Hindsight is 2020: Learning to Lead Through a Year of Uncertainty

It’s that time of the year when many leaders reflect on past performance with the hope of improving.  

For most, 2020 was a banner year in which to judge competency of a specific skill, your leadership agility. Remember the lofty annual goals that seemed so certain in January and then so completely overcome by the pandemic in March?  How well did you adapt through that rapidly changing situation? Were you able to continue leading, even when you yourself were so uncertain about how to proceed?  Did you provide the clarity of purpose and sense of safety that your people needed to keep going? In so many areas, leading in 2020 required a level of maturity that many of us had never need develop before.

When we’re trying to learn a new skill, nothing is more valuable than knowledgeable feedback. You have your own answers to how you showed up in 2020, but do you really know how others saw you?  More than likely, you’ll not learn these answers from annual performance assessments.  Even if you take it upon yourself to directly ask others for feedback, you’ll probably not get a straight answer.

The problem is that candid feedback it notoriously difficult to both give and receive. The truth can be uncomfortable and polite cliches too easy. There’s a plethora of well documented physiological reasons for this. Authority bias, for example, unknowingly contaminates feedback from those who see you as having authority over them. Also, just by asking for feedback, you might trigger a threat condition that will cause providers to either water-down or overly-inflate what they share with you.

Like most difficult things, we get better results with intentionally preparation over haphazard attempts. What would you need to do to create an environment where you can receive honest feedback in the future? Here are some proactive steps you can take now to lay the groundwork for future learning:

  • Identify a diverse pool of feedback providers from all levels and parts of your organization or customer base. You’ll learn as much from your critics as from your supporters.

  • Invest in the personal connections that build trust so people will feel psychologically safe enough to give you honest feedback.

  • Speak to providers personally about your need and desire to improve and the value you’d attribute to their feedback.

  • Clearly ask if they would be willing to support you in this and sincerely thank them if they say yes.

  • Explain the process by which their feedback would be collected and used in the future. (e.g. in-person or anonymous survey)

  • Give permission to be critical as you want the tough, constructive feedback on where you need to improve.

Finally, don’t hesitate to think bigger than just yourself.  Instead of leadership development being a solo activity, could your leadership team work openly, together on improving how they lead through uncertainty? One of my client is doing just this. Starting next week, their entire executive C-suite is investing in developing their Leadership Agility together. Each executive has participated in Leadership Agility training and will perform a Leadership Agility 360 reviews to learn how they can use those skills to improve. By intentionally focusing on developing their leadership capabilities through education, soliciting feedback, and working together to act on what they learn, they are well on their way being a more agile organization in 2021.

I’m a certified Leadership Agility educator and Leadership Agility 360 coach that helps leaders and teams work in ways that amplify each other’s skills to solver complex problems in uncertain and rapidly change environments.

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