The new year comes with resolutions to change habits to meet personal goals. With a new semester on the horizon, your team might want or need to implement some changes too. This issue of Leadership Insights focuses on increasing your team’s receptiveness to change with strategies you can employ in 2024.

Focusing on identifying and working on your strengths might be appealing, but it may not be the best long-term strategy. As a University of Minnesota manager, you wear many hats in addition to your own work demands. Among all the responsibilities and tasks you juggle, some may come easier than others. Strengths are comfortable, while reflecting on your weaknesses can sting. Focusing exclusively on your strengths and ignoring your weaknesses hinders your development.

Feedback is tough on the ego, and it can be particularly challenging when it comes from several people. In working with leaders and their Employee Engagement Survey data or other group feedback, Talent Strategy finds three common roadblocks to making the most of group feedback. 

Feedback is one of the building blocks for learning and growth—it helps build self-awareness, improve skills, and deepen our understanding of the impact of our actions. When people share feedback, it provides an opportunity to course correct to reach desired outcomes. Despite all the benefits of feedback, it’s difficult for many of us to receive and act on it. To continue growing, all leaders need strategies and techniques to really hear and benefit from the feedback they receive.