Do senior leaders actually change, or do you just get powerful enough to ignore your flaws?
I’m not a leader, so I’m looking for some blunt perspective from people who are actually at the top.
We always hear about "continuous improvement," but I’ve seen leaders with huge, obvious flaws who just keep getting promoted anyway. It makes me wonder if, at a certain level, you just stop caring about feedback because you have the power to ignore it.
For the senior leaders here, if any, I’m curious:
How do you filter feedback? When you get told you need to improve on something, how do you decide if it’s a real issue you need to fix or if it’s just "who you are" and you're not going to change it?
What do you ignore? Have you ever gotten feedback, agreed it was true, and just... decided not to do anything about it?
Does it actually stop promotions? Do those "improvement areas" actually keep you from moving up? Or do your results eventually get so good that the company just stops bugging you about your weaknesses?
Basically, I want to know if you guys actually evolve, or if you just get high enough up the ladder that you can hire people to deal with the stuff you’re bad at.