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Top tips for delivering upward feedback

Giving your boss feedback, commonly called upward feedback, can be a tricky process to master. However, if offered correctly and thoughtfully, your insight can not only help your boss, but also improve your working relationship. Here are some tips to consider.

The relationship comes first. The ability to give and receive upward feedback is dependent on the relationship and level of trust between you and your boss. Before giving feedback, you need to gauge whether your boss will be open to what you have to say. If you know that your boss is unreceptive to feedback, is likely to react negatively, or if you have a rocky relationship, it’s better not to say anything. However, if your boss is open-minded and you have a good relationship, you owe them the straight talk. As with any feedback, your intentions must be good and your desire to help your boss is paramount.

Ask first. If you’re unsure if your boss is open to candid feedback, ask them. Feedback can result in learning, and everyone should be open to learning, no matter his or her position. Hopefully your boss will say yes, and that will make giving the feedback a little easier. If you get the feeling your manager isn’t wild about receiving upward feedback, look for anonymous ways to share your thoughts, such as a 360-feedback process.

Make your feedback timely. Ideally, you want to give feedback as soon as you can and in an appropriate setting after something has happened. After that, details can get fuzzy. If you can’t get together to talk soon after the situation, write down what happened - in detail - so that when you are able to meet, you can quickly recall events accurately.

Be specific. For feedback to be effective and have an impact, make sure it’s specific. For example, “When you brief me on a project, it would be more helpful to give me the goals and desired outcomes instead of a list of tasks you want me to complete. I can figure those things out on my own,” is better than saying, “I don’t like how you give project briefs.” The second isn’t actionable and doesn’t give your manager insight on how to change or improve.

Choose your delivery method carefully. Although email or instant messenger is tempting, it’s best to talk face to face when giving feedback. It might be awkward and more difficult than just typing up your suggestions and hitting send, but having a real conversation will ensure the message you want to deliver is the one received. Body language often says more than spoken words; if you go into the meeting with a smile and relaxed manner, you can start things off with the right tone. And if you see your manager getting tense, you can adjust your tone and clarify your words so that the conversation stays meaningful. 

When your boss bites back. No matter how thoughtfully you’ve prepared and delivered your feedback, your boss may get upset or be defensive about the feedback you’ve given. If you were asked for the feedback, you should hold your ground and explain that you were doing what was asked of you. Sometimes reframing the feedback can help. Often feedback is more easily received if you frame it in terms of what your boss cares about. 

When in doubt, hold your tongue. If you’re not sure if your boss wants to hear feedback or if the subject of the feedback is a sensitive one, it’s almost always better to not speak up. There is no reason to risk your working relationship or your job, unless you feel your boss’s behaviour is putting the organisation or your unit in jeopardy. Instead, look for opportunities to give anonymous feedback, such as a 360-degree feedback process.

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The benefits of a creative workplace

It’s no secret that organisational leaders in the 21st century need to cope with and respond to increasingly complex organisational issues.

Sometimes, these issues and problems can be solved by applying a standard formula or set of actions: rigorously analysing the circumstances and drivers, applying logic to determine a course of action or following what’s been done before. Other times, particularly when the issue is something the organisation hasn’t faced before, genuine innovation is needed to solve problems and satisfy stakeholders.

In most organisational settings, leaders are expected to be able to think creatively and come up with innovative solutions to work-based problems. And they often do. But fostering and harnessing the creative abilities of a whole team is likely to produce an even richer selection of creative ideas and solutions to work tasks and problems. This is because diverse group members collectively possess knowledge and a variety of perspectives not found in just one person.

Specific benefits of creativity in the workplace include:

  • Better teamwork and team bonding;
  • Increased workplace engagement and interaction;
  • Improved ability to attract and retain quality employees;
  • Increased staff morale, fun and happiness; and
  • Increased workplace problem solving and productivity.

But in busy workplaces where time is limited, how can a leader establish a climate conducive to creative thinking and problem solving?  

For more than two decades, Teresa Amabile (1998) and her associates investigated the link between the work environment and creativity. She identified six leadership and management practices that foster creativity in the workplace. These findings are consistent with the observations of many other researchers and creativity consultants. The six practices are:  

Intellectual challenge

Match people with the right problem-solving experiences, that is, experiences that challenge or stretch them intellectually. This enhances creativity because it supports expertise and intrinsic motivation. But, the amount of stretch is critical; too little challenge leads to boredom, but too much challenge leads to feelings of being overwhelmed.

Freedom to choose method

Employees tend to be the most creative when they are granted the freedom to choose which method is best for attaining a particular work goal. In other words, leaders and managers can set the goals, but it should be up to the team members to decide how to achieve them. Stable goals are also important because it is difficult to work creatively towards a moving target.

