Biggest leadership skill people struggle with
Becoming a great leader takes time and practice, and a growing number of employees are trying to get better at it.
Search interest for the term “Leadership” is at the following level: all time highAs well as related terms like training, best practices, advice on how to lead a team, and professional development resources, according to Google data.
Brian Glaser, Google’s chief learning officer, says this excitement likely stems from people looking to lead in a time of rapid business change due to remote and hybrid policies in offices, global politics, changing economic conditions and the adoption of technologies like artificial intelligence.
Glaser has been an executive on and off for the past 20 years, leading the recruitment, training and leadership development of approximately 150,000 employees worldwide.
Glaser, a leadership expert, tells CNBC Make It that people of all experience levels struggle with a key aspect of being the boss: Offering “really effective feedback so people are clear about where they stand.”
Instead, many managers avoid critical or constructive feedback in search of admiration.
“As a leader, it’s great to be kind,” says Glaser. This may get you a thumbs up among your reports, but “the name of the game should really be respected.”
“If you’re not giving feedback, you may not get the respect you need as a manager,” he says. This can be difficult for a first-time manager or someone who has been promoted and is now overseeing the work of former colleagues.
But “if you just want to tell people what works and don’t want to deliver the hard stuff,” Glaser says, teams can become stagnant or repeat avoidable mistakes.
Glaser’s team is behind Google’s latest Contact Management Fundamentals, a paid course available to the public. covers lessons From more than a dozen Google bosses on what it takes to be a great leader.
Glaser says some of the lessons on providing solid feedback are inspired by sports psychology.
“We know that the best athletes are those who receive constant feedback from their coaches about how they are performing,” he says. Win or lose, “every time they finish a game, they debrief, talk about what worked and what didn’t. We believe the same concepts can be applied to corporate life.”
Talking about areas for improvement helps you achieve stronger performance results in the future. Athletes including Super Bowl champion Tom Brady and Team USA Olympic gymnast Gabby Douglas have argued that learning from mistakes and failures fuels their success.
Meanwhile, at work, it can be difficult to tell a report that it “needs improvement,” says Glaser, “but with good practices we know managers can do it, and that’s really important.”
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