It’s still very hard for senior executives to get frank feedback — or to welcome it. I worked with a corporate leader from the Caucasus who got a perfect score in his subordinates’ appraisals of him. They said he was a great manager. Then I found out that he had handed out the feedback forms to his subordinates with their names printed on them, and said, “Bring these back to my office.” This case may be extreme, but that’s the kind of feedback that many leaders get. There’s the famous scene in Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 where Lieutenant Scheisskopf says, “I’ll be grateful to the man who tells me the truth,” and then court-martials the one person who dares to speak up.
- From the strategy + business interview with Manfred F.R. Kets de Vries.
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