Supplying the right resources

Time and money are important resources for enhancing creativity. Deciding how much time and money to give to a team or project is a tough judgement call that can either support or stifle creativity. Under some circumstances, setting a time deadline will trigger creative thinking because it represents a favourable challenge. False deadlines or impossibly tight ones can create distrust and burnout. To be creative, groups also need to be adequately funded. But it should be noted that creative activities can be achieved at little to no cost with very few supplies, depending on the activities chosen (see below for some ideas).

Effective design of work groups

Work groups are the most likely to be creative when they are mutually supportive, and when they have a diversity of backgrounds and perspectives. Cross-fertilisation occurs and the various points of view often combine to achieve creative solutions to problems. Homogenous teams might argue less but they are often less creative. Getting the mix of team members ‘right’ does require experience and intuition on the leader’s part.

Supervisory encouragement

The most influential step a leader can take to bring about creative problem solving is to develop a ‘safe’ atmosphere that encourages people to think freely.

This includes making it okay for people to challenge assumptions and disagree with the leader.  If people don’t feel safe, they will only parrot their leader’s ideas.

Praising creative work is important because, for most people to sustain their passion, they must feel that their work matters to the organisation. Whenever possible, a leader should notice and publicly affirm creative thinking.  Creative ideas should also be evaluated quickly rather than put through a painfully slow review process.

Organisational support

The entire organisation as well as the immediate leader or manager should support creative effort if creativity is to be enhanced on a large scale. Organisational leaders should encourage information sharing and collaboration, which lead to the development of expertise needed for creativity and to more opportunities for intrinsic motivation. Executives who combat excessive politics can help creative people focus on work instead of fighting political battles. In a highly political environment, an employee would be hesitant to suggest a creative idea that was a political blunder.

Adapted from Dubrin, Dalgleish and Miller (2011)

Other tips and actions to foster creative thinking at the individual level and organisation-wide:

  • Encourage a mindset of continuous learning.  If you aren’t constantly refilling the creative pool, it will eventually run dry. Encourage staff to seek new information, new knowledge and new ways to do things, constantly. Support team members to attend conferences or other learning and development events.  Model habits of curiosity, observation, listening, reading and recording in the workplace.
  • Seek multiple options. Don’t be satisfied with one solution. Once the team has a good idea, encourage them to look for another, and then another. Give yourself and the team the opportunity to choose the best from several options.
  • Suspend judgment. To encourage new ideas, don’t evaluate them too  early. Relax your guard and let the ideas flow.
  • Lunchtime brainstorms. Encourage weekly, fortnightly or monthly lunchtime meetings of a small group of staff to engage in creative thinking and share ideas for how those ideas could be applied to the organisation.
  • Engage fresh eyes. Provide opportunities for employees who do not normally interact with one another to meet. Invite people from other departments or areas to your brainstorming sessions, and ask them how they would solve your problems.
  • Take breaks. The human brain uses more energy than any other part of the body and so needs constant replenishment. Rest is one of the key components to increasing personal energy, productivity and creative thinking. Many people do not take advantage of their breaks (lunch or other) during the day and, as such, are not giving their mind a true break from the stresses of the day. Encourage staff to use break time to walk around the building, sit outside or chat to colleagues about non-work related topics.
  • Get the culture right. Research suggests that the most effective group environment for creativity is one in which there is fun, humour, spontaneity, and playfulness. However, creating such a climate in a workplace setting isn’t easy. But, leaders can support this by fostering a permissive atmosphere in which individuality and humour are acceptable and mutual respect, trust, and commitment are the norm.

Some final words on workplace creativity

The general consensus in the research is that the more one engages in creative thinking, the better one becomes at it. Ideas produce even more ideas. But inspiration is only a small part of creative thinking. Commitment and application are also essential ingredients.

Once you and your team know the idea you want to work on, be prepared to work at it, and to work at it some more, to fine-tune it.

In addition, to be worthwhile and effective, a creative idea must also be appropriate, useful and actionable. It must somehow influence or improve the way things get done in the organisation. 

And finally, as Harvard Business School Professor, Teresa Amabile, notes: “The final stage of getting creativity to work is deciding how to put an idea into practice.” 

Ultimately, you can come up with a brilliant creative idea, but if you haven't thought about how to implement it, it will die without seeing the light of day.

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What makes a successful leader?

Even the most cursory review of leadership theory and research over the past century is likely to make your head spin. On one hand, some managers probably think that the myriad of approaches to effective leadership means theory has failed to answer the million-dollar question “what makes a great leader?” After all, how is a practicing manager expected to make sense of all these theories?

One the other hand, other managers have embraced what is most useful to them from the theory, even though it might not be definitive, and achieved extraordinary results. In short, leadership theories have a lot to offer aspiring and existing leaders. Let’s take a closer look.

Traits and leadership

Supporters of trait theory, which emerged in the early 20th century, claim leaders are different to non-leaders, because they possess certain innate character traits.

