If you want to be a better boss, some of the best information you can get is from your employees.

Whether you realize it or not they are watching you constantly, observing how you dress, how you handle challenges, and how you speak to other employees. They are analyzing your behaviour and your motives and they are very critical. But just because employees see your weaknesses doesn’t mean they will necessarily tell you about them. We’d all like to believe that we have such great trust and respect from our staff that they would surely come and tell us if they were concerned about something we were doing, or saying; but it doesn’t happen by accident.

Here are a few ideas on how to get honest feedback and put it into practice.

Make it safe

This is the first and hardest part of becoming a better leader. Even if you have great trust and relationship with your staff (and you should) they will always (even if they don’t realize it) want to give you positive feedback and shield you from the negative. There are many reasons for this: job security, the hopes of a new promotion, or they sincerely like you and don’t want to make you feel bad; whatever the reasons, it happens.

In order to combat this tendency, you need a way to for your staff to provide anonymous feedback. If your employees don’t feel completely safe, they won’t be able to give you their honest feedback. I recommend using digital tools like online surveys or even a word document that each person can type into, print off and drop into a shared box or envelope. Try to limit the amount of open ended questions and encourage people to write in bullet points rather than sentences so that you can’t easily identify who is saying what. Rating questions from 1 to 5 are also helpful for getting the overall feedback of the team in different areas of performance. If you can, involve HR in the process to help collect and compile the information into a summary form. This will inspire further confidence (and honesty) in the anonymity of the survey.

I’d also recommend creating regular opportunities for your team to provide feedback on your performance, and input on how they’d like to see improvements in the team in general. I include a section in each quarterly review for each staff to review my performance and recommend areas for improvement and identify ways that I can help them do their job better. I’ve found this feedback to be invaluable as I’m learning to lead a team for the first time in my career.

Follow Through

The only thing worse than not soliciting feedback on your performance from your staff is asking for it and doing nothing with it. It’s absolutely essential that your employees see you taking actions based on their feedback. You have to treat “getting better” as a project like any other; you need to set clear objectives, identify the physical actions needed and assign due dates for each in order to complete the project on time. I recommend using a tool like OmniFocus to help you self-manage this process.

As your employees see you taking actions, changing behaviours and delivering results they will feel more freedom to provide feedback in the future. Thus beginning a virtuous cycle of self improvement.

Grind it out

Becoming a better leader isn’t about riding in, making a few “big things” happen and then riding off again. It’s the little changes you make everyday to become better; it’s a slow and steady grind that over many years creates trust, transparency and results within your team or organization.

Have you had a great boss? What was it that made them great to work for? Have you worked for a bad boss? What was the most frustrating thing about them?

Share what you appreciate about them

In almost all cases, what is great about a team member far exceeds what needs to be corrected. I think we need to emphasize this truth and make sure we take time during the conversation to recognize all that the individual already contributes. If there is more bad than good, you’ve hired badly and you can’t dump that on them, you have to own it.

Declare your intent

Make it clear why you are having this conversation in the first place; the worst thing you can do is talk around the issue and hope the person “gets it”. You need to have the courage to say that you are trying to help them correct an issue but also declare your intent to help them improve going away from this encounter.

Own your failures

Sometimes as leaders we do things to contribute to negative behaviours in our team. Make sure you take a good look at yourself and see where you may have let this person down. If you are partly to blame, be honest about it and apologize – humility is far too undervalued as a leadership quality these days.

Help them to see how their behaviour is hurting their career

Don’t make this conversation about how this person is making your job harder. Don’t dump your difficulties on your staff. You need to shoulder these on your own; that is part of being a leader. Take time to help them see how their behaviour (real or imagined) is affecting people’s perception of them and how long-term it could hold them back from their goals.

Help them envision what a change in behaviour will accomplish for them/organization

Now that you’ve helped them see the negative, help them envision a preferred future. As a leader you are called to have vision, not just for yourself but for the organization and the individuals that make it up. Use those skills for the benefit of the person you’re correcting, take some time and help them see where you see them going. It is reassuring to know that your boss is looking out for your career and has plans to help you succeed. It inspires both confidence and trust, so don’t skip over this portion quickly.

Have ideas about how you can help them be successful

Too often managers identify issues, but aren’t willing to walk beside someone to help them get better. If you really want to encourage someone to change, you have to help them figure out the how, and then work with them to achieve this. If you want to convince a subordinate that you are “for them” then get your hands dirty and do all you can to help them be successful, create a plan, some action steps and follow up.

By taking the time to walk through these steps with your staff you’ll inspire confidence, trust and loyalty – commodities that are in short supply in most organizations.

From the top of Pike's Peak, Colorado Springs CO - 14,000ft

1. See the big picture.

Its very easy to get caught up in the urgent details of everyday life, in fact most of my time is consumed with these types of demands. I was reminded that you need to create space for yourself to step back from the demands of everyday life and survey the whole landscape of your life.

Action: Schedule a day out of the office once a month for personal reflection and evaluation. Create a list of your life priorities (God, Spouse, Family, Career, Ministry etc) and describe your current reality, the good and the bad. Grade yourself on each priority (A-F). Finally create 2-3 actions you intended to take next month to address what is lacking. Review your progress next month and repeat.

