direct report needs equally a chance to air his concerns, feelings and difficulties; the boss need not solve every difficulty nor does he need to agree but he does need to listen with empathy to everything that is shared.

Objective of feedback: The objective is only to take the person to the next level of performance and success by helping him to understand what he did well, what he can improve and what he needs to change. Blame fixing, berating and humiliation are guaranteed to perpetuate poor performance.

Assaulting a person’s self-esteem does permanent damage to motivation and is bound to culminate in a parting of ways. The leader’s job is to elevate every person in his care to the next level of performance. To do that he needs to earn acceptance, trust and respect.

Therefore, hurtling down the negative pathway of insult and injury is vastly counterproductive. It’s far more effective to nurture, appreciate and facilitate; feedback is all about building people up in this manner.

Open-ended questions

During the feedback session the leader must master the art of asking open-ended questions. This enables the person to share his ideas and thought process freely; in many ways such a sharing provides cathartic relief for pent up frustrations and worries. Powerful open-ended questions include the following: What do you think about your performance? What areas do you need to improve?

How can you improve? What do you need to change? What mistakes did you make and how can you avoid repeating them? What behaviours can you adopt? What new skills do you need? What are your aspirations?

Clarifying expectations

A feedback session is the ideal platform for the leader to communicate clearly his expectations from the person concerned. This will facilitate the direct report’s total alignment with the expectations and focus on the desired results. All doubts about the exact nature of deliverables can be clarified.

It is important to remember that the probability of achieving a result is directly proportionate to the clarity with which it is defined. The feedback session is tailor-made to define results with total precision.

When such positive and constructive sessions are documented and repeated every month people strengthen their connection with the leadership. They also receive powerful affirmations about their own importance and value to the organisation. That is the most powerful motivator for continued excellence in the delivery of results.

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http://TheLonelyCEO.blogspot.com

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