Feedback You Need as a Leader
Feedback you need as a leader rarely arrives on its own. Most working people have experienced reviews, feedback, and progress reports in some form from a manager. For most, feedback flows top down: you get feedback from your boss, you give feedback to your direct reports, and so on. Feedback from the bottom up happens, but it is not commonplace.
In another article, I reviewed 360 performance reviews for all-around feedback. This article focuses specifically on the type of feedback a leader should seek and how to get honest feedback.
It can be a challenge to get honest feedback from direct reports. And if you do, how do you make sure it is honest, and which areas will benefit you the most? Below are eight tips, a STAR example for showing progress, the questions worth asking, and a free leader feedback survey builder.
8 Tips for Getting Honest Feedback as a Leader
Asking is the easy part. These tips, several of which line up with Harvard Business Review’s advice on getting honest, productive feedback, are about making it safe for people to answer truthfully and making it worth their while.
1. Provide a Psychologically Safe Environment
If people feel their job is on the line, you will never get honest input. Even if you say their job is not on the line, they may still believe it is, so as a leader you have to be certain your actions line up with what you are saying.
Stand by the psychologically safe environment, and never bring the feedback up again later in a negative way. One slip undoes months of trust.
2. Be Specific About the Type of Feedback You Need
It helps to ask about a certain project or how a meeting was handled, rather than waiting for an annual meeting to discuss the entire year. This is more casual, which makes people more likely to be honest, and timely feedback tends to be more detailed.
The person giving feedback may not know what you are looking for, and that uncertainty can make the request stressful. Being specific removes the guesswork.
3. Think About How You Ask for Feedback
Rather than asking in a general way, try "What is one thing I could do better to support you?" This is easier to answer because it is specifically about support, and it is just one thing.
If you ask "What can I be doing better?", the question is broad and likely to get a "nothing" answer. Another approach is to say, "Please tell me the thing you think I do not want to hear."
4. Request the Good and the Bad
It is good for everyone to hear positives as well as negatives. There could be things you are doing that help people, and if you do not make sure positives are discussed, you would not know to keep doing them.
When you walk away, make sure you are perfectly clear about what an improvement would look like in the negative areas.
5. Be Clear of Distractions
Reviewing a leader is a risk for the person doing the reviewing, so put your phone away and avoid other distractions. You asked for the feedback; make sure you are paying attention.
6. Do Not Get Defensive
Ask if something is unclear, but avoid going back and forth and arguing about the feedback. It is another viewpoint, so try to learn something from it. Even if you feel strongly it is incorrect, there is probably at least a little truth in it that you can think about.
If the person giving feedback picks up on anger or defensiveness, they will shy away from giving it in the future, and you can guarantee the word will be passed around the office to be careful when asked for feedback.
7. Reflect on the Feedback and Plan to Take Action
Take the time to reflect. If you repeatedly ask for feedback and brush it off, the people providing it will stop taking the process seriously too.
It can work well to designate a person who meets with you regularly to hold you accountable and confirm progress is happening.
8. Stay on Top of It and Provide Progress Updates
You can show gratitude for someone’s time with a thank you, but it is even more useful to keep communicating about your progress with real examples.
Something I really like for this is the STAR framework: Situation, Task, Action, Result. If you answer those four areas with your examples of progress, it is very clear what was happening when you tried to use the feedback, what you did differently from your prior behavior, and how it turned out, so everyone can tell whether it was a success.
STAR Method Example for Acting on Leadership Feedback
Say the feedback was: "Delegation needs work to avoid bottlenecks." The next time the topic of progress comes up, this example could be used.
| STAR step | Example |
|---|---|
| Situation | This week, I had three projects to complete, one of which is not really part of my job description anymore. |
| Task | I delegated and gave Jane one of them. |
| Action | I trained Jane and kept myself available at the end of each day for progress reports. |
| Result | Jane completed the project and will now take it over going forward, freeing up my time for other strategic projects. |
Notice what the example does not include: excuses, or a promise to do better. It shows a specific change and its result, which is what tells your team their feedback mattered.
What Type of Feedback Do You Need as a Leader?
