How the Best Leaders Get Truly Honest Feedback From Employees

For an organization to grow, everyone must be onboard with getting feedback. That's especially true for leaders.

The purpose of giving feedback to someone is to help that person improve. Likewise, when we ask others for feedback, we’re asking them to assist in our own journey of self-improvement.

We can all improve at something, which means we can all benefit from feedback. For a leader of a company or team, asking employees, friends, and colleagues for feedback serves an additional purpose: it’s a way of walking the walk and ensuring the feedback processes you build into your company's operations are still useful.

Giving timely feedback provides context--which helps people understand how to apply it going forward.

The idea of real-time feedback is used at successful companies all over the world, including Ray Dalio's world-renowned head fund, Bridgewater Associates. In his book, Principles, Dalio encouraged one of his employees to send him feedback after a relatively poor speech he gave to a potential client. The feedback was sent on the same day: