Your Lead Team Needs a Feedback Forum

Why You Can't Always Count On Others to Initiate Input

Me and my long-time friend, Aaron Stern, riding bikes on his visit out here. Friendship is like a feedback forum for life.

When you’re leading a team of leaders, you have to create a clear, simple, and frequent feedback forum. Without a mechanism that makes it easy for them to share their perspective, they will constantly be counting the cost of sharing their thoughts.

Leaders want to shape things; they want to have influence. And they want to use their influence for the good of the organization, out of their love for the organization. The people on your lead team or board are no different. But you can’t just expect them to weigh in when they want to. You can’t put it all on them to speak up when they want to share their perspective.

There are (at least) three reasons why leaders on your team mute their voice:

First, leaders don’t want to be relationship drainers. They don’t want to make “withdrawals” from the relationship every time they come to you with something. They are on your team because they enjoy leading with you. The relationship is important to them. So to minimize the toll on the relationship, they’ll offer minimal feedback, usually early on, and then after a short time, they’ll stop.

Secondly, leaders don’t want to be a burden or to add extra weight to your role. They know what it’s like to lead, and they don’t want to be “that guy” or “that girl”, the one who slows you down. At their core, they want you to succeed; and they want you to feel their support. But if they share feedback or even criticism they worry about the way it may affect you.

Finally, leaders don’t want to jeopardize their future. They don’t want the reputation of being the “wet blanket” or the “squeaky wheel”.  They want to be seen as someone who’s “all in”, someone who can be counted on and trusted with more. They don’t want to be pushed out because they’re perceived as being the contrarian.

Putting the ball in your team/board member’s court by expecting them to come to you with ideas or observations or perspectives every time requires them to count the cost of giving feedback.

Even when the cost is low, the perception that sharing their thoughts will chip away at the goodwill of relationship, the peace of the leader, and their own future as a team member will effectively mute their voice over time.

But there is a solution: Create a clear and consistent opportunity for feedback. Early in my ministry life, I had a leader who used to ask me regularly, “Am I doing anything that is frustrating you?” At first I was taken aback by the question. I had never had a leader ask me that. Now I try to regularly ask the people I’m leading if there’s anything I’m doing that’s confusing or frustrating to them.

When you build in a clear and consistent mechanism for feedback, you lower the cost of offering feedback. You make it easy to preserve the relationship; you minimize the toll on you since you are practically seeking their perspective— and not being blindsided by it; and you do more than protect their future— you actually get to leverage the gifts of the leaders on your team because they can share what they see and hear and think.

Creating a regular check-in on the calendar lowers the cost of feedback.

Most managers have “one-on-ones”. But most of the time, those are project related— they’re a progress report with a long list of questions or updates about how things are going. Sometimes they include a personal check-in. These meetings can be leveraged for feedback. Build in space for questions like:

• “What are you noticing that you think I should know about?”

• “Is there anything about our current direction or vision that you don’t understand?”

• “What am I doing that is confusing or frustrating to you?”

• “What might be a blindspot for me in the way I’m leading right now?”

• “What would you like senior leadership/the rest of our team to know about your area of the organization?” (This works for middle managers too.)

Your lead team or board doesn’t always want to have to initiate offering feedback. You might be making it easy for the to approach you. You might even say, “My door is always open” or “You know where to find me”. But if you don’t have a built-in time, space, and mechanism (like the questions above) to hear from them, you’re most likely not getting the full benefit of their perspective and wisdom.

Making a feedback forum that is clear, simple, easy, and frequent will yield the best input from your team of leaders.