How to Receive Feedback Like a Boss, Part I

We all need feedback if we are to grow and perform at our very best. And if our people don’t have a way to express their fears and concerns, what will that do to their morale, engagement, and desire to remain at your company?

So, before discussing strategies for receiving feedback, we must first tackle the challenge (and it’s a big one!) of getting our people to open up to us in the first place.

Part of the challenge here could be our mindset. In her bestselling book Mindset: The New Psychology Of Success, Stanford Professor Carol Dweck talks about people’s mindsets with regards to their ability to perform new tasks. She talks about people who stay squarely in their comfort zones and others that venture well beyond them. Dweck labeled these mindsets as “fixed” and “growth,” respectively.

Permit Yourself to Be You

The statistics are staggering. According to the website Statista, the current number of social media users worldwide sits at over 2.5 billion and will grow to 3 billion by 2021. Facebook leads all social media platforms with 2.2 billion active users (80% of Americans have Facebook accounts), while messenger apps like WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger are actively used by 1.3 billion people each.

When in Social Space, do as the Socialspacians do.

But Social Space is not for everyone. Nor should it be. I just wish that someone had told me this a bit sooner.

How to Lead Authentically

We live in a paradoxical world. On the one hand, we are more connected than ever before. Social media and our portable devices makes posting and reading content, liking, commenting, and sharing, easier and faster than ever. We know what our contacts are doing in real time and can “join them” virtually from the comfort of wherever we are and whatever we’re doing at that moment. Email and a host of messaging platforms also keep the virtual conversation going around the clock.

Yet, there is something about all of this connecting that leave so many of us wanting and unfulfilled.

Part of the issue, no doubt, is the superficiality of how we connect and engage. Though our networks are larger and more diverse than ever before, the quality of those connections is simply not there. So much of communication depends on the things that technology cannot replace, like non-verbals, proximity and the like.

But for many of us, a bigger issue with Networking 2.0 may be the inauthenticity and contrived realities that it fosters.

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