2. Change your perspective.

I often get frustrated when I can’t figure out how to solve a particular problem right away. Often it will lead to feelings of despair or lack of control because I can’t imagine the actions I need to take to bring about the change I want. I’ve found that a change in perspective is necessary in order to figure out how to move forward. Sometimes you need to see the problem from the perspective of a customer, your spouse, your boss, your employee and most importantly – God.

Action: I can’t encourage you enough to spend daily time (20-30 minutes) with God by reading the Bible and journaling. Read until something jumps out at you or catches your attention, record the verses in your journal and then begin writing about what jumped out to you and why you think it did. Is there something you need to understand about God from the passage? Is there an example of someone you should imitate or a truth you need embrace to help you through a difficult time?

It has been during these daily times that God gives me the perspective I need to figure out what actions I should take or if I should take any action at all. There is a great sense of peace you can experience from getting God’s perspective on your circumstances and to work with Him to bring about the best possible solution to your problem.

3. You didn’t get where you are on your own.

No one achieves anything in this life on their own, we are all incredibly dependent on others for our growth and success. There have been times when I’ve been far too concerned with getting credit for what I’ve contributed and often failed to be intentional in thanking those who have been generous towards me with their council, advice or ideas. I’ve learned that if you are generous with others, they will return that generosity 10 fold. I’ve been blessed to have great mentors, friends and colleagues invest in me throughout my life and its incredibly important to thank them for their generous contribution to your life.

Action: Make a list of your closest relationships, both personal and professional. Then beside each name list out one thing they have done to encourage, bless, or help you along the way. Then add a note as to how you can recognize their contribution, this could be public or private, spoken or written and then attach due dates to each.

Try this for 3 months and see how it feels to encourage someone else and see how it changes how others relate to you.

P.S. Special thank to @Joe_Henegan for the group photo above.

So here is all the covers in order, they are still some of my favorite pieces I’ve ever done.

“Modern Day Nostalgia”

The goal with this cover was to created the feeling of a late fall evening growing up as a kid in Ontario Canada

“More Modern Day Nostalgia”

This was a short EP sequel to "Modern Day Nostaliga"

 ”The Modern Day Fades Away”

Francois decided he wanted a time machine on the cover, so not having a time machine I could take a picture of, I built one for him in photoshop using about 30 separate images. It was a huge challenge, but I was so pleased with the result.

 ”Green Things Grow”

Another EP from Hello Kelly - The story for this one was to create the feeling that the greenry was alive, and taking over.

“Hello Kelly – Self Titled Album”

Most bands start with a self-titled album, Hello Kelly waited until their 5th release to do so. This was their first full length album and had a really happy pop kind of sound. I can't remember how we exactly decided on the theme for this cover, but I do remember that the phones are supposed to be like flowers growing up out of the bottom of the frame. Also that there is a conversation being had between Hello Kelly and their fans that is represented by the new logo treatment for the band.

This can’t be true, social networking is just a waste of time isn’t it?

Apparently not, according to new research participating in social networks like twitter and Facebook release a chemical into your brain called Oxytocin which correlates with feelings of generosity, trust, empathy.

Social networking could therefore be even more important for not-for-profit fundraisers than other marketers when you consider the following:

1. People avidly using social nets like Facebook and Twitter to “relate” show higher levels of oxytocin … in other words, tweeting is good for your health! (not really important for fundraising, but cool nonetheless)
2. Higher levels of oxytocin produces more generosity toward charities and causes, not just toward individuals.

How much more? In the research control group the individuals given Oxytocin gave 48% more than the group who received the placebos and were exposed to commercials from different charities.

You can read the full story on fast-company’s website

So spend some time on twitter or facebook today and become a more generous person!

For those of you who are not familiar with charity: water, take a few minutes and watch this video:

I’m a huge fan of what charity: water is doing, and how it is doing it. Traditionally not-for-profit marketing prided itself on how bad or cheaply they could do their marketing, not Charity: Water. They have made a conscious decision to invest into their marketing campaigns with great design, high production quality, and well designed online tools.

They have set a new bar in not-for-profit marketing, and I’m inspired to respond to the challenge at Compassion

Thank you Charity: Water for teaching us about the importance of clean water, and great marketing.

I’m not a particularly strong writer, I’m more of a verbal communicator.

I can’t pretend that I’m really an expert on anything, thats not to say I don’t have some good thoughts and ideas, but I’m hardly the person to come to for authorative answers on just about anything. So what do I have to contribute?

So I’ve decided to take a new approach and see how that goes, short blog postings, with little nuggets of wisdom I’m learning, experiences I’m having, great content I’ve found, or questions that I wouldn’t mind some input from others on to gain more nuggets of wisdom.

We’ll see how it goes…

What I love most about Compassion’s ministry is that it is Christ-centred. What I mean by that is that everything that Compassion does is motivated by our love for Christ and our desire to see the poorest, most vulnerable children around the world, put their faith and hope in Jesus Christ for their salvation.

But don’t just take my word for it, listen to the testimonies of these Pastors.

If you’re already a sponsor, share this blog post with a friend, family member, your small group, or better yet, your Pastor.

If you’d like to help spread the gospel through Compassion’s ministry, visit: www.compassion.ca/advocate/adamduguay