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Want a Successful Career? Dig In, But Give it Time to Develop

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A career, by definition, is something that develops over an extended period of time. In other words, a successful career is not born — it is made. Whatever you hope your career will become doesn’t just spring into existence on day one of your first job. Nor will it be baked by the time you reach midlife. A career is an ongoing process.

The reality: If you’re at the start of your career (or even if you’re somewhere in the middle), many things need to play out between “the now” and “the not-yet” (whatever you want to accomplish). With this in mind, how can you define a professional path you’ll eventually be proud to look back upon?

Dream Big, But…

I’d like to offer 5 strategies for managing your professional progress. But first, allow me to suggest an overarching mindset worth embracing from the outset:

Dream big, but plan for measured growth.

The best time to think expansively about your vision of a successful career is at the start. Go ahead. Embrace awe-inspiring ambitions, ginormous goals, outsized objectives, and infinite intentions. The career image you put in your mind can become a reality — if you truly want it to be and you work your butt off to get there.

But don’t expect it to happen overnight. Instead, take the advice offered by tech entrepreneurs, Jason Fried and David Heinemeier, in their book Rework. They say, “Trade the dream of overnight success for slow, measured growth.” Those who do so make their way over time through the twisting, winding road that takes them from the now to the not-yet.

5 Keys for Building a Successful Career

To help you move through the various stages of professional growth and achievement, consider the following five suggestions.

1. Map Out Your Area of Exploration

It’s never too soon to think carefully about your interests, desires, dreams, hobbies, talents, education, and experiences. Use them to outline a map that sets a general direction toward the “X-marks-the-spot” of your professional objectives.

Taking time to invest in this step is more than worth your effort, because it helps you define relevant territory. This sets the stage for you to focus where you’re most likely to unearth valuable career treasures throughout your journey.

2. Bring a Shovel

A unique, rewarding, and personal(ized) career awaits you. But finding it requires the willingness and ability to dig. This is why you’ll need a shovel.

The treasures of a dream job and a golden career are seldom found strewn about above ground, in plain sight. You won’t find them on a shelf like items at a grocery store. Instead, you’ll need to look below the surface for what you’re seeking.

So, how can you get below the surface? Don’t settle for a superficial approach to getting the career you really want. Dig deeper. Career archeologists — those who relish a rewarding professional path — often demonstrate their dedication in visible ways. You’ll find dirt under their fingernails, a sweaty brow, dusty boots, and other signs that tell you they aren’t afraid to plow through promising employment opportunities in their chosen field. They are committed to the task, and they stay with it until they find what they really want. It’s an example worth emulating.

3. Be Prepared to Modify Your Course

The initial sketch work for a career map seldom reflects the final results. But what’s true of all career mapmakers? They use as much of the pencil’s eraser as the lead itself. (Or even more!)

So take a tip from those who’ve gone before you. When mapping the professional territory you want to explore, resist the temptation to define its boundaries in permanent ink. Why? Because at some point, adjustments are likely to be necessary.

Some people think bolder lines make better, more accurate maps. But this kind of map-making confidence doesn’t allow for numerous twists, turns, and what-nots that can happen on any given day at work and in life.

What’s more, when you draw stark, vivid lines on paper and in your mind, they’re harder to erase. After 30 years of helping people develop their careers, I’ve learned that change always plays a role. So start by recognizing that change is part of the process, and as your career evolves, remain open to adjusting the map.

4. Expect Obstacles

Excavation work is not without challenges. Archeologists encounter geological difficulties, engineering issues, political red tape, structural problems, and more. All these issues make discoveries more difficult. The same is true with uncovering a successful career.

At each stage, you will face problems that threaten to prevent progress on your path of discovery. Instead of being distraught and distracted by these issues, consider them a confirmation that you are onto something worthwhile. You are heading in the right direction and getting closer to your discovery. If you embrace these challenges with enthusiasm, resourcefulness, and resilience, they are likely to teach you the most valuable lessons of your career.

5. Remember Time is on Your Side

One of life’s greatest blessings is time. Most of us assume we have more of it than we do, and many of us waste more of it than we should.

When it comes to your career, don’t waste time. On the other hand, don’t rush things, either. If you’re anything like me when I started my career, you’ll want to get where you think you are going as soon as possible. (Becoming an overnight success always sounds good.) But like most things that improve with time, successful careers typically develop less rapidly.

Whether you know it or not, time is on your side. There are countless examples that underscore this point. For instance, think about Walt Disney. It took decades of persistent effort for his dreams to become a reality. And J.K. Rowlings’ Harry Potter series was published years after the story idea first came to her while she was riding on a train.

