How to Design an Effective System for Developing Managers and Executives

STEP 3: Use Feedback as the Baseline for Executive Development

With the outline of our program in place, we turn to feedback—generating energy and providing direction for development. Both individuals and organizations have a natural tendency to seek the status quo, to try to maintain the comfortable, familiar style that has brought them success in the past. An executive development program, however, asks the target executives to break out of their familiar patterns in the service of better performance. That is not always an easy sell. The energy for change begins with dissatisfaction in the executive—the dissatisfaction that can come from feedback.

Feedback is an essential step in a program of development. It tells the executive where he or ...