June 19, 2008
Reader Story ~ it is possible to get managers to listen to feedback
I wanted to follow up on my email to you.
I had my meeting with the managers of our team regarding the results of a recent survey I conducted. I asked questions about what challenges the team faced in their jobs, as well as their thoughts about the management of our group. I am happy to say that I was pleasantly surprised at how smoothly this meeting went.
I opened the meeting by saying:
- I received some honest feedback that we’ll go through one by one. As we go through these responses, I’d like you to remember that the feedback represents how these folks feel and how they perceive a situation or challenge. There are no right or wrong answers as these responses represent their feelings. I’m excited about the honesty of their answers.
- Based on how some of these responses are worded, as well as what some of the folks specifically said, you may know who responded in a particular way. Again, I ask you to do your best to dismiss trying to figure out who-said-what and just focus on what they said.
During my informal presentation, there was a lot of silence and note-taking — which I feel was their way of absorbing what was being discussed and documenting what they felt were possible resolutions.
After the presentation, my manager asked the team, “Well, how do you all feel about this?” One manager started saying something like, “You know, I’m really sick and tired of all this griping and I know who said the majority of these comments and she always…”. The Director of the group (who was one of the people I initially anticipated a lot of resistance from) interrupted her and said (calmly and quietly), Stop… we’re here to look at the answers and not judge the people… these are important and a lot of them are right-on. We need to figure out how to fix this.
WOW
We continued with an open and honest discussion, and ended with action items and next steps. It was such a successful meeting. Thanks again, Meryl, for your words of guidance.