It’s not uncommon for careers to feel delayed, slowed, or even asleep. But time, courage, and consistent effort can clear the rubble-strewn roads that lead to whatever accomplishments you want to achieve. Keep showing up.

Secret to a Successful Career: Slow and Steady

Do not confuse a slower pace with failure. It’s tempting to become impatient or discouraged. I haven’t met anyone who wouldn’t prefer a simple, speedy route to becoming an overnight success — especially compared with the lackluster look of a laborer, working their tail off to get where they want to be. But slower, more measured movements are not inactivity. Keep pushing forward and keep learning and adjusting as you go.

Right now, if you’re in the middle of the muddle of all this career development stuff, here’s my parting recommendation: Let time work its magic. Don’t assume the fast track is your best bet. Refuse to skip over incremental steps and hard work. And don’t dismiss the tedious tasks that will clear the way for you to find a successful career. I guarantee you’ll look back and appreciate the journey as much as the destination.

Leaders: Do You Connect Employees With Their Noble Purpose?

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TalentCulture Content Impact Award Winner - 2023When employees feel disconnected from their jobs — or their work doesn’t bring a sense of purpose to their lives — they’re more likely to quit. Unfortunately, this is happening all around lately. Troubling signs like productivity theater and resenteeism are flooding the work zone. Clearly, many employees are struggling to connect their organization’s purpose with their own.

According to McKinsey, 70% of employees find a sense of relevance through work. This doesn’t mean people expect their job to define them 100%. But when personal and business purposes align, everyone benefits. Workforce engagement and loyalty tend to improve significantly. As a result, employees become more willing to advocate for their employer and recommend prospective applicants.

Why should leaders care? Because when you create a culture of psychological safety and compassion, you empower people to be authentic at work. This, in turn, drives commitment, satisfaction, and team performance.

Keys to Connect With Employee Purpose

1. Start by Ensuring Psychological Safety

In a world overflowing with toxic workplaces, psychological safety is more important than ever. No one should have to fear humiliation or punishment when they share concerns, ideas, and mistakes. Everyone should feel free to speak up and support one another without rejection or embarrassment.

The definition of psychological safety isn’t everyone being nice to others all the time. Rather, it is a work environment where everyone is welcome to:

  • Share feedback
  • Challenge the status quo, and
  • Work together to resolve disagreements.

But these conditions don’t materialize out of thin air. They depend on supportive top-down leadership.

2. Facilitate Open Communication

Purpose-driven cultures thrive when leaders consistently encourage a free flow of communication. This is possible when everyone feels a shared sense of ownership and trust.

In practice, trust emerges when all team members are willing to offer peers a “soft landing.” In other words, when a teammate is in a vulnerable position, others recognize and respect their situation and honor their point of view.

When teams approach authenticity with grace, it sends a powerful message throughout the organization. But this won’t start until leaders establish ground rules and set a consistent example for others to emulate in day-to-day settings. As team members become more familiar and comfortable with others’ abilities, personalities, and perspectives, respectful collaboration can naturally take hold.

3. Measure What Matters

Finally, companies that recognize people as their most valuable asset apply appropriate metrics to measure engagement, growth, and satisfaction.

Quarterly pulse surveys can include some probing questions to assess employee sentiment about psychological safety and leadership communication. This provides meaningful data you can use to compare results against historical trends and statistical norms.

Benefits of Connecting Purpose and Work

Studies show that people who live their purpose at work are more productive than those who don’t or can’t. They’re also more resilient, healthier, and less likely to leave their company.

Most of us find this kind of culture appealing. In fact, more than 80% of employees want their employer to value them as humans — not just worker bees. Yet, only 45% actually believe they’re seen this way. This gap is important. It means too many of us feel like mere cogs in an endless wheel designed for others’ benefit.

So, where does the concept of engagement fit into this picture? Successful performance doesn’t happen by accident. It comes when organizations tap into employees’ passions and strengths. People who feel engaged, seen, and heard are more likely to contribute their full selves to work whenever they’re working.

Of course, in today’s “work from anywhere” world, leaders often find it difficult to understand what team members feel internally. This uncertainty can cause them to respond in unhelpful ways. No wonder remote and hybrid employees often find it harder to connect with their organization’s purpose!

The best solution is for leaders to reach out proactively to ensure that team members are finding meaningful value in their work. Building and maintaining those connections takes time, space, intention, and investment. But eventually, as you engage in conversations and build camaraderie unrelated to business tasks, trust will develop and the rest will follow.

