In this article “Meeta Kanhere: Earn Your Leadership Everyday!” Meeta Kanhere shares valuable insights on how leaders can continually earn and enhance their leadership skills. She emphasizes the importance of performance evaluation, self-reflection, and maintaining clarity of vision within teams. These practices, according to Kanhere, are essential for achieving successful and impactful leadership.
Highlights
Who is Meeta Kanhere?
Meeta Kanhere is a Leadership and Development Coach who enhances performance for C-suite and senior HR/L&D practitioners by building leadership and team effectiveness. She collaborates with executives and business leaders seeking tangible solutions to performance challenges, working with organizations such as 3M India Ltd, Hindustan Zinc Ltd, and KPIT Technologies. With a background in consulting and academia, Meeta is known for quickly diagnosing issues and delivering effective solutions. Her expertise has helped numerous leaders and teams grow and succeed, with clients often inviting her back as they advance in their careers, demonstrating the ‘Meraki’ she brings to her work.
In her article, Meeta Kanhere discusses how leaders can evaluate their performance by creating opportunities for feedback, making time for self-reflection, and checking the clarity of their team’s vision.
The Power of Feedback, Self-Reflection, and Vision Clarity
In my experience working with leaders, I have seen very few leaders seeking feedback from their team members. Similarly, very few leaders create time for self-reflection and check the clarity of vision across teams. Investing time in these areas is very important to make the leadership journey more meaningful.
However, did you know that leaders can evaluate their self-performance in the following powerful ways:
- Creating opportunities for feedback
- Making time for self-reflection
- Checking the clarity of vision in their team.
Creating opportunities for feedback
When leaders are open to feedback, it shows employees that the leaders are aware they are not perfect and there is always room for improvement. Good leaders care about those they are leading enough to ask questions like:
- “How can I be better at supporting your success?”
Or,
- “What is one thing I could improve about my leadership abilities to help you in your position?”
Though feedback is essential, leaders shouldn’t be limited to feedback only during employee check-ins. Some input needs to be timely to resolve specific issues quickly. For example, if a leader sends a critical email to the team and it is unclear, the leader needs to know this immediately so communication can be tweaked and the message understood. However, if no one on the team feels they can express their confusion and give feedback, the content of the email will continue to be misunderstood and impact the desired results. Open communication needs to be part of the company’s culture so that ongoing opportunities for feedback are the norm. Create ways for employees to engage with you whenever there are concerns so solutions can be timely.
One tip when it comes to creating opportunities for feedback is to be intentional and ask for it skillfully, as one of the Harvard Business Review article highlights: “Asking ‘What feedback do you have?’ rarely elicits a useful response. Instead, ask about-
- Specific events: ‘What did you hear when I shared my strategy?’
- Worrisome patterns: ‘How often do I interrupt people in meetings?’
- Personal impact: ‘How did it feel to you when I sent that email?’
Ensure you create a safe environment for transparency and risk-taking from your employees. The best indicator that you’ve created a safe environment is when there is frequent, beneficial feedback.
Make time for self-reflection
Feedback is great, but not everyone sees a leader’s behind-the-scenes work. Because of this, it’s important for leaders to spend intentional time in self-reflection. Reflection helps the brain untangle chaotic thought processes, find clarity, and develop problem-solving strategies. It also helps leaders stop and see things clearly, both internally and externally.
Many leaders struggle with self-reflection because they fear they won’t like the results or don’t understand the process or benefits of reflection. Here are a few tips to get started:
- Write down your discoveries. Journaling can show patterns and reveal the benefits of self-reflection over time. Documentation is key to measuring development.
- Schedule self-reflection time. Often, the biggest excuse is that there isn’t time. Just like other important things, self-reflection should be scheduled to ensure it happens.
- Ask yourself the right questions. Some leaders may not know where to start as far as the right questions to ask themselves during times of self-reflection. Here are some thinking prompts:
a) What are your strongest beliefs? What would it take for you to change your mind on them?
b) What are a few things you know now that you wish you knew 5 years ago?
c) How can you do less but better?
d) Are you hunting antelope (big significant problems) or field mice (minor urgent problems)?
e) What actions were you engaged in 5 years ago that you cringe at today? What actions are you engaged in today that you will cringe at in 5 years?
- During those times when you feel like self-reflection is just taking up your valuable time, remind yourself that quiet reflection creates effective action. This famous quote from Peter Drucker inspires me: “Follow effective action with quiet reflection. From the quiet reflection will come even more effective action.”
Check the clarity of your vision
One way to evaluate leadership success is to see how clearly the team understands the company’s vision. An organization’s vision is so important because it’s a shared direction of the team. Peter Stark, a management consultant and author, wrote, “There’s a lot of leaders out there that take the employees, blindfold them, spin them around 10 times, and then want them to go hit the tail on the donkey and they can’t do it.”
This example shows why it’s important for a team to understand the company vision and for a leader to make “vision clarity” a part of their evaluation. Without it, no one knows what to do. Leaders don’t want their team members to feel lost or confused about their daily mission. Clarity is not just about memorizing a company statement; understanding and conveying how that statement impacts the entire company’s culture and each member personally is also important.
You may be unable to evaluate this part of your leadership success immediately if you haven’t yet instilled your company’s vision into the team. But be sure you make the vision something each team member can relate to and feel motivated by, and find ways to emphasize the mission in some way every day.
Implement frequent leadership evaluations by creating opportunities for feedback, making time for self-reflection, and checking the clarity of your vision among your team. You will soon find yourself on the way to becoming a more effective leader.
