Lead the Way: Feedback & Leadership

"In Monday's client call you cut Priya off twice, and she stopped sharing ideas." In SBI feedback, that last part is the what?

• Insight
• Involvement
• Improvement
• Impact

Answer: Impact. Situation, Behaviour, Impact: say what happened and what it caused, with no label on the person.

Of Daniel Goleman's six leadership styles, which one is summed up as "Come with me"?

• Pacesetting
• Coercive
• Authoritative
• Affiliative

Answer: Authoritative. The authoritative leader rallies people to a vision. Coercive is "Do what I tell you".

Your strongest analyst has missed three deadlines in a row. Best first move?

• Quietly reassign all their work
• Call it out in the team meeting
• Talk privately to understand why
• Report them to HR straight away

Answer: Talk privately to understand why. It could be workload, unclear asks or something personal. Start with a private conversation.

A new joiner gets step-by-step direction; a ten-year veteran gets a free hand. Which model backs that?

• Situational Leadership
• Transactional Leadership
• Laissez-faire leadership
• Theory X

Answer: Situational Leadership. Hersey and Blanchard: match your style to each person's readiness for the task.

His TED talk drew three circles, Why, How and What, and his book is "Leaders Eat Last". Who?

• Adam Grant
• Brené Brown
• Simon Sinek
• Stephen Covey

Answer: Simon Sinek. Simon Sinek's Golden Circle talk is among the most watched TED talks ever.

Instead of announcing the plan, a manager asks the team "What should we do?" Mainly, that builds…?

• Micromanagement
• Confusion about roles
• Ownership and participation
• Delays in every decision

Answer: Ownership and participation. People own the outcomes they helped shape.

Google's study of 180 teams found psychological safety mattered most. Its name?

• Project Moonshot
• Project Aristotle
• Project Oxygen
• Project Loon

Answer: Project Aristotle. Project Aristotle, after "the whole is greater than the sum of its parts". Project Oxygen studied managers.

A former AT&T manager, Robert K. Greenleaf, coined which leadership idea in a 1970 essay?

• Servant leadership
• Transformational leadership
• Adaptive leadership
• Authentic leadership

Answer: Servant leadership. In "The Servant as Leader", Greenleaf argued the best leaders serve first and judge success by how their people grow. He had spent 38 years at AT&T.

Which of these is the most useful feedback to give a team member?

• "You're lazy."
• "You need a better attitude."
• "Everyone is annoyed with you."
• "You missed the last two deadlines, and the client noticed."

Answer: "You missed the last two deadlines, and the client noticed.". Behaviour can change; labels like "lazy" just make people defensive. Specific facts and their effect give the person something to act on.

Bruce Tuckman's 1965 model of how teams develop runs Forming, Storming, Norming and which fourth stage?

• Adjourning
• Performing
• Transforming
• Reforming

Answer: Performing. Performing is when the team works smoothly towards its goals. Adjourning was added as a fifth stage in 1977.

You hand a project to a team member. Which approach is real delegation?

• Agree the outcome, their decision rights and a check-in date
• Give step-by-step orders and check every hour
• Hand it over with no deadline or context
• Keep the final call and redo their work

Answer: Agree the outcome, their decision rights and a check-in date. A clear result, clear authority and agreed check-ins remove the urge to hover. If they must ask you about every decision, you haven't delegated.

In High Output Management, Intel's Andy Grove said the agenda for a manager's one-on-one should come mainly from whom?

• The manager
• The team member
• HR
• The manager's own boss

Answer: The team member. Grove saw the one-on-one as the team member's meeting: preparing the agenda makes them reflect on their work and raise what matters.

A star salesperson is promoted to sales manager and struggles. Which principle says people in a hierarchy tend to rise to their level of incompetence?

• The Peter Principle
• Parkinson's Law
• The Dilbert Principle
• Murphy's Law

Answer: The Peter Principle. Laurence J. Peter's 1969 book was meant as satire, but it stuck: being good at one job doesn't mean you'll be good at the next.

Douglas McGregor called the view that people dislike work and need tight control Theory X. What did he call the view that people are self-motivated?

• Theory Z
• Theory Y
• Theory A
• Theory W

Answer: Theory Y. In The Human Side of Enterprise (1960), McGregor argued that trust and responsibility get more from people than close supervision.

In the Johari window, what is the pane holding things others know about you but you don't?

• Open area
• Hidden area
• Unknown area
• Blind area

Answer: Blind area. Psychologists Joseph Luft and Harrington Ingham created the model in 1955. Honest feedback is how you shrink the blind spot.