Compensation and benefit packages matter to employees. But even the best salaries and perks can’t compare to a purpose-driven culture. People need regular reinforcement to confirm that they are contributing in ways that make a meaningful impact. This kind of human connection only comes when leaders take the time to develop genuine relationships with everyone on their team — and encourage others to do the same.

Building a Culture of Authenticity: One Idea That Works

Although connecting with each employee’s purpose may take time, it doesn’t need to be complicated. Start by committing to bring everyone together in person, even if only periodically or on an annual basis. People naturally want to form human connections with team members, and in-person meetings are the best way to promote that kind of relational energy.

At Authenticx, we’ve established a practice that helps. We invite each team member to choose one word as their own personal beacon for the year. The goal is for everyone to select a term that describes how they’re trying to grow as an individual.

Part of living that word comes from the act of sharing the word’s meaning with others and the journey each of us travels with that intention throughout the year. So we all know each other’s words. Each quarter, we schedule word-sharing sessions to discuss where we’re struggling, where we need to be accountable, and where we’re finding success.

Recently, one of our employees shared the word “engagement.” It’s a perfect word for capturing the need to tap into people’s passions and strengths to achieve business success. When people feel seen, heard, and engaged they’re likely to contribute more fully when they’re working.

We’ve found that this practice opens a window into each employee’s mindset and often offers a new insight into their work role and performance. By learning more about what matters to team members, we can spark more useful discussions. And we see this “single word” exercise as a starting point for these conversations.

A Final Note on Purpose at Work

When people feel empowered, respected, trusted, and valued, they’re more likely to challenge themselves, remain committed, and stay on board. These are worthwhile outcomes for any organization, no matter what the mission may be.

This is why purpose-focused leaders don’t hover, but they do pay close attention. They listen to employees’ needs, tap into their passions, and promote connections across teams. As a result, team members can develop a healthy emotional commitment to their work and resilience that keeps them moving forward — even during difficult times.

Rethinking The Manager’s Role: Here’s How to Get Better Results

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Sponsored by The Culture Platform

At some point in the last 20 years, companies started to believe employee engagement should define a manager’s role. And looking back, this conclusion made some sense. After all, managers are the organizational layer between leaders and people on teams. So why not embrace this as a framework for managerial effectiveness?

How The Engagement Expectation Began

The shift to engagement as the center of a manager’s role coincided with the arrival of tech-savvy millennials and the promise of HR software to power the so-called engagement revolution. It sounded good in theory. But it has largely been a failure.

Frankly, there is no evidence that investing in “managing” employee engagement actually works. Instead, research consistently points in the opposite direction. So let’s dig deeper for answers.

Throughout most of the industrial economy, managers weren’t very good at managing people. In fact, job turnover surveys typically found the #1 reason employees quit was “my manager.”

No wonder organizations decided to invest in technology to help. But what has that accomplished?

If you add up the revenue of engagement software and HR tech firms over the past 20 years, you’ll see customers spent perhaps $25 billion on these tools. Even so, the level of U.S. employee engagement remained mostly unchanged throughout this timeframe. It has consistently hovered around 32%, according to Gallup. Abysmal.

Why do we need to change what's wrong with a manager's role? 20-year U.S. employee engagement trends from Gallup

Rethinking the Manager’s Role

I believe this idea of managing engagement was flawed from the beginning. Flawed because managers actually manage people and their expectations about success. If every employee could perform at a top 10% level, get promoted, and work from home, engaging them in their work would be a breeze. But that’s not reality.

Today, when people leave a job, they usually don’t say their boss is the primary driver. Instead, they point to a desire for professional growth or career advancement. With this in mind, I would say managers have the most important role in any organization. So this is why I believe it’s time to rethink the manager’s role.

What if organizations actually embraced what employees want? And what if they empowered managers to help their people plan for professional growth and advancement?

Currently, most organizations don’t think this way. They culturally believe career planning is an individual employee’s responsibility.

I vehemently disagree with this conventional thinking. It’s really just an artifact from an era when employees could comfortably expect to spend their entire career at one or two companies.

For most managers, empowering employee career-building will require new attitudes and actions. Changing cultural norms and setting clear expectations isn’t an easy or intuitive process. This means managers will need a new framework or model for managing people that is different from today’s engagement-centric approach.

A New View of the Manager’s Role

I propose a new concept built for the modern manager-employee relationship. 

I call it goals with purpose.

Goals with purpose align an employee’s current job role with future career aspirations. This alignment is the key to creating an emotional connection between an individual and the work they’re performing as part of the team.

For managers, this is no doubt much more challenging than seeking engagement through a simple pulse survey or weekly poll. Those engagement tools are easy to use and they appeal to the mass market by design. However, they don’t address what matters most to employees.

