Leadership Lesson: Leaders Create A Strong Feedback Culture
This lesson hit home, so please pay special attention.
2 weeks ago, Barrett and I hosted my dear friend Petra on a Fit Body Mastermind call.
Petra is a survivor of the hard socialist rule of East Germany.
She was 22 years old when the Berlin Wall fell.
On November 9, 1989, she waited 5+ hours to walk through a little crevice in the fractured wall with terror and excitement to taste freedom for the first time.
Something most of us took for granted.
It was an inspiring interview with a lot of takeaways, including a massive perspective shift.
However, 1 question I asked her hasn’t left me.
“Petra – what’s the #1 thing North Americans take for granted?” I asked.
Her response:
“Americans take the ultimate freedom for granted: Freedom of Speech.”
You see, this is a liberty not granted to most of humanity even today.
Using “first principles” physics thinking, all of our entrepreneurial freedom hinges on this.
While this has societal and political implications that hit near and dear being, Barrett and my great grandparents escaped the communist regime in Poland like many of our ancestors.
I look at her feedback from a leadership framework, which is the spirit of today’s lesson.
Leaders create a strong feedback culture where people are comfortable sharing the good, bad, and ugly.
This is mission-critical to ensure your team and clients are heard.
This will improve your product and service when feedback can be shared freely.
The dichotomy of this is that just because you can say something, it doesn’t mean you should.
There can and will be consequences for what you say, rightfully so, which is the dichotomy.
With great freedom comes great responsibility.
However, strong leadership leans into the danger and creates space for a feedback culture.
Short term, this can sting.
Long term, this is beneficial to your organization as human nature can analyze both good and bad ideas.
With space, eventually, the good rise to the top.
The opposite is true.
However, this can only be done if you, as the leader, create the space for dialogue, which is today’s lesson.
After all, Good Leaders Create A Strong Feedback Culture!
