Feedback and Us
The Values of Work by Jenny Zhang caused something to click for me the other day. I started work in corporate environments when I was about 23. I don't think this will be news to most people reading it on Fediverse but there's a common idea in corporate environments: “(employee) doesn't take feedback well.” “It's important to take feedback well.” “You shouldn't make excuses or defend yourself when you receive feedback.”
There's a degree of reality to that concept. No one likes to be criticized. It can feel like an attack. If the feedback you receive is about actions you took because your manager didn't deal with a situation, it can feel all the worse to get that criticism from the same manager. If you went to your manager ahead of time and told them about the situation and asked for their help and they refused to do anything about it, it's going to be really difficult for you to hear their criticism. I've always heard it said that “criticism is a gift.” That's true to a point. If you buy me a knickknack from a gas station as a gift, that's still a gift. If you're low on money and that's all you can afford, I'd rather have the gift of spending time with you. If you as a manager can't give quality, well-considered, actionable feedback, maybe there's something else you can give your employee. Like quality time with a senior employee who moved up from the same role they have today.
That's not what this post is about. I just need it to illustrate what's bound to be a touchy topic: companies receive feedback from their employees very poorly.
For all the much managers and leaders want employees to take feedback well, managers and leaders are often extremely bad at receiving feedback from employees. “Often” is a weasel word here. I have never seen of or heard of an organization with 100 or more employees where management and leadership took feedback from line workers well. Statistically, I'm sure it has happened. I'm completely unaware of it ever happening but it had to have happened somewhere at some time.
Whatever the last big mistake your organization made, there's a good chance that someone at your organization either told your organization's leadership or would have told your organization's leadership if they hadn't been stopped. Lose millions? Reduce market share? Get sued? Faced reputational harm? Face regulatory consequences? Someone saw that coming and they probably told someone about it. They were ignored or even punished for it. When the situations are reversed, we tell people they're not being good employees. They need to get with the program.
When the C-levels are bad at taking feedback, the consequences are to the organization and to the workers. If the problem is big enough and pervasive enough, it can tank an economy while the leaders who didn't listen escape relatively unscathed. That's not hyperbolic. If you're in the U.S. and you're reading this in the year I wrote it, there's a roughly 100% chance you lived through an event that big.
As managers might tell employees, feedback can happen at any time and in a multitude of ways and formats. If you're soliciting feedback (perhaps in the form of an engagement survey?), you need to actually do something with the information you get. If your employees respond to your engagement survey by telling you that they'd like to leave your organization as soon as possible and your response is to implement the smallest possible change that is, at most, tangential to what the employees are providing feedback, you aren't listening to their feedback. You're not taking it seriously. You should also not be surprised when people start leaving.
Not all feedback to leadership is solicited. Not all of it is going to be that blatant either.
It could be the question in the all hands meeting “How are you planning to handle XYZ contingency?” I can hear the screaming already. “You can't tell employees every little thing. They'll be overwhelmed with information and ignore it all ... or worse!” I'm not telling you to tell them everything. They're not telling you to tell them everything. They are probably telling you that, based on your organization's past behavior, they think it's likely that you haven't appropriately considered scope, impact, and mitigation planning.
They could tell you that outright but they'd probably face consequences for it. Instead, they got you the best knickknack they could afford from the gas station. Feedback is a gift, remember?
It would be nice if the employees could be more direct about it but I bet there's a damn good reason they're not being more direct.
In some cases, you'll get someone who is more direct but they're rude and confrontational about it. That's because they're fed up with living with the consequences of feedback that wasn't received. Sometimes they're going to complain on social media. “That's not the right way to handle it, blah blah blah.” Sure. Maybe you're right that it's not the right way to handle it. It's very unlikely you got to that point by listening to feedback from your employees and seriously taking it to heart.
You have the power in that situation and they are still giving you a gift. It may be a gift of public shaming and maybe I'd normally say that's a bad thing. The closest thing they have that's an analogue to firing you or putting you on a PIP for refusing to change your behavior is leaving the organization. And we always say “no one is irreplaceable.”
Note: This is where a call to action would normally be. While I'm currently focused on my education, my background is management. I was officially middle management by the time I left the last place I worked at. This isn't merely sour grapes. Consider this at least partly an act of self-reflection. Also, the examples I used in this were wholly my creation (other than the subprime lending crash) but inspired by real dynamics. So. Here's the CTA: Actually listen to employees.