The Power of Goals With Purpose

What does it mean to set goals with purpose? Through the research I’ve conducted at The Culture Platform and the listening I did at Cisco with hundreds of companies, I’ve processed this input and determined what constitutes a goal with purpose.

At its highest level, this kind of goal is the way an individual contributor on a team clearly sees how today’s job role aligns with future-minded growth opportunities.

Specifically, a goal with purpose has five attributes:

1. It is tangible
It aligns a job role in a measurable way with goals that matter to the organization’s success. An individual contributor should be able to “hold” this goal in their “hands.”

2. It shapes personal growth
It reflects the strengths of the person in that role. Experienced leaders know a job role should never play to someone’s weaknesses.

3. It demonstrates a pathway
It aligns a current role with a future role. The future role may even be outside the organization or team.

4. It helps people navigate the organization
It clarifies the position an individual plays on the team. This helps dispel politics and endless positioning.

5. It empowers a reputation
It enables people to communicate with facts about their accomplishments. Ideally, it provides a “signature” project to build an individual contributor’s credibility.

Managerial Success: A Call to Action for Leaders

A manager’s role has never been more important to organizational success. It has also never been harder to be a manager, given the pandemic, work-from-home disruption, the current era of business “efficiency,” and the unrelenting pace of change.

If managers have an organization’s most important job, leaders need to realize an employee’s emotional connection to the company is earned. They also need to recognize it is worth the effort.

Tapping into an individual’s intrinsic motivations is the key to inspiring discretionary effort — that magical relationship between an employee, their manager, and their company. It’s the sweet spot where going above-and-beyond is the way things work.

During Cisco’s heyday, we called these magical moments the “Cisco Save.” In other words, when we needed to accomplish something important, a group of people would step up and do whatever it took to get the job done.

As leaders and managers, we can make work more magical for our people. But engagement doesn’t make someone want to do “whatever it takes.” We finally know that now, after 20 years of trying. It’s time to try a better way. We need to make goals with purpose every manager’s priority and make career empowerment the new managerial normal.

What do goals with purpose mean to you? How could this approach help your organization move in the right direction? I look forward to seeing your comments and ideas.

Learning Culture: Ideas for Nurturing Growth in a Hybrid Work Environment

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TalentCulture Content Impact Award Winner - 2023
At what point in a career does learning stop? Hopefully, never! Most business and technical professionals realize that becoming proficient in a job and becoming more capable over time requires continuous learning. But this can be difficult for employers to support, particularly in a hybrid work environment. Here’s why…

The Business Challenge

According to research, 70% of employees feel inadequately trained for their current job. What’s more, 74% feel they could benefit from additional training. Yet, the U.S. economy loses an estimated $550 billion a year from workforce disengagement, due in part to a lack of learning opportunities.

Training is critical for employee retention. And retention is critical for organizational success, especially in difficult economic times when companies need to accomplish more with less. But in the wake of the pandemic, hybrid work is becoming more widespread, which further complicates employee development. It’s no longer enough to rely on classic learning strategies based on in-person classroom training, seminars, and conferences.

Although hybrid work creates new challenges for employee training, it also opens the door to fresh thinking. Effective training in a hybrid work environment requires an organization-wide learning culture that ensures equitable opportunities for in-person, remote, and hybrid workers, alike. That’s a tall order, but these ideas can help:

What is a Learning Culture?

“Learning culture” is a simple concept. It’s an understanding that professional growth and development are integral to daily work life and success. It’s also an active commitment to continuous improvement among individuals and teams within an organization.

A strong learning culture encourages and rewards people for developing and sharing knowledge and skills. That’s why employee training is often seen as a benefit, alongside retirement savings accounts, paid family leave, or medical and dental coverage. But a true learning culture isn’t just a perk. It’s a way of thinking and doing that enhances work experiences, while paving the way for future advancement.

This commitment is clearly good for employees — but it’s also good for business. In fact, statistics show that organizations with a strong learning culture enjoy 24% higher profit margins, on average. Also successful companies are nearly 5x more likely to have a healthy learning culture. So it’s worth the effort to improve the way your organization develops employee capabilities.

Despite the simplicity of this concept, a learning culture can be difficult to manage. In fact, ATD estimates that only 31% of organizations have a culture of learning. And now, as hybrid work environments take hold, fostering this kind of culture is becoming even tougher. Why?

The Social Learning Hurdle

Hybrid work complicates learning cultures because it introduces a different mode of remote engagement. This is a problem because many organizations still rely on more traditional methods of informal learning — what psychologist Albert Bandura called “social learning.” Specifically, he notes:

“Most human behavior is learned observationally through modeling. From observing others, one forms an idea of how new behaviors are performed. This coded information serves as a guide for action.”

