Question: How should a leader get feedback on how she is doing as a leader?

Answer: Legitimate Leadership believes that if one truly wants to know how a leader is doing, the best judges are the very people who depend on that person for leadership. We incorporate this principle into our approach to transforming leaders by conducting Leadership Surveys for each participant. These surveys diagnose how the leader is perceived to be aligned to the four key criteria of giving Care, providing Means, cultivating Ability, and holding people Accountable.

The process is of course anonymous. It provides leaders with immensely useful feedback – and gives them clarity and focus on where their development opportunities lie.

When discussing this feedback with leaders on our programmes, one of the questions I often ask is how often they themselves ask their people directly for feedback on how they are doing. The response is generally not about how often it happens, but more about whether it happens at all.

It always strikes me as such a missed opportunity for leaders to build trust with their people. I insist that they start doing it, and doing it regularly.

Why? The crux of the Legitimate Leadership framework is whether direct reports perceive their manager to be genuinely concerned about their wellbeing. It is my view that there are few things that demonstrate this more practically on a day-to-day basis than a leader being genuinely interested in the impact that her words and deeds have on her people.

When I first suggest to leaders that they start doing this, the number one concern is that the leader will not get the truth. That the answer will be that “everything is fine”. There is therefore no point in asking unless one uses an anonymous process.

My thought in response to this concern, is that the quality of the feedback you actually get is less important than the unconditional act of asking for it in the first place.  I will not soon forget one leader who said that it took her nine months of patiently asking for feedback until she finally started to get the truth.