Kirkpatrick and Locke (1996) identify six traits which make leaders differ from non-leaders, including:

  • Drive;
  • The desire to achieve;
  • Honesty/integrity;
  • Self-confidence;
  • Cognitivemability; and
  • Knowledge of the business.

Other, less important traits include charisma, creativity/originality and flexibility.

Similarly, Dubrin, Dalgleish and Miller (2006) draw together the vast collection of traits associated with this theory into two distinct categories:  general personality traits and task-related personality traits.  General personality traits contribute to success in a work and personal context and include:

  • Self-confidence;
  • Trustworthiness;
  • Extroversion;
  • Assertiveness;
  • Emotional stability;
  • Enthusiasm;
  • Sense of humour
  • Warmth; and
  • A high tolerance for frustration.

Task-related personality traits are associated with task accomplishment and include:

  • Courage;
  • Locus of control;
  • Passion;
  • Emotional intelligence;
  • Flexibility; and
  • Adaptability.

A significant body of evidence exists to show that traits do matter. For example, studies by Kirkpatrick and Locke (1991) and Goleman (1998) show leaders are different from non-leaders and traits do have a consistent impact on leader effectiveness.

Still, many authors have criticised the trait approach to leadership for being too simplistic. It does not tell us which traits are the most important in which situations, or the amount of the trait required. Nor is there universal agreement amongst trait theorists as to which traits contribute to effective leadership.

At this point, the behavioural and contingency theories of leadership come in to play.

Behavioural and Contingency theories of leadership

The behavioural school of thought endorses the idea that successful organisational leaders routinely exhibit certain behaviours.  This main impact of this theory, when it emerged in the 1950s, was the notion that leadership was not necessarily an inborn trait but a methodology that could be taught to employees. What a great relief this was for the many aspiring leaders out there concerned they lacked the right character traits to be successful!

Following a 25-year longitudinal study at Harvard University, Kouzes and Posner found that exemplary leaders demonstrate five (5) core practices:

Model the Way

Actions speak louder than words: ''Leaders' deeds are far more important than their words...Exemplary leaders go first. They go first by setting the example through daily actions that demonstrate they are deeply committed to their beliefs.'' Exemplary leaders have a philosophy about their organisation, leadership and teamwork. They know what their own values are, particularly around how people are treated.

Inspire a shared vision

If you view leading as a journey, vision is simply the destination you want others to join you in pursuing. Leaders cannot expect to be followed if they have no idea where they want to go. Exemplary leaders envision the future, dreaming how they would like it to be. When that vision is clear to them, they can communicate it enthusiastically to those whose buy-in they need.

Challenge the process

Being a leader entails initiating ''a change from the status quo”. Effective leaders are always experimenting with new ways of doing things, searching for “opportunities to innovate, grow, and improve”. According to Kouzes and Posner, ''the leader's primary contribution is in the recognition of good ideas, the support of those ideas, and the willingness to challenge the system to get new products...adopted''.

Enable others to act

This practice acknowledges that successful leadership and accomplishments are not the result of a single person. Effective leaders listen to ideas, treat people with respect, foster teamwork and collaboration, and encourage others to exceed their own expectations. A high level of trust exists and people have the freedom to make mistakes, rectify these and drive success.

Encourage and recognise

Successful leaders know that colleagues require and deserve recognition and celebration. Effective leaders find innovative ways to celebrate goals that are reached, and encourage and motivate teams and individuals. This practice fosters a strong sense of community.

 

The contingency (or situational) theory of leadership acknowledges the interaction between a leader’s traits, a leader’s behaviours and the situation in which the leader is leading.

History shows us that leaders can lose power and influence as the situation changes, for example, Winston Churchill in a victorious Britain immediately after World War II. The same applies to leaders in organisations.  Applying a certain set of traits and behaviours in one organisational context might lead to great success. Try the same approach in a different organisational setting or situation, where employees have different needs or environmental factors have shifted, and the same leader might fail miserably.

So, what does this all mean in terms of effective leadership? And are we any further along the path to understanding what makes a successful leader?

I think so. What the broad and varied body of theory and research on leadership tells us is that there are many appropriate ways to lead or styles of leadership. Traits are important. But traits alone are not sufficient for successful organisational leadership. Leaders who possess the requisite traits must behave in a certain way and take certain actions to be successful. And there’s one more important point.

What makes a good leader truly outstanding is a deep understanding of their traits and behavioural preferences and the ability to adapt their leadership approach to suit the specific organisational context and circumstances they find themselves in at any given time. Put simply, great leaders understand that “one size doesn’t fit all”. They think about the culture of their organisation, the characteristics of their followers (or team) and the external environment, and shape their style and behaviour accordingly.

If you are looking for ways to improve your personal and professional effectiveness or take your leadership performance to the next level, Best Practice Consulting can help you. Contact us today at http://www.bestpracticeconsulting.com.au/contact-us

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