People often have an inaccurate impression of how others perceive them and their behavior. For instance, according to a survey, 83% of German managers believe that their employees consider them to be cooperative superiors. In contrast, 86% of employees would describe their bosses as authoritarian! Managers tend to considerably overestimate their abilities in a number of areas, including team-oriented behavior, constructive feedback, sensitivity, staff development, transparent decision-making and staff motivation.
 
Munich Leadership Group has a few basic hypotheses about the importance of feedback:
 
» Feedback is a must for self- and relationship development.
 
» Feedback is information about what impression a person makes on others (there is often a difference between how people perceive themselves and how others perceive them).
 
» Feedback is a clarification process: other people tell us how they perceive, understand and experience our behavior.
 
» Only when we learn how others really see us can we decrease the gap between our own self-perception and how others perceive us.
 
» Feedback is the best way to achieve clarity and to get more fully in touch with reality. However, the process of clarification often leads to dis-illusionment (often due to illusions about oneself) and can thus be painful at the start.
 
Professional feedback systems must be aligned with the corporate culture. For example, in a strong control culture, only a few employees are likely to give their superiors open and honest feedback. In such cases, fear of potential consequences determines how employees act.

We systematically develop and implement a broad range of feedback systems around the globe. These range from 360-degree programs to one-on-one coaching sessions, all of which can be customized to your company's needs, for instance in the context of:
 
» Leadership training: The trainer provides structured feedback that focuses on learning incentives and self-development (this can also be supported with tools such as the egogram, HDI and an MBTI-based analysis method)
 
» Coaching sessions: Situational feedback (e.g. through "shadow coaching") to optimize your own leadership situations
 
» Team development: A moderated and structured form of feedback that focuses on clarifying and developing interpersonal relationships
 
» Employee surveys: A fast and comprehensive survey that serves as a starting point for professional, two-way feedback between managers and their staff
 
» Bottom-up assessments and 360-degree feedback: Structured and transparent feedback on management behavior. This process can be adapted to your corporate culture with different levels of anonymity, confidentiality, openness and consistency
 
» Corporate culture analyses: To identify the strengths and weaknesses of your company's feedback processes: What conditions are required to ensure that feedback processes work at the individual or team level?
 
Please contact us to discuss your ideas in this regard.