Reverse Feedback

Sanjay got promoted as National Sales Manager. It was a Senior Leadership position. Sanjay was ecstatic to grow to a Leadership position. Soon, he learnt nuances of his new role and responsibilities and started executing his role in said capacity. Sanjay was promoted at the end of calendar cum financial year 2020. It had been six months since he got promoted. Sanjay belonged to the system and processes where half yearly KRA discussion was part of the process. Sanjay started scheduling KRA discussions with his Zonal Managers. Sanjay has taken note of performance in context of KPIs and was ready to discuss KRA with Zonal Business Manager Vijay at an appointed hour. Scheduled discussion on performance parameters lasted for about 2 hours. Sanjay was in a Feedbacking mode and was giving his observations and comments to vijay for half of the year gone by so far. Sanjay set his expectations from Vijay for remaining half of the year. These expectations crossed KPIs and were far above the set expectations by the Organization. That was the time, Vijay started wondering, if KPIs were supposed to be verbally restructured, what was the point of creating them in first place. It seemed to be a wishful thinking reset in the middle of the year which had sprung up in the middle of the year, unwarranted. Vijay tried to reason with Sanjay, however, a futile effort. Vijay asked Sanjay for resources for the expectations set beyond KPIs, for which Sanjay replied that there is a budgetary constraint and nothing can be done in this regard. That was the time when Vijay also wanted to give Sanjay a feedback on the basis of his observations for the period gone by when he hardly got any support from Sanjay but expectations. However, situation was like Sanjay in a Euphoria who would not listen to any feedback. Rather, he was amused that how come a subordinate give a feedback to his superior. Vijay felt frustrated and disappointed with given behavior of Sanjay and kept quiet beyond this point.

Does this situation sounds familiar when people reaching to Leadership positions develop an Aura and halo behind and become indifferent to feedback from subordinate. Is it that there is nothing they can learn from their subordinate? Do they not require any kind of feedback? Have they come of age that a Reverse Feedbacking does not belong to them?

Those who are reading this article may opine about perspective of Reverse Feedbacking which flows from bottom to top.