Next Level Blog

Feedback – Why You Need It and What to Do with It

One of the things that I’ve come to count on over the past couple of years is that my blogging friend, Dan McCarthy of the Great Leadership blog will write consistently grounded and practical posts on how to be a better leader. His latest post, 10 Ways to Get the Most from a 360 Degree Leadership Assessment,  is the most recent example of the contributions he consistently makes. If you care about leadership, you need to subscribe to his blog.

As an executive coach, I read through a few hundred 360 degree assessments a year in my company’s Next Level Leadership™ group coaching program. From that experience and the experience of being the subject of six or seven 360’s in the 15 years that I was a manager and executive myself, I know that Dan’s advice is spot on. I also know from talking with my clients and HR professionals that have been around the block a few times that it’s often the case that not much happens when someone gets a 360. From the standpoint of your leadership development and your credibility in the organization, you’re almost better off to not get any feedback at all if you’re not going to communicate and act on what you learned from the feedback. It can be hard to admit to your colleagues that you’re not perfect, but guess what, they already know you’re not perfect. All of us have something we can improve on. By asking for feedback, telling people what you learn and then visibly acting on it, you get better and your organization gets better.

 So, with that in mind, I want to pick up on three particular points that Dan made and add a little bit of my own coaching perspective and advice to the mix:

Leadership Questions Raised by the 2009 Elections

The morning after election day 2009 was probably not a particularly fun one in the White House. As noted in a first rate summary by John F. Harris and Jonathan Martin in Politico, the outcomes of the Virginia and New Jersey gubernatorial races and even the New York City’s mayor race didn’t really go the President’s way. As an historical analysis by Ruth Marcus in the Washington Post points out, it’s important to not over interpret the results,  but one thing about the 2009 election results does seem clear. Voters who identify themselves as independents are looking for  leaders who seem to address the issues that are most important to them. 

As an example, since I live in Virginia, I had a pretty direct line of sight into the governor’s race here.  The winner, Bob McDonnell, ran a very effective straight down the middle campaign centered on jobs, transportation, taxes and government spending. His opponent, Creigh Deeds, seemed to never get any traction on explaining exactly what his priorities would be if he was governor. (See Dan Balz's post election analysis in the Washington Post for more on this.)

In connecting the dots on the different races, I find myself looking for some common denominator lessons we can learn about effective leadership communications.  After all, that’s what a campaign is ultimately about.  In reviewing this week’s results, I’ve come up with four questions that I think leaders need to address either implicitly or explicitly if they hope to win over their followers. These strike me as important questions for any leader – not just political candidates – to address when they’re attempting to mobilize people in a challenging situation. Here are the questions:

Leadership Takeaways from Harvard’s Drew Gilpin Faust

In its almost always interesting series, Sunday’s New York Times ran a Corner Office interview with the president of Harvard, Drew Gilpin Faust. I’ve often thought that because of the range of different stakeholder groups involved that running an academic institution is one of the toughest leadership jobs there is. It was interesting to read what Faust had to say about what she’s learned about leading in this type of environment. Most of the points she made apply to leaders in all arenas  whether it’s academia, the private sector or government.

Here are some of the takeaways (in bold face quotes) I had from the Faust interview along with some of my thoughts about how they apply to the world beyond the Charles River.

Redskins Leadership Lessons Redux – The Video

Regular readers may recall that I ran a post last week on the leadership lessons that can be learned from not doing what Redskins’ owner Dan Snyder is doing with his organization. In the category of “doesn’t happen every day,” I got a call from a producer at DC’s Fox TV affiliate to ask if I’d do an interview on what I was hearing from fans about the situation. Fox 5 ran the piece on a few of their broadcasts following the Redskins’ Monday night loss to the Eagles this week. Roll the tape:

The original post cited nine things that Snyder and his EVP of football operations Vinny Cerrato are doing that leaders shouldn’t do.  When I went to the Fox studio to do the interview, the producer told me that when she mentioned to her colleagues that I’d come up with a list of nine things, the universal response was, “Only nine?”

It turns out that they were right. There are more than nine. Two new ones that emerged this week are treating your customers like criminals (as reported by the Washington Post’s Dan Steinberg on how Redskins security ripped up the sign of a fan who was trying to send a message of love to her husband in Afghanistan) and playing the blame game in public (see this article on Redskins EVP Vinny Cerrato arguing that he gave Coach Jim Zorn a playoff caliber team).

I will make a promise that I’m not going to turn this into a Sports blog. I’m done (for now anyway) with what we can learn from the Redskins. Thought you might be interested in the rest of the story (so far). 

Learning from the Navy’s Commitment to Leadership Development

The next time you’re feeling challenged about how to reach a goal, think of the sailors from the USS Carl Vinson. As reported in the Washington Post,  30 sailors from the Vinson set a goal to make last Sunday's Marine Corps Marathon their first 26.2 mile race.  More and more people are running marathons these days, but not very many have their training space limited to the confines of a Nimitz class aircraft carrier. The sailors from the Vinson were inspired by the example set by their former commanding officer, Walter Carter, a recently promoted rear admiral who shared his enthusiasm for running with his crew.  Carter has left the Vinson for his next assignment but came back to DC to run the race with his men. Through his own commitment to fitness and his and camaraderie with his team, Rear Admiral Carter is the embodiment of what a positive leadership footprint looks like.

I’m honored to report that I got a first hand account of how the race turned out for the sailors from the Carl Vinson when I was one of the opening speakers last Sunday for the Navy’s annual Flag Officer and Executive Training Symposium at a federal training center in the suburbs of DC.  (This is a week long annual event for the newly promoted admirals and their civilian colleagues in the federal Senior Executive Service. )

The speaker that followed me on Sunday was the head of the Navy’s Fitness program. She was there to brief the participants and their spouses on the range of support available to help these leaders stay fit in their very demanding roles. As she wrapped up her remarks, she read from the Post story and asked if Rear Admiral Carter was in the room. He was indeed and reported that all 30 of his sailors had successfully completed the race and that he had finished it in 3 hours and 36 minutes himself.  Bear in mind that this briefing came about six hours following the marathon.  Let it be noted that the admiral did not have the bearing or tone of someone who had just run 26.2 miles in under four hours.  He pretty much looked fresh as a daisy!

There were a number of  things I took away from the Sunday session that I think are worth offering as food for thought for leaders. Let me share three of them here.