Bad Leader Chronicle: Vague, unhelpful feedback

#ambersbadleaderchronicles

My goal is to share brief stories about ineffective leaders with practical tips on how to apply highly effective behaviors & skills.

Providing an employee with feedback that you “want to see them demonstrate more leadership behavior” is UNHELPFUL feedback.

A client of mine experienced this in her last role. As to be expected, she relied on her leader to give her effective, helpful feedback and assumed that her leader knew what she was talking about when it came to leadership skills. She took this feedback to heart but she was left to “figure it out” and create her own meaning for what “leadership behavior” meant. 

Fast forward – she was abruptly laid off (shaken confidence). Now, she’s in a new role – higher than she was before and she’s wanting to start off on the right foot and really live up to her potential. Unfortunately, that piece of feedback, combined with some other past experiences (going for a leadership role & not getting it) has caused her to create a story in her head that she hasn’t done enough to exhibit leadership behavior. 

Additionally, her observation was that the people who talked the loudest and the most were the ones who advanced. She took that to mean that “demonstrating leadership behavior” simply meant speaking up a lot. 

Truly, how was she supposed to know? This is a great example of someone who relied on her boss to exhibit highly-effective leadership behavior and to teach & coach her on what those behaviors are. I’m going to guess that her leader had no idea how to articulate what leadership behaviors are but that she thought she was doing something great by providing this vague, unhelpful feedback.

It’s my experience that leaders find these suave, nice-sounding things to give as feedback and then they dish it out to everyone. *THIS* is what we get when we don’t develop leaders (over 60% of companies provide no development or leadership training). Leaders CAN learn. Research shows us that 70% of leadership is learned. Let’s give them a chance to learn and set them up for success!

Examples of ineffective, vague, unhelpful feedback that I’ve heard: 

❌ demonstrate more leadership behavior

❌ be more assertive

❌ be more adaptable

⚡ What’s my advice if you’re the feedback receiver in these situations? 

👉🏻 Ask for clarification: “What do you mean by ‘leadership behavior’?” “How do you define assertiveness?” “Can you provide me with specific examples of what this would look like?”