In other words, we learn how to do our jobs largely by watching others perform similar tasks. As we watch, we pay attention to their expectations and responses, as well as the behaviors of others in our environment.

This is relatively easy to accomplish when people are located at the same place. But when work involves a mix of in-person, remote and hybrid experiences, social learning manifests itself in different ways. This can create problems — especially when our location is determined by factors like commute distance or personal preference, rather than our work role. Ultimately, these unpredictable work patterns can lead to social learning barriers and disconnects across an organization.

To attract and retain top talent, employers need to create a cohesive culture that overcomes these barriers by making continuous learning opportunities and reinforcement available wherever people are located.

Training Resources For Hybrid Work Settings

Bandura was clearly on to something with his social learning theory. Humans are social animals. We learn best from exposure to great teachers, whether they’re formal instructors, informal mentors, or peers. Keep this in mind when developing a training strategy for any hybrid environment. You don’t want to sacrifice the power of human interaction by focusing solely on classic modes of online learning, like asynchronous self-guided training modules. Otherwise you risk disconnecting people from one another.

Where should you focus instead? Hybrid is the keyword here. Invest in next-generation training experiences that bring in-office and remote workers together, with social learning as the glue. For example, consider these resources:

1. e-Learning platforms that support instructor-led breakout sessions, advanced gamification functionality, and in-training assessment and analysis. These capabilities support richer social experiences than isolated on-demand training modules.

2. VR and metaverse technologies that make it possible to create three-dimensional virtual spaces where social learning participants can engage within a shared digital environment.

3. Tools that enhance popular web meeting tools. For example, the Adobe Connect open architecture lets industry partners extend the platform’s core capabilities. Extensions include custom pods, learning management system integration, advanced authentication, login functionality, and much more.

4. Discussion and collaboration tools that function as standalone products or as features you can integrate into a learning management system.

5. Social tools that work within a digital learning environment to supplement and reinforce traditional onsite and online training. For example, Adobe Learning Manager offers built-in social learning tools that make it easy to informally share ideas, content and meaningful insights before, during or after people complete a course.

Supporting Learning Engagement in a Hybrid Work Environment

Of course, identifying helpful hybrid learning tools is one thing, but providing a culture that drives engagement and performance improvement is another. Here are some useful ideas:

1. Proactively encourage all team members to pursue learning opportunities on a regular basis. For example, allocate a particular number of hours each week to the pursuit of development goals. By making resources accessible across devices, platforms and locations, you can enable people to participate at their convenience.

2. Acknowledge and reward team members for the time and energy they invest in learning. This can take the form of financial incentives or team dinners. Even something as simple as a Slack shout-out can boost motivation when employees achieve development milestones.

3. Knowledge sharing is essential for a healthy learning culture. And when team members are rewarded for sharing knowledge, they become more invested in the learning process. So don’t overlook the deep expertise already available within your ranks. Think about how to empower individuals as subject matter experts. Establish methods for people to create, promote and recommend content, so you can get everyone more invested in collaborative learning, even across hybrid teams.

4. Measurement matters in any learning endeavor, so you can determine baseline benchmarks and track progress over time. Digital systems can automatically track training engagement, progress and completions. But you’ll want to track other metrics as well. For example, think ahead about the kind of feedback you want to gather from team discussions, post-learning quizzes, and organization-wide surveys. All of these can help you determine learning effectiveness and map the way forward.

5. Better culture starts with better conversations — especially in a hybrid work environment. That means open feedback channels are essential. What works? What doesn’t? How can your organization improve hybrid learning experiences? Be sure to involve team members in the process of planning, evaluating and evolving their learning journey, for more successful outcomes, all around.

The Manager’s Guide To Developing A Growth Mindset

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A dramatic shift in the job market has led many companies to turn to feedback to improve employee retention rates. Unlike in the past, employees are feeling less tied to company loyalty and freer to take on new opportunities. Millennials in particular are notorious for their job-hopping tendencies, with most being expected to stick with each job for less than three years. Employee turnover can result in major costs for your company, and significantly impact company morale. Think about how much time you’re already spending recruiting new people to replace those who left.

Attracting top talent will also become more challenging as potential hires are not only looking at salaries, but also quality of the work environment. Rating based reviews on websites like Glassdoor are helping hires become more selective and raising concern amongst companies over the potential for disgruntled employees to scare off new talent. As companies focus more on trying to reverse this trend, feedback has emerged as a way to better engage employees.

