I know when sometime you have argumentation to your direct leader, feels like you want them to blame themselves rather than you bravely said “I did the mistake”. I bet, very rare of you are requested to admit mistake by your subordinate.

I had one good lesson, few days back, when one of my difficult-non cooperative-feels like the most right ream raised an angry statement with one sentence: “You made the mistake, because what you did all was wrong”. My subordinate’s emotion level was at the highest! easy to detect the angriness through his eyes and gestures. How was my reaction? I asked questions back to him: “Why do you think that it is my mistake? Did you come to our department weekly meetings? Do you come to office on time? How would you think others see your presence in here? What did you do to follow up and Have you be proactive as a team? Have you open open communication, listen to feedbacks, and do well execution? Why don’t you ask or remind me and team mates if I and they’re forgot about that?”

People, what is wrong by a leader give you feedback to direct you to be better? All I did was to ensure process and result output are good. However, for him, it was not a support he needs from a leader. He preferred to be solicit well, but less talk to other team member, act like a boss and not listening to input from anyone.

Was it a good process of taking feedback? I let you be the judge…

Readers, it is “How good you want to be?” not how good you are. Fostering a difficult person to do your request is another challenge, either they would ‘just’ grant or leave it. If you notice, these kind of person, want to show others that they are good than their bosses. But some of them are slow performer, even not an achiever. This is nice example! Maybe not their passion or personal reason. So let’s stand up as leader! You can create an active learning environment.

Hire achievers, develop them and direct to think in innovation, but coach them to listen each other! Taking feedback and admitting mistake are points that we as leader can blend into strength and weakness to solve. Use your logic rather than the emotion, because it works better together with others.

You can blame other, but remember three other fingers are pointing back at you.

AW – 08102016