A leader’s relationship with feedback will greatly impact the leader’s effectiveness and the growth of the team. While it is natural to resist receiving feedback, and some struggle to offer feedback, both receiving and giving feedback are critical in leadership.
Here are ten axioms or truths about feedback and leadership:
1. Your growth is hampered without feedback.
2. Feedback is an acquired taste, but once you develop the taste for it, you crave it.
3. If you want to give feedback, you must be willing to receive it or you lose credibility.
4. Wise leaders choose carefully whose feedback is absorbed and whose is discarded.
5. The best feedback is often solicited.
6. Your team won’t develop as they could without feedback.
7. How you receive feedback reveals your character. “Don’t rebuke a mocker, or he will hate you; rebuke the wise, and he will love you.” (Proverbs 9:8).
8. How you give feedback reveals your character because the godly “speak the truth in love.”
9. The more specific the feedback, the more helpful the feedback.
10. The timelier the feedback, the more helpful the feedback.