To some, giving candid feedback more often may seem counter-productive, but a 2009 Gallup Inc. study shows that 98% of employees fail to be engaged when managers give little or no feedback. As a result, companies are investing more in new feedback technology to encourage the exchange of feedback between managers and employees. Faced with the challenge of satisfying a more demanding employee population, managers will be responsible for using this technology to infuse the workplace with a greater feedback culture.

Why is feedback important for me as a manager?

While the entrance of Millennials into the workplace will present new opportunities, it will also require adjustments to your management style. The top two most commonly cited reasons for employee turnover are problems with management and a lack of opportunities for professional development. In fact, a 2014 study by Deloitte University revealed that two-thirds of Millennials believe managers are responsible for providing them with further development opportunities. In other words, managers must become more open and engaged in their employees’ career growth to meet their expectations.

When given effectively, providing your employees with more feedback is one of the best ways to demonstrate your involvement in their professional development. Giving your employees’ advice on how to enhance their skills and helping them to develop career goals is a powerful way to motivate your team. Even if you don’t have any constructive feedback to give, giving positive feedback is a great way to acknowledge an employee’s work and make them feel valued within the team. In the long term, feedback can significantly boost team spirit and productivity.

Feedback is not only helpful for improving your employees’ performance, but also allows you to pinpoint adjustments that need to be made to your management style. Employees might be reluctant to voice concerns about your performance as a manager until it’s too late. Creating an open environment in which employees are encouraged to give you feedback in return will foster greater trust between you and your team, and alert you to potential conflicts before they heat up.

Changing your mindset

To realize the benefits of a feedback culture, you and your employees will need to overcome common misconceptions about feedback. As a manager you may be hesitant to give constructive feedback to your employees and risk hurting or offending them. When it comes to your top performers, you may stick to showering them exclusively with praise as a way to demonstrate how satisfied you are with their work. When it comes to receiving feedback from your reports, you may feel uncomfortable or even defensive when given constructive criticism. You may question whether opening yourself up to feedback will undermine your position as a manager.

If this sounds familiar you may have what Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck terms a “fixed mindset” towards feedback. People with a fixed mindset see their intelligence and personality as static features. Constructive feedback is therefore taken personally and can elicit a more emotional response. People with a “growth mindset”, on the other hand, see their abilities as learned traits which must be exercised and enhanced to develop over time. People with growth-centered mindsets will view feedback as a way to re-assess and hone their skills.

Remember that employees with fixed and growth mindsets may react differently to your feedback. If an employee becomes defensive or emotional when you review their performance, this may be a sign that they have a fixed mindset. To create a positive feedback culture, it’s essential that you coach your employees on how to open themselves up to and benefit from feedback.

How to create a feedback culture in the workplace:

  1. It starts with you

Become a role model for open communication by asking for more feedback. Creating an open environment in which employees feel comfortable reviewing your performance will help you to improve your management skills and encourage them to see feedback from a different perspective. It is likely that some of your reports will be hesitant at first to give you honest feedback. Here are some ways you can break down these barriers.

  1. Encourage employees to come to you for feedback

Be sure to make yourself available when employees seek feedback and follow up with them after giving it. Giving your employees feedback more often will motivate them to come back to you for advice when they need it. The most important part is to learn how to give a mix of positive and constructive feedback and work on delivery. Communicating feedback in a clear and constructive way will ensure that it’s received well and taken into consideration. The following guides will go into greater detail on how to deliver effective feedback.

  1. Promote peer to peer feedback

Getting used to giving and receiving feedback from each other will help employees improve their interpersonal communication skills and build a greater sense of team spirit. There may be some employees who continually take on an informal mentorship role. Help them to develop their potential leadership skills by providing extra training on how to give effective positive and constructive feedback. See our series of feedback guides for employees to get some inspiration.

  1. Identify and coach employees with fixed mindsets

Employees with fixed mindsets will need extra coaching to overcome their defensive tendencies. Consider holding one-on-one sessions where you can discuss their reactions to feedback, and come up with a plan to overcome their inhibitions. For tips on how to hold effective one-on-ones see here.

Summary and take-aways:

When given and received effectively, feedback can be a powerful tool to not only improve professional skills, but also to motivate, increase productivity and raise the profile of your company’s work culture. However, as a manager you will not only need to adjust your mindset towards giving and receiving feedback, but also that of your employees’.

  • Ask for more feedback from your employees
  • Encourage employees to come to you for feedback
  • Promote peer to peer feedback
  • Coach employees on how to achieve a growth mindset

A version of this post was first published on the Impraise blog.