That covers how to get honest feedback, but what should you ask about? This section is geared toward executive director and higher positions, though much of it applies to other roles with slight changes.
There are endless questions for reviewing performance, but for leaders there are specific areas DDI recommends for evaluating a CEO in addition to the typical ones: financial performance, talent development, culture, innovation, relationships, and board partnership. Leadership, strategy, and metrics round out the list.
| Area | Question to ask |
|---|---|
| Culture | What level is employee engagement at? |
| Metrics | How well are we determining key metrics, regularly reviewing them, and taking action? |
| Culture | Do I embody the company values and inspire others to do the same? How do I show this? |
| Leadership | Am I providing timely and useful feedback? |
| Leadership | How am I doing in providing a clear vision for work? |
| Leadership | How well am I leading by example? |
| Leadership | How am I doing in bringing in diverse perspectives? |
| Financial | What level of work went into risk management this year? |
| Talent | What type of focus was put on developing the team? |
| Relationships | How am I doing at building relationships with customers, vendors, and other stakeholders? |
| Strategy | Is the company strategy clear, planned out, and shared with the team? |
| Innovation | Are we innovative enough and paying attention to market trends? Are we adding new products appropriately? |
| Board | How well are we communicating with the board? |
You do not need all of these at once. Pick the areas where you most need a reality check, and rotate the rest over time.
Free Leader Feedback Survey Builder
Use the builder below to turn these questions into a short upward feedback survey. Check the questions you want, choose whether people rate each one from 1 to 5, write an answer, or both, and decide whether responses are anonymous.
The builder writes a request message that tells your team how long it will take and promises to share what you heard, which is the step that makes people willing to be candid next time. It keeps the survey to a manageable length and warns you if you pick more than 10 questions.
Print the survey to hand out, or copy it to Excel to get a response sheet. Enter up to five people’s ratings, and the average and flag columns calculate live, marking your lowest-rated area as the place to start.
Leader Feedback Survey Builder
Pick the questions you want your team to answer, choose how they answer, and add your name. The builder creates a printable upward feedback survey and a short request message you can send. Copy it to Excel to get a response sheet that averages each question and flags your lowest-rated area. Nothing you enter is saved or sent anywhere.
Request message
Your survey
Taking Leadership Feedback Seriously
If you are in a leadership position requesting feedback from a direct report, always remember it was a risk for them to be candid. The feedback should be taken seriously, reflected on, and followed by a plan to work on some or all of it.
The questions in this article are meant as inspiration for the areas to cover when you ask. The habits around them, safety, specific questions, no defensiveness, and visible follow-through, are what make the answers honest.
Updoot is business management software for $5 per user per month with two-way performance reviews and eNPS surveys built in, so upward feedback becomes a routine instead of a one-off.
Sources
How Leaders Can Get Honest, Productive Feedback (Jennifer Porter, Harvard Business Review)
Your Guide to an Effective CEO Performance Review (DDI)
Opens in Google Drive. View and download for free.
Related Reading
Use 360 Performance Reviews for Honest Feedback →
The Importance of Employee Feedback and How to Use It Effectively →
Frequently Asked Questions About Feedback for Leaders
How can a leader get honest feedback from employees?
Create psychological safety, ask specific questions, request both the good and the bad, listen without getting defensive, and show visible progress on what you heard.
What questions should I ask my team about my leadership?
Ask about vision, leading by example, feedback, team development, strategy, metrics, and culture. "What is one thing I could do better to support you?" is a strong place to start.
What is upward feedback?
Upward feedback is feedback employees give to their manager or leaders, the opposite direction of a typical top-down performance review.
What is the STAR method for feedback?
STAR stands for Situation, Task, Action, Result. Leaders can use it to show how they acted on feedback with a specific, real example.
How do I avoid getting defensive when receiving feedback?
Ask clarifying questions but do not argue. Treat it as another viewpoint, look for the part that is true, and thank the person for the risk they took.
How often should leaders ask for feedback?
Ask about specific projects and meetings as they happen, and run a broader upward survey once or twice a year so you can track progress over time.
Should upward feedback be anonymous?
Anonymous surveys usually get more candid answers, especially early on. As trust grows, open conversations become more useful because you can ask follow-up questions.