6 Ways Employers Can Use Leadership Feedback to Their Business’ Advantage

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People often move through organizations into managerial roles based on their technical capabilities. But that doesn’t automatically qualify them to be a great leader. Effective leadership depends on a host of soft skills and strong relationships with employees and teams. Feedback plays a key role in developing leaders. In this article, we outline 6 ways employers can use leadership feedback to their business’ advantage.

Successful companies need great leaders and great leaders need honest and regular feedback from their people to hone their leadership skills and make meaningful changes. So for your business to thrive, you need a firm emphasis on leadership development. 

Let’s dive into why leadership feedback is so important and how to harness it to enhance business performance and drive lasting success.

Why is gathering leadership feedback so important?

Leadership feedback is central to strengthening the relationships between leaders and employees. Strong relationships in the workplace promote better engagement, growth and motivation. In this new work environment we find ourselves in, 69% of millennials said they are concerned their workplace doesn’t develop their leadership skills. And alarmingly, 79% of employees will quit after receiving inadequate appreciation. It’s safe to say this is a primary area of concern for many of the working population.  

Effective feedback requires a 360 approach. Gathering meaningful feedback from across the organization helps leaders to improve and grow. They can identify areas in need of improvement, become better aligned with their teams’ needs and demands, and take actions to inspire and motivate employees.

Feedback is ultimately wisdom. It’s insight and awareness into how others perceive you, and how your approaches directly impact them. What you do with that feedback is down to you but a great place to start is by leveraging technology to support your efforts and help you gather insights and analyze feedback data and foster a culture of regularly giving and receiving feedback

Tivian’s 6 key ways to leverage leadership feedback

Tivian’s 360 Leadership platform will help you harness the power of leadership feedback and use it to increase performance, strengthen your company culture and gain a competitive advantage. And here’s how to do it:

1. Improve leadership development

We’ve talked about the importance of leadership development in business and its impact on company morale and values previously. Great leaders who demonstrate proactivity when it comes to growth and improvement inspire team members to do the same. With 83% of organizations believing it’s important to develop leaders at every level of the company, it’s becoming a business necessity.

A great leader will inspire, motivate and engage teams. Employee engagement is at the top of organizational concerns right now. With teams dispersed across geographical locations, it can become difficult to collaborate, communicate and lead effectively. Leadership feedback encourages employees to speak up about how leadership can be improved. 

If your company doesn’t positively breed a positive feedback culture, it can make it difficult for employees to voice how they’re feeling. In this scenario, managers are given no guidance on how to develop effectively to lead better. Feedback is a great starting point for improving leadership development. 

2. Identify patterns

The visibility provided by a 360 online feedback platform enables you to identify patterns. This allows your company’s leadership team to uncover blindspots in skills, detect areas of improvement and progression or pinpoint recurring themes. 

In Tivian’s Leadership 360 tool, our Exec View feature offers a holistic view to Admins that tracks how a company is performing in a particular area over time. For example, the tool could reveal that your leaders are struggling with communicating their vision, therefore being an area for improvement. Or, instead, insight could reveal the need for further investment in learning and development programs. 

With these insights at your fingertips, you have the power to implement strategies that improve the overall company performance and address any trends that could harm the business.

3. Use leadership feedback to start conversations

Organizations wouldn’t exist without people. It’s the multiple personalities that create a unique culture and team atmosphere. However, not everyone is an extrovert. And most people aren’t confident in starting tricky conversations with management. But without feedback, employees and managers can feel disconnected and disengaged from the organization – especially in the new world of hybrid working.

Whether it’s feedback about performance, how supported employees feel or the team dynamic, all insights from leadership feedback matter. A 360 feedback platform can pinpoint areas for improvement for managers and kickstart open conversations with their team on how they’ll work on these areas.

4. Boost employee retention

The grass is always greenest where you water it. Leadership feedback is one avenue to support the emotional well-being of your employees. It empowers your teams to build an environment where freedom of expression is expected and encouraged. A feedback loop lets employees see how their actions impact company success. That bigger picture can influence employee retention.

Ultimately, employees and managers who are free to express themselves identify areas for improvement and feel continuously supported to do so are less likely to seek greener grass.

5. Establish goals

Clear goals keep everyone aligned and focused on meaningful work. Employees want to feel fulfilled and see tangible progress – don’t we all?

You wouldn’t expect someone to get in a car without knowing the destination. This is kind of how feedback supports the goals initiative. You can’t create goals out of thin air. If you do, you won’t be able to create a realistic path as to how you’ll achieve them.

Helping managers implement meaningful goals that improve their focus and keep them engaged is one powerful benefit of a 360 feedback tool. The feedback is recorded and monitored, so it can be used to develop goals and objectives that are revisited and tailored towards a manager’s progression. Personalities and personal development can also be taken into account to ensure the goals are unique to the individual, setting them up for future success and, ultimately, better engagement.

6. Increase transparency

Eliminate the need for office gossip and resentment with total transparency. Innovative leadership feedback tools enable timely and anonymous feedback, so niggles can be ironed out before they cause friction between teams. If managers are not inspiring confidence in their employees, this can be identified before it becomes an issue. Then you can implement plans to correct behaviors and improve your leadership style.

Poor managers can lose valuable employees, but feedback can help you identify leadership problems and implement strategies to tackle them before they lead to conflict.

Using Tivan’s 360 Leadership tool

Traditional methods of gathering 360 leadership feedback can be time-consuming and labor-intensive. Meetings, face-to-face appraisals and stifling written surveys are off-putting for employees and leadership. 64% of CEOs said developing next-gen leaders was one of their top 10 challenges.

Tivian’s 360 feedback tool, Leadership 360, caters to the demands of the digital generation while enabling feedback from managers, peers, subordinates and colleagues. Its AI function allows you to build a personalized plan to navigate responsive change that’s aligned with the needs of your teams. 

Develop your leaders, elevate your teams and grow your organization with Leadership 360. Learn more about this transformative solution for employers or get in touch with the Tivian team to learn more about leadership development.