Feedback on Coaching Is Essential for Leaders, but What If It’s Hard to Hear?

Leaders know that developing a feedback-rich environment can help the organization and individuals grow, adapt, and succeed in a dynamic, ever-changing workplace. Empowering employees to share insights, raise concerns, and offer new ideas leads to better decision-making and innovation.

They know the best leaders are always evolving, and you need feedback on your coaching to evolve.

Giving and Taking Feedback as a Leader

Balancing what’s going well and celebrating wins along with acknowledging what could be even better if… ensures that feedback feels constructive and encouraging, not just critical and acknowledges that there is room to improve.

As a leader, giving feedback to guide and support our teams to help them improve can feel like a natural part of the role, but receiving feedback—especially when it’s critical or not what you want to hear—can be a challenge.

It means opening a second line of communication with your team and being vulnerable. It also means creating a new source of insight and inspiration to grow. Feedback is a powerful tool for us to see how we are doing and provides a mirror for self-reflection.

Coaching without Feedback

When leaders rely solely on their own insights or assumptions without inviting input from employees, they risk missing key signals about what’s working and what isn’t. This lack of feedback can result in a disconnect between the leader’s intentions and the team’s actual needs or experiences.

Over time, coaching without feedback can hinder progress, reinforce ineffective behaviours, and limit innovation. Feedback provides fresh perspectives and honest reflections and fosters personal growth and organizational improvement.

Embracing a Feedback Culture

Embracing feedback, even when hard to hear, is essential for personal growth and creating a healthy work culture. It demonstrates humility and commitment to growth and fosters an environment where trust and open communication thrive.

No matter how hard, embracing feedback is crucial to your development as a leader and the overall success of your team. It helps you to see things from different perspectives, reveals your blind spots, helping you to make better decisions, creating space for innovative solutions and think you may not have previously considered.

How Do You Receive Feedback Well?

Feedback isn’t about being perfect; it’s about making progress. When you are willing to accept that you don’t have all the answers, you create space for learning and evolving into a more effective and adaptable leader.

So, how do leaders become skilled at accepting feedback, even when it’s tough?

Next time you receive feedback, try these 5 steps:

1. Pause and Reflect: Your first instinct might be to get defensive. Instead, take a moment to pause and reflect. Breathe deeply and remind yourself that feedback is a tool for growth. Try to respond from a place of curiosity.

2. Ask for Clarification: If the feedback is vague or emotionally charged, seek clarification. Ask specific questions to understand the root cause of the concern and how you can improve.

3. Separate Emotion from Action: Taking negative feedback personally is easy. However, it’s crucial to separate your emotional response from the feedback. Focus on the specific actions or decisions being critiqued, not on yourself as a person.

4. Thank the Person for Their Honesty: Acknowledge the effort it takes for someone to give constructive feedback, especially if it’s critical. Showing appreciation opens the door for more feedback in the future and sets a tone of openness. As a leader, it role models the importance of being open to feedback for your teams, helping them to be more receptive to receiving feedback themselves.

5. Commit to Action: The real value of feedback lies in how you act on it. Commit to making the necessary changes, and communicate your plans with your team. Follow-through is essential to show that you value others’ input.

Strong Leaders Accept Feedback

Accepting feedback, especially when it’s tough to hear, is a mark of a strong leader. It demonstrates your commitment to growth and sets a powerful example for your team.

By fostering an open, feedback-friendly culture, you pave the way for innovation, trust, and continuous improvement within your organization. Embrace feedback not as a critique of your leadership but as a valuable tool for becoming the best leader you can be!

If building this critical leadership skill is important to your company and you would like more information, please get in touch at info@lighthouse9.ca or visit our website to learn more about our customized leadership development training that can set you and your organization up for success.

Gemma Norman

Gemma Norman is a partner at Lighthouse NINE in Toronto who heads the firm’s Organizational Design practice and co-leads the area of Change Management. She also collaborates closely with colleagues in Leadership Development.Removing barriers that limit success. This overriding purpose animates Gemma’s work as an organizational effectiveness consultant in sectors including Government, Telco, IT, Financial Services, Utilities, Manufacturing, Retail, and Engineering Services. During her career, Gemma has worked with organizations such as British Gas, CLYDEUNION, Fujitsu, IBM, Sobeys and Virgin.Gemma empowers clients to enhance organizational efficiency and make real change happen: from bridging departmental silos, to creating new post-merger leadership structures, to re-engineering HR processes that put the right people with the right skillsets in the right jobs. Gemma is a skilled facilitator and trainer, adept at leading teams through change to achieve substantial breakthroughs in performance. Her talent is working hands-on with team members as they master new skills, gain new insights and explore fresh ways of relating that become part of the group’s DNA.At Lighthouse NINE, Gemma’s clients benefit from an incredible breadth of consultant knowledge, great humor and a warm demeanor. Every Lighthouse NINE partner is a subject matter expert, committed to pooling their ideas, insights and talents with their colleagues in order to create the solution that best fits the unique needs of each client.

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