Nihar Chhaya, MBA, MCC

In addition to using assessments and surveys, it’s important for executives to take into account the context in which they are called to lead. What is the success criteria of the team, department, company for the role now and into the future? This is vital because what is considered a strength in one company or team may be a weakness in another. When I’m coaching an executive in a Fortune 500 company, certain behaviors are seen as more important to get right than when I’m coaching executives in a startup. To not take the context into consideration misses key areas to grow and also potentially leads to overspending time in non-impactful, even counterproductive areas.

There is some merit in choosing activities that play to your strengths, per advice of folks like Marcus Buckingham and Clifton. But avoiding working on areas of weakness can lead to less adaptability, more hubris and more blind spots, particularly when we start overusing strengths to diminishing return. Choose a balance of learning activities that stretch you out of your comfort zone in order to truly expand your impact as a leader in an ever-uncertain world.

One piece of advice based on my years of executive coaching: please don’t use the “feedback sandwich”. This is such a simplistic and overused, lazy way of coaching people. Everyone sees through it. Instead, use situation-behavior-outcome and work to establish a view of what shared outcomes are and how their behavior helped or hindered getting there. As in, “in the last meeting (situation) you didn’t say much when we expected your input (behavior); this seems to be at odds with your interest in being more visible to the team (outcome and shared values). People need to hear feedback that relates to what they value in order to grow; not niceties followed by vague criticism followed by niceties again.

As Harvey Mackay wrote, “Dig your well before you’re thirsty.” It’s so easy to put off cultivating your network when you are steadily working in your job, but keep nurturing relationships and expanding through their connections so that you are not treating them as transactional ones to be used only when you need something. People see through such self-orientation and it’s not fun on either side. Invest in connections as a habit that is just as important as your deliverables at work.

Make sure to design goals and expectations in ways that also develop their stamina and resilience and emotional growth, not just ones based on output. From one of my HBR articles, I shares a study that showed “when people have set goals that involve striving to attain success in a task instead of ones that seek to avoid failure” they can become more engaged. This is why the quality of goals is important - they should have stretch in them but not so much that people give up and feel worse about performance.

In addition, remember that the less clear you are on why and what you want feedback on, the less inclined people will be to give it to you. Colleagues want to see some ownership first on your part before feeling safe or even motivated to offer input. So instead of asking, how am I doing, start with “I’m working on how I communicate with my team; what is working well and where do I need to develop or adjust?” And show a willingness to share how you are progressing so people don’t feel like you’re just making them do the work of giving feedback without effort on your part.