I had a boss back in the day when I was a brand-new Program Director who gave me zero feedback. I would ask and he would say, “if you did something wrong, I’d tell you”. I am not sure now after so many years if I appreciated that. When we’re younger and cockier, we may think, wow, look at me. When in reality we should be mortified that as a green manager, you actually don’t have that needed support.
I think constructive feedback is paramount to continually be a top performer. I’m not talking about sales. I’m talking about providing the best material or content you can and being open to constructive feedback. Notice, I’m not saying constructive criticism. How can you do even better, if you don’t have anybody coaching you?
Some folks excel and need no pushing, but that’s not to say I was excelling back then, because, like I said, I was brand-spankin’new. I really needed someone to be my anchor. (I’ve also been bullied before, so there’s gotta be a happy medium.)
Here are two examples:
I had one person working for me who almost never answered an email from me. If I potentially had a new job/client for them, they were all over it, but when it came to feedback, questions, or even feeding them material to use, it was zip, nada, nothing. It became untenable to the point where I really wanted to let them go, but the client liked them. As soon as the client said they were unhappy, I didn’t jump, I said I wanted to let them go and then the client jumped and said “yes I agree”. And now they’re over-the-moon about their new anchor! Smart move all-around.
The other example is someone I hired at the same time, who immediately owns mistakes, apologizes profusely and tells me, they usually do better. This is the kind of person I lean into because they are so much easier to work with. There’s no chasing, instead it’s like “here I am, mold me”. A client complained they didn’t get their content from this person, and they emailed repeatedly about how they would improve the situation and how they felt mortified it even happened. To me, these two scenarios are night and day. Give me the mistakes made, apologetic soul anytime and I’ll show you a happy manager. 👩🏼💼
