An Open Letter to Leaders: Ask For Feedback

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Dear Leaders,

Ask. For. Feedback. If you don’t do this with your team, you are making a huge mistake. Many employees, even if they’re miserable will quit their jobs before they come to you and voice critical feedback.

It's a must that you create a safe space for your team to provide feedback about your leadership style and their experience. This is paramount to building trust, strengthening your relationship, and retaining great employees. It is so simple to do, and a big mistake to not do it.

As a leader you have to prove that your people can come to you and give you honest feedback. And you not only have to create space for it, you have to initiate it. Most employees are too afraid to do that unless you go to them and start the conversation. Most of them are still afraid of being honest even if you do start the conversation, which is why you have to be consistent, make it safe, and mean it.

“Do not make the mistake of assuming that your people are happy just because they aren’t coming and complaining to you, or because they seem to appear happy.”

Who, me? Yes, you.

One of the hardest parts of this topic is that most leaders hear this and think that it doesn't apply to them. I am here to say unequivocally that it absolutely does. Do not make the mistake of assuming that your people are happy just because they aren’t coming and complaining to you, or because they seem to appear happy.

Get real with yourself and acknowledge the power dynamic that’s in play for them if they say something that you don’t like. From their view, it’s often not worth the risk of damaging their relationship with you in order to share critical feedback. Especially if they have negative things to say about you that you aren’t self aware of and likely don’t want to hear. Like it or not, that fear is grounded in the reality that there are PLENTY of shitty leaders out there, and your people have likely experienced one or more of them before. Until you prove otherwise, it’s actually pretty reasonable on their part.

Come to grips with the fact that as their leader, they know you have the power to make their jobs miserable and retaliate against them in a myriad of creative ways. It’s not uncommon to hear about backlash from managers; mistreating people, badmouthing them to others, preventing them from advancement opportunities, cutting their hours and pay, destroying their reputation within the company, finding a reason to fire them, the list goes on and on.

“...most employees make the decision to either live with the things that they don’t like about their boss (or their job), or just quit and go work somewhere else.”

These things are worse than leaving your job on your own terms. This is why most employees make the decision to either live with the things that they don’t like about their boss (or their job), or just quit and go work somewhere else. And regardless of how happy or miserable they might be, for the most part they’ll put on a happy face.

It might seem ridiculous that an employee would do that before trying to have a conversation with their boss to make things better, but leadership wisdom involves understanding people’s motives and acknowledging what is true, not what should be true.

A perfect real-life example:

I recently had a conversation with a colleague who works for a company that they love. They love the mission and the work that the company does, they love their job, their co-workers, and they like their boss. They think their boss is a good person and they like them, but there are one or two things that their boss does that drive them crazy and they are wondering how much longer they can stand it before they quit.

One of the things that they can’t stand had just happened and was fresh in their mind, here’s what it is:

They'll get a project from their boss and then go spend an entire week putting a lot of time and effort into completing the project, and doing a great job. When they come back with the finished product, every single time without fail, their boss will tear the project apart and only give negative feedback. He only ever responds by pointing out every possible critical thing he can find. He never gives any type of praise at all, never acknowledges all of the hard work and effort, or anything that this employee feels particularly proud of or feels above and beyond to them.

Now, maybe in your head you can think of reasons why that’s no big deal, or the employee is too sensitive, or it’s their job to do that work and their boss is just trying to make the final product better, blah, blah. The reality is that while any and all of that might be true, none of that actually matters here.

What actually matters is that after two years of this, they're feeling worn down, deflated, demoralized and frustrated about it. They feel like their boss never acknowledges or appreciates anything positive that they ever do and they are seriously considering quitting their job because they don’t feel like they can take it anymore. And when I heard the story I would’ve bet the farm that their boss had absolutely no idea that they felt this way, and thought they were 100% perfectly happy in their job (which turned out to be exactly the case).

“They’re afraid to have these conversations with their leaders because they’re afraid it will damage their relationship, they’ll get fired, or they’ll get in trouble, or their boss will make their job miserable, or they’ll prevent them from opportunities in the future.”

But whose fault is it?

Here’s the rub: it doesn’t matter who’s to blame, all that matters is that it’s true.

In your head, you might feel like, “Well, it's on the employee to tell their boss and have a conversation to try to fix things.” I completely agree with you, those were the first words out of my mouth to them.

And based on their response to me, I realized something that I have seen in action many times through having similar conversations with employees about their bosses more times than I can count. Based on past experiences, the risk of damaging their seemingly great relationship with their boss and the potential repercussions from that just weren’t worth it to them. They saw their options as either suffer through it, or quit.

What actually happened was after some encouraging I was able to convince them to have that direct conversation with their boss and gave them some language and tools to approach it in a productive way. They were able to sort a lot of things out and make great changes. I’m happy for them, but how many employees never get to have that conversation and just end up quitting or staying miserable and becoming checked-out, poor performers? Too many.

“How many employees never get to have that conversation and just end up quitting or staying miserable and becoming checked-out, poor performers? Too many.”

This is not a thought experiment or a logic problem, this is the reality of how many employees are. They're afraid to have these conversations with their leaders. Maybe they’re uncomfortable with conflict, maybe they’ve had bad bosses, the reason why doesn’t ultimately matter. If you don’t go and ask and find out how you’re doing as a leader and gather their feedback, you may lose great employees over completely solvable issues.

It’s not just about them, it’s also about you.

The other extremely obvious reason to asking for feedback from your team is because you have blind spots. It doesn’t matter if you are new to leadership or you’ve been doing it for most of your career, you always have ways to improve and there’s no one better to ask about how you’re doing as a leader than the people you’re leading.

“The things that they’re afraid to tell you will make you a better leader if you have the courage to hear them.”

Ask them, prove that it’s safe for them and that you actually do want to hear the things that are hard to hear. The things that they’re afraid to tell you will make you a better leader if you have the courage to hear them. Do it on a regular basis, make the process transparent and positive, make it feel collaborative and in service of your growth as a leader.

Use these three simple questions: What am I doing great? What’s my biggest area(s) of opportunity to improve? And how can I show up ever better, what does a 10/10 look like from me?

A leader who shows up asking those questions, and proves that they mean it by listening, being vulnerable, taking the feedback to heart, and making changes to improve will earn the trust, loyalty, and respect of their people. This is one element of exceptional leadership that is an absolute must.

Want more?

This article was created by Galen Emanuele for the #culturedrop. Free leadership and team culture content in less than 5 minutes a week. Check out the rest of this month's content and subscribe to the Culture Drop at https://bit.ly/culturedrop 

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