Photo Credit: thienan01 via Compfight cc

Overcoming the Fear of Feedback

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Mary considers herself to be a good manager. Whenever one of her employee’s is struggling with an assignment she swoops in to help them put things into order and give pointers. Her company is now introducing a new 360-degree performance management system based on continuous feedback and, as a manager, she’s been encouraged to lead the transition by asking for feedback from her team first. She’s excited about this new change because she thinks it’ll help a few of her team members to open up more and resolve conflicts amongst each other.

However, when she receives her feedback, she’s surprised to find that several people said she needed to let go more and allow people to work out assignments in their own way. One person even used the term ‘micromanaging’. Even though she’s supposed to be setting an example, her first reaction is to get angry. She sets aside a lot of time to help her employees solve problems and only gets criticism in return. She’s now supposed to act on the feedback she receives in order to encourage employees to do the same, but she’s still feeling betrayed.

Most people have difficulties receiving feedback well. For others, the only thing worse than receiving constructive feedback is giving it. When given correctly, feedback is not meant to harm or criticize people, but meant as a way to improve. Even if we know feedback is good for us, what’s holding you back from accepting and sharing it with others? The answers might all be in your head.

What are the psychological factors that make us afraid of feedback?

The most common answer is our body’s natural negativity bias. Prominent psychologists and neurobiologists have found that our brains are hardwired to react to negative stimuli faster. This was originally necessary for our survival. Sensing an attack would trigger our body’s natural fight or flight mode, increasing the amount of hormones released to the bloodstream, elevating reaction time and heightening our emotions. The experiences that trigger these reactions become etched into our brain so that we can react to dangerous situations faster. This is why we tend to remember negative experiences more than positive ones.

However, in an office setting our negativity bias and flight or flight reaction can actually work against us. Even when receiving mostly positive feedback, it tends to be the constructive feedback that we recall most acutely. Though feedback doesn’t constitute a physical attack, in their separate research Psychologist Peter Gray and Management Professor Neal Ashkanasy both explain that criticism can signal a sense of exclusion. In hunter-gatherer societies people were dependent on the group for survival. For this reason, constructive feedback can sometimes trigger our fear of exclusion from the group.

Is fear of giving feedback more about yourself than others?

In fact, this is also relevant to giving feedback. A study by Dr. Carla Jefferies of the University of Southern Queensland discovered that a failure to give constructive feedback may actually be more about protecting ourselves than others. In her experiment, participants were told to give feedback on an essay either face to face, anonymously or to give feedback that would not be shared with the author.

She found that participants with lower self-esteem gave more positive feedback face to face and more critical feedback in the other two situations. People with high self-esteem gave the same feedback in all situations. According to a researcher on her team, “If one accepts that people with relatively low self-esteem are expected to place greater emphasis on wanting to be perceived as likeable or attractive to others, then this lends support for the self-protection motive.”

Supporting this research, a study conducted by leadership development consultancy Zenger/Folkman found that 74% of employees who received constructive feedback already knew there was a problem. This shows that employees aren’t necessarily blind to the things they need to improve, they just either aren’t sure how to improve or aren’t fully aware of the impact on the rest of the team. In fact, in their previous research, they found that a majority of employees actually want constructive feedback.

However, the caveat is that people don’t want to receive top down instructions on what to do. In their study, they also found that the more managers carefully listened to their employee’s point of view before giving feedback, the more honest and trustworthy their feedback was perceived. Jack Zenger and Joseph Folkman suggest that the best way to give constructive feedback is to first give the other person the chance to explain the situation and what they think went wrong. Before immediately going into feedback, first allow them to formulate their own plan of action. If you listen carefully up to this point, when you give your own feedback it is much more likely to be well received. Finally, offer to check in the following week so that you can lend further advice if needed, without seeming overbearing. For more information on how to give constructive feedback see here. So what are we still so afraid of?

Changing your mindset

Stanford Professor Carol Dweck’s studies into what she terms ‘fixed and growth mindsets’ also provide valuable insights into this fear. According to her research, people with fixed mindsets view their skills as constant personal traits, while people with growth mindsets view their skills as malleable abilities which can be improved. For example, children who have been praised for being smart throughout their lives may face difficulties improving after receiving a bad grade on an exam. However, children who have been praised for getting good grades based on their hard work and dedication are more likely to see a bad grade as an opportunity to learn more.

When we associate abilities with a part of our identity, receiving constructive criticism can feel more like a personal attack. People with growth mindsets, on the other hand, are more likely to take risks and overcome obstacles by seeing failure as a signal to try harder, rather than time to give up.

