Are you in an echo chamber when asking for feedback?

A leader who wants to develop their communication skills needs to be able to use each of the communication quadrants effectively. This week I’m going to look in more depth at the skills needed to ‘Ask’ for feedback. This is where you are seeking collaboration with an individual or a group, but as the communication channels are invasive, (you are taking peoples time, knowledge and resource) care needs to be taken that you demonstrate respect. 

Have you ever been asked by a boss - “you love working here don’t you?” You definitely know what answer they are looking for and that they aren’t really wanting your feedback to improve or change something. So you just give them what they want. If you are interested in how to effectively ask for feedback download my Simple 7 step guide here.

The Employee Engagement Survey is a great example of the Why and What not being clear in organisations before they go ahead and ask for the feedback or the authenticity of them asking isn't in place.  I'd like to share with you two tales of my experience of employee engagement surveys, both positive and negative.

We had a new HR Director, her view was there was a lot of 'dead wood' (I hate this term but one she liked), the company had some great initiatives like employee workgroups that came together to solve business problems, they had some great clubs and activities and benefits.  However they had just been sold off from national ownership to a private company, there was a lot of change taking place and there had been a freeze on pay rises.  You get the picture, inevitably people weren't happy with a lot of the change but it was pretty mixed up with other external as well as internal factors.

So the new HR Director convinced the board of our new owners to carry out an employee engagement survey.  We were unionised and it was sold as a way to gain feedback and improve working conditions and environments.  However the real motive was to use the data to get rid of the senior leadership team. In this it was successful but obviously because the intent wasn't to really listen to what employees had to say or to effect change nothing was done with the data apart from Echoing back to the staff how unhappy they were.  

As you may have guessed this was an incredibly negative experience for everyone involved.  Once I found out the real motive I did what I could to actually do something with the data for the managers I partnered with however the positive impact was limited.  It did however teach me a lot about asking for feedback and the negative impact it can have on a culture.

So when I was the HR Director and our Head Office decided to carry out an employee engagement survey.  I developed a complete program to ensure we were able to effectively use this data to create change in the organisation.  Building on the written data we had received by holding team workshops to develop plans for them to change their own environment and culture focusing on their circle of influence and power.  We gamified progress by tracking progress and advertising events that took place.  Feedback to employees when something changed based on their feedback by using the tagline 'You asked, we did'.  

This resulted in an increased participation in the next survey from 45% to 84%, giving us more reliable and representative data.  The actual overall satisfaction as measured by 'Great place to Work' for the entire region went from 42% to 65% in 18 months.  A huge leap and the best in the Global Organisation.  So being clear of why you are asking, what you intend to do with the data and then actually acting on it can make a huge difference to the next time you ask for feedback.