Don’t be a Jerk...if you are, Do something about it, before somebody else does!

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If employees don’t like their bosses, they will leave even when they are paid well, receive recognition and have a chance to learn and grow. In fact disliking the boss is one of the top causes of talent loss.

Recognising your ineffective and potentially damaging behavior is the first step to doing something about them. There is no harm in doing the self assessment. If you don't do it yourself, time will not be far when this would be done by your organization and may be, who knows, it would be very late by then. So it is always better to take the self assessment on our own volition. If you find you often exhibit jerk like behaviors, decide to change and if you don't, somebody, would be constrained to CHANGE you.

As we grow up the ladder, our opportunities to get critical feedback get limited as people tend to be cautious about saying anything negative about authority, hence, self reflection becomes critical to ensure that we keep correcting unwarranted behaviours that becomes part of our day to day functioning.

I have seen many good Leaders asking their sub-ordinates :  

What should they do to improve? 

What is my development need? etc.

However, seen people playing safe. They tend to say things that Boss would like to hear. 

It takes lot of efforts to elicit feedback verbally. I believe giving critical verbal feedback to your manager is tough, however, when you put some kind of anonymous framework in place, it does the trick.

I have tried below framework containing following and elicited quite an excellent developmental feedback:

• Things that I should stop doing 
• Things that I should continue to do 
• Things that I should do more of.

People felt more comfortable providing feedback on the above lines.

Leaders should ensure that feedback comes anonymously and it should be used for your own awareness and development.