The good news is that we are not naturally divided into fixed and growth mindsets. Developing a growth mindset towards feedback is possible. According to Dweck, the first step is recognizing your fixed mindset “voice”. When you start placing blame on others for the feedback you receive, this is your fixed mindset speaking. Once you recognize this voice you can begin counteracting it and responding with a growth mindset. See Dweck’s TEDTalk, ‘The power of believing that you can improve’, for more inspiration.

Overcoming fear of feedback through habit

An important part of overcoming your fear is creating a feedback habit. In Pulitzer prize-winning journalist Charles Duhigg’s book The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business, he describes how neuroscientists and psychologists discovered the impact of habits on rewiring the brain towards certain behaviors. Marketers and CEOs have used the key elements of creating a habit – cue, routine and reward – to induce certain behaviors in consumers and employees. Duhigg contends that by creating a routine and reward system triggered by certain cues, we can rewire our brain to create new habits and behaviors.

If you want to start exercising more, leaving your running clothes next to your bed will trigger a cue to go for a run in the morning. If you get into the routine of going for a run every morning your body gets used to the routine. The incentive can be a reward, such as having a big breakfast when you get home. Eventually, the habit kicks in and your body will become accustomed to going for a run when you wake up, even if you forget to leave your running clothes out or don’t have time for an elaborate breakfast.

One example he gives is Starbuck’s success in teaching employees how to navigate difficult situations with customers. In Duhigg’s book he introduces Travis, a manager of two successful Starbucks locations, who attributes his professional success to Starbuck’s lifeskills training program. In his previous jobs, Travis had difficulties dealing with angry customers. Rather than dealing with the situation calmly, he would be overcome with emotion and argue back, making it difficult to hold down a steady job. When he began working as a barista at Starbucks he entered into its education training program.

The company’s main focus is providing great customer service, and it found that the best way to do this was to ensure its workers received training on life skills such as managing emotions, how to stay organized and focused and, most importantly for Travis, willpower. Through these trainings Travis was able to master his emotions by creating go to habits for different situations that could arise at work. For example, the LATTE method is used to deal with difficult customers:

Listen to the customer

Acknowledge the problem

Take problem-solving action

Thank them

Explain why the problem occurred

The program encourages employees to imagine difficult situations with customers, decide how they would react in advance and practice through role play. By having a set routine in place, Travis was able to overcome his emotional response to angry customers. As soon as he receives the cue, a complaining customer, he dives into his routine allowing him to stay level headed. Since instituting this program, Starbuck’s revenue increased by $1 billion. See Duhigg’s thought-provoking TEDTalk detailing more insights from his book.

Creating a feedback habit

You can also use this method to create a feedback habit in your company. Amongst our clients we’ve observed that as employees share more and more feedback through Impraise, they begin to develop feedback behaviors. As the habit forms, people become more comfortable expressing feedback face-to-face. In our biggest client company, a major hotel booking platform, we’ve seen this lead to an increase in the exchange of unsolicited feedback and better professional development conversations.

Utilizing their employees’ affinity for games, a gaming company we work with has created a reward system in which people vote for the best feedback they were given, resulting in a bonus for the top contributor.

When creating your own feedback habit keep in mind these three elements to habit forming. For example, your steps could be:

Cue – Receiving a feedback notification from a colleague

Routine –

  1. Analyze the feedback,
  2. Ask questions to better understand
  3. Thank them
  4. Strategize ways to improve based on your feedback
  5. Set goals for yourself based on these strategies

Reward – Using the feedback to reach the professional goals you’ve set for yourself

To put this into context we’ll go back to Mary, the manager who just received surprising constructive feedback from her employees. When her thoughts of betrayal and exclusion start to set in, she should recognize her fixed mindset voice and respond: “It’s not that my employees are ungrateful for my help, they just want more opportunities to grow professionally.”

Following these steps, after receiving her cue, feedback notifications on her real-time feedback platform, Mary should automatically read through them and write down keywords and patterns she sees. She should then respond to her feedback in order to fill in the gaps: “What can I do to better support you when you reach an obstacle?” Finish by thanking them for their feedback.

Based on their answers, it’s time to come up with strategies for improvement. Maybe her employees would like her to first ask if they need her help. When they do ask for help, she can make sure to adjust her language and tone, so that she’s sure to provide suggestions rather than instructions. She should also consider offering individuals opportunities to take on more responsibilities. For example, suggesting that an employee take the lead on a new project. Another option is committing to having more regular one-on-ones with her employees, so she can check in and offer her assistance when needed.

Finally, Mary can set her professional goals around this feedback: “Becoming a better leader by providing more autonomy to my employees”. Mary should then check in from time to time and ask her employees for feedback on her management style and what she could do to more effectively reach her goals.

A version of this post was first published on the Impraise blog.

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