The lowest-scoring leadership practice

Recently, I had the privilege of getting trained in "The Leadership Challenge," a renowned leadership framework developed by Kouzes and Posner through over 35 years of extensive research. Thanks to this deep body of research, we know which leadership behaviors are exercised most frequently and which are neglected.

Want to know which one ranks at the bottom? Watch this quick video to find out and learn how you can start leveraging this critical practice more effectively.

• Read the video transcript

  Well, I recently had the privilege of being trained in one of the best known, most respected leadership frameworks and that is "The Leadership Challenge" by Kouzes and Posner, because I am delivering the program for a client. And it's amazing!

  And through my learning journey, I discovered that there is one leadership behavior that consistently scores at the bottom in all of their research. In other words, what is the behavior that leaders execute the least frequently? Can you guess what it is?

  It is a leader's practice of requesting feedback on how their actions are impacting others' ability to perform. And I guess I wasn't surprised, but kind of bummed because the truth is, folks, this is easy to change. We can easily start to solicit feedback more frequently. We just need to have the humility to do it.

  And how we do it matters, though, right? If we want to get good, tangible information in the feedback, how we ask for it really matters. And I know you've heard me talk about it before in Two-Minute Tips, but I wanted to share a new methodology with you today.

  And that is, let's say, you know your team staff meetings aren't going great, or they could be going better. And instead of going to your team and saying, "Hey, what feedback do you have for me on how team meetings are going?" Instead you say, "What would an ideal team staff meeting design look like to you? What would that perfect staff meeting experience feel like to you?"

  And, and so you ask them to describe their ideal because A, it doesn't feel like feedback to them then, which can feel kind of scary to give to our boss. And B, you will hear much more tangible specifics on things you can do differently, less of, or more of.

  So again, when you are soliciting feedback, you ask for them to describe what would it look like to have this done in an effective way from your perspective? So start doing it more. Start doing it well, let's change the research and bring that leadership behavior up from where it stands today.