How to ask your employees for feedback (and get honest answers)
Are you asking your team members for feedback on you, your leadership style, and your relationship?
If not, how are you supposed to know what's working?
Employees can find it really intimidating to provide feedback to their manager since it can feel like their livelihood depends on your relationship... and nobody wants to threaten that.
Even if you have a seemingly great relationship with your employees, don’t you want to know if there are things you could be doing better to make their jobs easier or to build more trust with your team?
Today we're going to cover some ways to get started and common questions I hear about this topic:
How often should I ask for feedback from my team members?
How do I ask for feedback from my team members?
My employees each have different preferences from a leader - how can I manage each of their preferences?
What if my leadership style is different than how my employees prefer to be managed?
What if my employees are afraid to give me feedback?
How often should I ask for feedback from my team members?
Most managers rarely do this if at all, so don't overwhelm yourself or your team by trying to go from zero to 100. You may need to ease yourselves into it.
Bare minimum, it needs to be part of every performance evaluation with each employee on your team - so, annually or quarterly. Either asking the questions below in advance, or having an open-ended question on their performance evaluation of 'how can I better support you or the team?'
Ideally, include one of the questions below or rotate among them in each of your one-on-ones with each team member.
One of my favorite managers used to ask at the end of each of our one-on-ones 'how else can I support you?' It's so powerful on the other side to feel supported, take ownership over what you need, and trust the other person to help you get there. At first, I didn't have much to ask for, but over time it became something I would anticipate so I would prepare in advance and think about what I specifically needed. Win-win all around.
How do I ask for feedback from my team members?
Decide in advance an appropriate time and place to have the discussion like at the end of your one-on-one meeting, a performance review conversation, or schedule a meeting dedicated to this.
Then, let them know ahead of time so they have time to think about it. If you ask them on the spot they may not share anything or it may be too vague to be meaningful.
If this is a new concept for your team, I'd recommend sharing specific prompts with them a few days (at least) before the meeting to think about specific areas you're looking for feedback. Here are a few to get you started, or consider which areas you're specifically working on and adjust accordingly:
Communication: What could I be doing differently to communicate more effectively with you or as a team?
Level of support/involvement: What level of support do you need from me during this season? What needs to change for me to meet you at that level?
Recognition: What could I be doing differently to recognize you and your work more often or in a more impactful way for you?
Feedback: When I'm providing constructive feedback, what could I do differently to make it more valuable or timely for you?
Learning and development: How can I better support your learning or growth here at our organization?
Open-ended: How else can I better support you or the team?
It's best to keep these questions open-ended to encourage more meaningful responses than just yes or no (focus on what or how questions instead of 'do you' or 'can I'). It also empowers them to take more ownership of their own needs in your relationship.
Keep in mind that not everyone is even aware of what kind of support they need so don't push them to give you an answer to every single question, especially when this is a new process.
It also may take a few attempts to build up the trust enough that they are willing to open up enough to you or to even come up with meaningful answers.
My employees each have different preferences from a leader - how can I manage each of their preferences?
It can feel overwhelming to keep track of each individual person's preferences across these topics, especially when you have more than five people on your team.
My biggest recommendation? Make yourself a cheat sheet. A high-level view of responses to the above questions for each person.
Keep it somewhere you can easily pull up before you jump into your one-on-ones, team meetings, or call your team members.
Do a quick scan to make sure you're aligned with their communication, involvement, recognition, and feedback preferences before deciding how to approach unique situations with them.
It sounds like extra work at first, and it is, but a few extra minutes of being intentional in your relationships can create a 10x ROI in terms of trust, effectiveness, and communication.
What if my leadership style is different than how my employees prefer to be managed?
Honestly, you'd be very lucky if your leadership style matched every single employee's preference.
When this happens, it can be helpful for you and the team member to get really clear about your different styles, how they differ, how you plan to meet in the middle, and hold each other accountable to it.
Don't make excuses "oh that's just my personality" or "that's how I was treated when I was in your position."
You'll need to give each other grace, be transparent when you make mistakes, and be willing to keep learning and growing together.
What if my employees are afraid to give me feedback?
This will likely be the case if this is something new to your team, if the culture is unhealthy, or when there is a lot of uncertainty or change happening.
When team members don't feel psychologically safe at work, they likely won't provide meaningful feedback out of fear of retaliation or losing their job.
If you're reading this, you're likely a leader who does care about their team and wants to improve the culture. So if you've tried asking for feedback and aren't getting anything meaningful, work on building team trustand your emotional intelligenceskills first.
Ready to make feedback a two-way street? Grab the free guide, How to Give Feedback to Your Team Members, for language you can use in your next 1:1. Grab it here.
Brittany Canaski is a highly-rated Leadership Coach, Trainer, and Founder of Hello Velocity where she builds confident leaders and high-performing teams. When she's not building her business, you can find her planning her next travel adventure with her husband, watching Formula 1 racing, or volunteering in her local community of Charlotte, NC.
