Give your "boss" feedback - he probably deserves it!

Leader question: What has been burning on your mind for a long time that you always wanted to give your superior?

Do you lack goals on the part of your superior? There is too often a back and forth regarding the direction and tasks? Maybe one or the other thing is a bit intransparent... He answers late or not at all or he micro manages you and others?

OR maybe he is just a great manager and should hear again that he is on a damn good way?

Should you have answered one of the questions for you with "YES", then it's probably time for some feedback upwards!

❌ But stop - are you allowed to do that at all? Or are you making enemies and messing up your work life?

How you should give feedback to your manager depends a lot on your team and organizational culture, but most of all on her as a person personally. On the one hand, there are cultures where interns go to lunch with the CEO and talk about just about everything at eye level, and on the other hand, there are cultures where no one dares to give their manager an honest opinion.

Therefore, keep the following points in mind:

✅ The basics - Is the setup well thought out? Has the rapport just been established? Is your colleague receptive right now?

✅ What type of feedback receiver is he or she? Think about it in advance: what motivates your supervisor and why should he change? Is he into growth, reputation or impact? Career & salary?

✅ What makes your colleague tick? Profiling techniques can help you here. To start with, you could look into the DISC model (there is a nice audio book by Thomas Erikson on Spotify), Myer-Briggs or the NLP metaprograms.

✅ You have the feeling that none of this would be of any use and that you would only fall on deaf ears anyway? In that case, the only thing that will probably help is the top class of change work: You hone your questioning techniques, learn to use dissociated language and stories to convey your feedback to your boss in a well-packaged way.

✅ How do digital leaders work in this case? Do you have the possibility to give each other feedback via software solutions? Can you take your boss to a workshop where feedback among each other is part of the agenda? Can you use warm-ups to lighten the mood and make him or her more accessible?

Let's do this! 🚀

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