There is potentially a burgeoning movement afoot in the social sciences (dubbed “intellectual humility” in one article on this). The idea is to get researchers to admit when findings (often influential) of their previous studies turn out to be wrong. The ugly truth in academic research is that it’s often impossible to replicate the findings of celebrated studies.
This admission of wrongness movement squarely deals with the problem of the corporatization of academia, the demand for quantity over quality (measured by higher numbers of publications on our CVs asserting novel findings) in order to make the institution look good and advance our careers. The situation has most scholars ignoring the essential scientific work of replication studies, which have no glory associated with them. Instead of confirming previous work to establish a solid evidence base, we turn to the search for new ground on which to make our stand (and name).
This idea of intellectual humility got me thinking of one of our core leadership principles here at Outreach by Design, which is practicing radical transparency.
What does radical transparency mean? It means being open to and actively (and even aggresively) seeking feedback and input on your performance.
You can learn about this and our leadership approach in our free video: 5 Steps to Organizational Transformation and Social Impact.
Why is radical transparency an important leadership trait?
We all make mistakes or missteps (making us no different than anyone else). We also all have blind spots that we need a social mirror (and an open mind) to see. Asking for feedback makes you stand out. It does take courage to open yourself up to possible criticism, but few people do it, and those who do, rise above the rest. Not only that, by covering your blind spots, you could avoid costly and painful missteps and improve your results as you go.
I’ve found, without fail, in my teaching experience that when I incorporate a mid-course evaluation roughly half way through the academic term, my final course evaluations improve. By taking my medicine (with a spoonful of sugar, as Mary Poppins would say–can’t help it just took my boys to see the new movie) and dealing with potential discontent early on and even sharing and discussing the results with the class, I have an opportunity to course correct.
The Paradox of Letting Insecurity and Imposter Syndrome Get in the Way
On the other hand, whenever I let my own insecurities and imposter syndrome get in the way, and hunker down and soldier on through the term without soliciting that feedback, I inevitably get lower marks and comments about what the students wish there had been more of (making my negative feelings worse in the process!) Plus, I find most times these are things that could have easily been rectified.
That’s in the classroom. Imagine when your performance is on the line as a leader, public official, or supervisor, when the stakes are overwhelmingly high in terms of financial and human resources, goodwill, legacy and reputation, and lasting real world impact. Can you afford to hunker down and ignore your potential blindspots, or are you willing to be intellectually humble, admit wrongness and course correct before it’s too late?
Getting feedback doesn’t have to be (too) painful
For feedback to be truly useful, it’s important to be specific about the feedback you want vs. generic. For example, simply asking “How am I doing?”, “How are things going?” is not going to cut it. Those are examples of bad questions.
You can cultivate constructive feedback on how you are doing from multiple constituents (higher ups, direct reports, colleagues, clients, members, trainees, etc.) in multiple ways (simply asking, evaluations, the popular 360 degree feedback approach (but do it right, so you avoid disaster), or use the constructive 5 Conversations approach (trust, expectations, appreciation, behavior, and the future) or other evidence-based approaches. You can collect feedback at key moments or on an ongoing basis. I talk about our approach to transparency in our free training video on increasing your leadership impact.
Below is a simple 5-question evaluation form you can download for free to use during or after meetings, trainings, or anything you are doing where feedback would be welcome. You could use it in print form or integrate into an online application like SurveyMonkey or Qualtrics (I’ve done both ways).
Feel free to use and modify at will. Download it now by clicking the link here or below (no opting in necessary) and if you haven’t already, watch our training video to learn more about embracing radical transparency.
