Constructive Feedback That Sucked To Hear At The Time But Helped Me In The Long Run As A Manager and Leader

Recently, a good portion of my time has been spent in reflection — reviewing the experiences I’ve had as a manager of projects/programs and a leader of teams. I’ve also been thinking about the best constructive feedback I’ve received over the years — which I wasn’t necessarily happy to hear at the time, yet truly helped me become a better manager and leader (and still helps me now). I’ve listed three of them below.

Stop Being Afraid To Make A Mistake And Start Taking Decisions With Confidence

I have perfectionist tendencies. If I decide to do something, I would prefer it is done well and void of error. I can be quite hard on myself when I make mistakes and in the past would do everything in my power to avoid making any. Earlier in my management career, I had the opportunity to work with a great female supervisor whose guidance and teachings must be credited for how far I’ve come as a manager and leader today. As someone whose opinion I respected and trusted, I would consult her on practically everything — from how certain aspects of a project should be implemented to how training sessions should be conducted to how emails should be worded (to convey specific tones to specific audiences). Every damn thing. Initially, she answered all my questions…until one fateful day. I had gone to her with another task on my plate and asked for confirmation that the approach I wanted to take was correct before going ahead with it. She informed me that while she was there to guide and support me to accomplish my work, I had to trust more in the experience/skills I had and as she said, “stop being afraid to make a mistake and start taking decisions with confidence”. Another thing she said was that it is okay to make mistakes (it means I’m applying myself and testing different ideas out) and that she makes a bunch of them herself. That was magic to my ears - her honesty was a form of liberation for me and I became a much greater and confident decision maker after that experience.

You Look Annoyed, Fix Your Face

When ‘poker faces’ were being shared, I must have been somewhere else eating bitterleaf soup and pounded yam. You can typically get a sense of how I feel based on looking at my face — excited, happy, annoyed, uninterested, etc. I remember being in a work meeting years ago and a co-worker/friend of mine sitting next to me leaned over and whispered in my ear “You look annoyed, fix your face”. Ah, which kin nonsense be dis? I was annoyed. But, he was right. I’ve had to learn over the years to work on my facial expressions because a key aspect of emotional intelligence (which is necessary for working with teams and managing stakeholder relationships) is being self-aware of one’s own body language and how it positively or negatively affects others around us. This is not the easiest one for me however, I consciously remind myself of it and I’ve come a long way over the years. Cheers to getting that stoic expression 100% down for good 😉

You Can’t Fit A Square Peg Into A Round Hole

Years back, I was managing a large project team and we were struggling to meet our project deliverables within required timeframes and at the quality that I desired — which was painful for me. I found it difficult to delegate tasks to several team members because based on historical experience, the quality of work produced was not to the standard I expected and I would end up going back afterwards to redo several aspects of the work myself. This, and a few other factors, resulted in me ‘trying to do it all’ and I burned out in exceptional fashion. Rockstar burnout style! Go big or go home, right? I was physically, mentally, and emotionally drained, I couldn’t sleep to save my life, and work was suffering. I was soon called out by a senior manager who informed me that I didn’t know how to delegate well and that there were several team members affecting the project’s success that I had chosen to turn a blind eye towards. As a loyalist, I did not want to hear such a thing. I made one excuse after the other as to why I was so heavily involved in my team members work packages, which resulted in the senior manager replying that ‘you can’t fit a square peg into a round hole’. At the time, I brushed off the statement. In hindsight, I later appreciated the underlying message of it, which is the importance of project-team fit. A key part of a project (or program) manager’s job is to assemble a team of people that have the necessary attitude, competencies, and commitment level to successfully achieve the requirements of a project. Another not-so-fun part of the job is accepting when there is an incorrect fit (due to mismatched skills or lack of a desire to learn/improve or toxic behavioural tendencies) and make changes to the team, as required. I keep that in mind now as I put together teams and consider the capacity building initiatives required.

Now there’s been several other pieces of constructive feedback that have helped me grow along the way however these three always stuck out for me and I figure you might find them useful in becoming a better team member, manager, and leader, and also develop a greater appreciation for the constructive feedback provided by those around you.

Consider this part of my ‘paying it forward’ scheme :)