Lessons on leadership can come from anywhere. Some of the best insights I’ve brought back to my clients have come from watching people in completely unrelated fields operate at their highest levels, striving for results that aren’t so different from our own. This time, I’m borrowing a few ideas from an unexpected place: Broadway.

Even if Broadway isn’t your thing, stick with me.

This summer, my wife, Lacey, read a new biography of Lin-Manuel Miranda called The Education of an Artist, by Daniel Pollack-Pelzner. If you’re not familiar, Miranda is the iconic writer and composer behind Hamilton, the show that turned America’s founding fathers into a hip-hop phenomenon and became one of Broadway’s biggest hits. He also wrote the songs for Disney’s Moana and Encanto. Miranda’s list of accomplishments is long: a Pulitzer Prize, five Grammy Awards, and three personal Tony Awards, all in addition to eleven Tonys for Hamilton.

When Lacey finished the book, she described it to me as a masterclass in having a growth mindset. It tells the story of how Miranda approaches learning, seeks out people who can challenge him, and keeps looking for ways to get better. But what really struck her wasn’t just Miranda’s desire to grow; it was how deliberately he built his entire relationship with feedback. He didn’t wait for it. He intentionally made feedback part of his daily work.

While he was writing Hamilton, a process that took 10 years, Miranda sent his songs to Stephen Sondheim, the legendary composer and someone Miranda had admired since he was a teenager. Sondheim would write back, sometimes with just one word: “variety.” Other times, he pushed harder. For example, he fiercely critiqued an early version of the show’s finale calling it “dry” and “academic.”

Miranda didn’t get defensive. He replied to that feedback the very next day and said, “I absolutely agree … I need to dig deeper.”

That’s an important distinction. It’s easy to focus on feedback during regularly scheduled one-on-ones or as part of a formal performance review cycle, which are traditionally opportunities for evaluating results. It’s entirely different to proactively seek feedback when it’s not required. That can be vulnerable. Miranda continually put unpolished, incomplete work in front of an expert he respected and gave him total permission to tell him what wasn’t working (and, equally as important, to tell him what he was doing well).

And Miranda didn’t stop looking for ways to improve once the show made it to the stage. Hamilton opened Off-Broadway in January 2015 to sold-out crowds and rave reviews. But Miranda wasn’t satisfied. He and his team made a list of 25 things they still wanted to improve before moving to Broadway. Some changes were small, like a line. Other changes were much bigger, like rewriting an entire song.

Imagine that. The show was already a massive hit, and Miranda was still trying to make it better.

None of this happened by accident. Miranda practices a strategy of “Collecting Teachers”. He doesn’t outgrow his mentors; he accumulates them. While he continues to work with his director and music director from his earliest shows, he also gets ideas about his projects from rappers, other Broadway composers, historians, and even his eighth-grade English teacher. Miranda doesn’t care where a good idea comes from. He’s more interested in whether it makes him, and his work, better.

This is an important point. The individuals who get the most out of feedback aren’t necessarily the ones with the most formal, HR-mandated processes. They’re the ones who build relationships with people who tell them the truth. If you want to start making feedback part of your work, I encourage you to give these three Miranda-inspired strategies a shot.

• Share at 70%: Stop waiting until a project or plan is 100% polished to show your team. Bring them into the “messy middle.” Share a rough framework and say, “This is incomplete. Tell me what’s working and what I can do better.”
• Keep an optimization list: When a project goes well, don’t just celebrate and move on. Gather your team and ask, “Even though this was a success, what are five things we can do better next time?”
• Audit your “teachers:” Look at your inner circle. Are you only listening to people who have the same background, expertise or perspective as you? Find a new “teacher,” whether it’s a peer in another department or even someone in your personal network.

Ultimate growth doesn’t come from formal systems; it comes from real relationships. I have long believed that feedback is an act of compassion. When someone takes the time to tell you the truth about your work, they are investing their own energy into helping you grow. It takes care to give feedback, and real vulnerability to receive it.

If you want to help your team make feedback part of your organization’s work, let’s connect. Noble Hill partners with teams to build these high-performance behaviors and drive continuous improvement.