Do These Describe Your Environment?

In my programs, consulting work, and coaching, I regularly encounter these situations:

  • Managers struggling with an employee’s performance, yet they’ve provided little to no feedback, or their feedback was watered down to the point of having no impact.
  • Groups and project teams are more debating societies than anything else.
  • Environments where complaining about each other to the boss is a daily activity.
  • No one is comfortable talking to the micromanaging boss about their destructive behaviors.
  • Groups are frustrated over poor communication, broken or cumbersome processes, and other issues that suck time, increase costs, and generate stress. In these environments, no one is comfortable speaking truth to power and offering ideas to improve.
  • Leaders are perceived as disconnected from the realities of the customers, markets, and plight of the employees.

Show Me a Workplace Problem, and Together, We’ll Find a Communication Issue

Every problem in the workplace has, at its core, a communication issue. And while we regularly focus on feedback as an individual performance tool, it’s also a critical communication tool for driving improvement across groups and for processes and initiatives. Yet, this important, honest communication is in short supply in too many organizations.

How’s the Flow of Tough Topics in Your Organization?

When asked to work with an organization for strategy or culture change, one of the first things I do is take note of the quality of communication about challenging issues flowing up, down, and across layers and boundaries. In some instances, I use a simple, homegrown Feedback Culture Survey to gain insights; in others, I listen. (Want the survey? Drop me a note.)

While correlation isn’t causation, it’s my long-time observation that organizations functioning at a high level tend to have a comfortable, timely flow of communications around the challenging issues of performance and improvement. People speak truth to power. They give timely, quality, performance-focused behavioral feedback, and individuals relish a chance to strengthen their effectiveness.

For organizations struggling with performance, engagement, and subpar strategy results, there’s typically poor communication flow for tough issues. The inability of individuals at all levels to share their observations and experiences on what’s not working and what needs to be changed is an inhibitor to success.

You control this.

How to Jump-Start a Culture Where Feedback in All Forms is Expected and Valued

A little backstory. I run a program called the Feedback Skills Boot Camp. I’ve helped thousands of professionals and hundreds of organizations and teams learn to design and deliver quality feedback discussions for individual and group performance. The training is research-based, and the practice and tools help individuals at all levels strengthen their skills with tough discussions. Yet, the essential ingredient for success isn’t a skill or behavior–it’s ensuring that everyone in the group, team, or organization understands it is their job to raise tough issues across boundaries, with all levels, and on any topic that impacts performance.

Six Things Leaders Must Do To Strengthen Their Feedback and Challenging Conversations Cultures:

It’s incumbent upon you to help everyone recognize the importance of being able to talk freely about tough topics of performance, improvement, and change. To do this, it’s imperative that you:

1. Educate everyone on why it’s their responsibility to raise tough issues and to listen fiercely to team members who raise the topics. Ideally, blend this into your group values or, as one client described, the “rules of the road.”

2. Teach a method for talking about the challenging topic of performance that focuses on behaviors that impact effectiveness. (OK, ding, I’ll help with that if interested.)

3. Ensure that feedback flows up, down, and sideways. Note: engaging in peer feedback discussions is the most challenging direction for many.

4. Model the right behaviors when requesting and receiving input on you, your initiatives, or organizational issues.

5. Coach and evaluate individuals’ effectiveness in navigating tough topics through spoken and written communications.

6. Measure individual and group perceptions of the quality of the feedback environment over time and draw the group into strengthening effectiveness.

The Bottom Line for Now

You cannot lead a successful team or grow a profitable, healthy organization without quality, timely, behavioral feedback. We need to employ excellent feedback practices daily to turbocharge learning and improvement. And to do that, we must overcome our fear of engaging others in challenging conversations. After all, the tough conversations are where we uncover reality, solve problems, innovate, and progress toward success.

Art's Signature