Ben Young - Are you really performing?

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Opinion

How well are you really performing as a leader in your company? The best way to find out is to Let your people tell you.

Let your people tell you but in a constructive way.

That's what Philip Rosedale (founder of SecondLife & LoveMachineInc) does. Every quarter he runs a quick survey which collects anonymous responses to these questions:

1) Do you think I should remain as CEO or be replaced?

2) Regardless of the above have I improved / gotten worse at my job?

3) Why?

Philip then relays the numbers of the first two questions back to the team with the insight that at some point he should leave the role as CEO and at that point he probably won't want to go but the trend of the numbers won't lie. And everyone in the company will know that.

Secondly he would sit down and review the Why responses (after a couple of drinks). It is easy to brush off feedback when it comes from someone you know but when (as he says) you get the same feedback from seven different employees who don't know one another you can't argue with that.

Are you brave enough to collect and take feedback?

It's a classic case of just holding your breath and doing it. The feedback helps everyone, those you ask, you and your company. We do it for our customers (at Young & Shand) and it was amazing to hear three different customers give us the same feedback.

Like Philip said it is a universal truth when you hear it from multiple people. You can't argue with that.

It also pulls the company together, how is our CEO really doing? Are they getting better or worse?

It gives the CEO the feedback loop they need to grow, improve and head in the right direction.

You can use a tool like SurveyGizmo to pull together a survey like this within minutes and send it out to your team. Go, do it.

Ben Young from bwagy is the author of The Best Ideas are Free and marketing director at Young & Shand.