Your team has feedback for you. Here is how to ask for it.

As a leader, it’s important to continually be asking for feedback. How can I better support you? What can I do better here? How can I show up better for you? These kinds of questions show our team members that we are in tune with the fact that, yeah, we always got to be improving also. Welcome to the Managing Made Simple podcast, where you get a masterclass in managing your team with ease in 15 minutes or less. I’m Leah Garvin, your host and team operations consultant.

Through this show and my programs with small businesses and corporate teams, I condense a decade of experience driving team operations in some of the most influential companies in tech into strategies to save you time, money, most of all stress. Doesn’t matter if you’re a business owner who realized that running a team isn’t as easy as you thought it would be. Are a new manager learning the ropes or a seasoned manager ready to up their game? Everyone is welcome to hang out with Managing Made Simple.

From conflicts to feedback to delegating and more, we leave no stone unturned when it comes to what makes us love managing, kind of hate it and everything in between. Let’s go. Welcome back to the show. Today, I want to talk about you asking your team members for feedback. We talk a lot about feedback on this show. And a lot of times I share about how to give feedback effectively, how to have conversations, how to give positive recognition and appreciation through feedback.

But I don’t often talk about the importance of you asking for feedback. And frankly, it’s just as important as giving it. Because when we ask for feedback, we show that we know we’re human, right? It puts forward some of that humility that makes us a great leader and makes people trust us. And it also creates psychological safety, right? It shows our team members it’s okay to speak up, to be direct, to make mistakes, because we have trust, respect and empathy for each other’s experiences.

Okay, so as a leader, it’s important to continually be asking for feedback. How can I better support you? What can I do better here? How can I show up better for you? These kinds of questions show our team members that we are in tune with the fact that yeah, we always got to be improving also. Now it’s funny, I did a workshop quite a few years ago now at a financial institution at a big bank. And I said something like, you know, feedback, it’s gotta be a two way street.

And they were like, what? No, no, no, that’s not how it is here. And I encourage you, if that’s not the culture in your company, to make it the culture on your team. It doesn’t have to be the case that like, no, no, no, no, you don’t say anything to the boss. Because that that’s not how we actually build the best team. When people are afraid to share feedback with us, when they’re afraid to tell us what they need to feel like they can be successful, when they don’t tell us what’s going wrong, when they don’t give us any feedback, we actually don’t know what’s going on.

We’re in the dark, right? Just like we want our team members to know what they need to do to to be able to work at their best. We got to know what we need to do to work at our best. And we might be getting some our own feedback from our managers, or our clients, or whoever it is, or stakeholders. And we might feel like I can’t hear one more thing I got to do. I’m already maxed out.

Manager burnout is high. Okay, we’ve got a lot of things to think about. So it can feel overwhelming to ask for feedback. It’s like, great. Now I got to hear my team members don’t like the work they’re doing, even though that’s their job. So I’m not asking to open up Pandora’s box on like, tell me everything that you don’t like about your job, so I can fix it for you. No, that’s not what I mean. I mean, asking for feedback specific to how you are showing up as a manager, so that your team members have opportunities to share things that would make their experience better.

You have an opportunity to have more of a radar out for that. And as with any feedback, it doesn’t mean we have to action it immediately doesn’t mean it’s all true. It doesn’t mean it’s all right doesn’t mean it all has to happen. But it’s something to factor in. It also doesn’t mean none of it’s true. Okay, so like, if you’re hearing feedback, you’re like, forget that that can’t be right. I don’t agree with any of it.

Well, it’s it’s an opportunity to collect more data and kind of see well, okay, like how much of this is something we want to action. Now, when asking our team members for feedback, I love to use a framework of putting out there something that we’re working on, for example, and I know I’ve used this example in the past, because I talk about micromanaging all the time, because it’s always happening. I let’s say you have been working really, really hard to get out of the weeds.

But you know, you can slip up and you have heard feedback before that you’re a little micromanaging. Okay, not you. Well, that’s great, because a lot of us fall into that trap. But let’s just pretend for example’s sake. So saying something to your team or an individual team member like, hey, I’ve really been working on trying to get out of the weeds and really make sure I’m conscious of not falling into micromanagement. This is something I know I’ve struggled with in the past.

I’ve just really tried to be aware of it. I’d love to ask you for feedback now or if it kind of comes up in the future on how I’m doing in that. And please, so let me know any way I can do better at this, any way I can give you more space here. Here’s one of the things that I’ve been trying to do, like set clear expectations up front so that I feel super aligned. We know we’re going to check in and I don’t have to be asking about stuff.

What else would be helpful to you? Now, wow. Okay. I showed that I understand it’s a problem. I’ve been working on it. I’m talking about specific things I’m doing to work on it. I’m asking an open-ended question. I’m not putting you on the spot. So I’m saying now or another time, and I’m just making it very fluid and easy. So now not only, again, did I show that I’m aware of this challenge, I also show that I trust your opinions, right?

I want to hear from you. I’m interested in making sure that you feel like you’ve been heard and that I’m letting you do your job and you step up. When we frame and ask for feedback in this way, this builds so much trust, so much rapport, so much connection. I mentioned it builds psychological safety, and this makes it easier for our team members to hear feedback because they know, wow, they’re working on stuff. They’re a work in progress.

We all are. It’s not embarrassing if I have to do something differently or I’m not worthless or whatever. I’m not just a failure. Whatever kind of stuff can come up for people when they hear constructive feedback, we’re making that feel much lower stakes. So it’s really important to ask for feedback. And then again, I would caution you from saying, do you have feedback for me? Yes or no. Usually we get a no. That question puts folks on the spot.

They’re worried. What should I say? What’s okay to say? What’s not? How big is this? And so we offer an example. We’re putting a container around it. We’re giving the type of thing we’re talking about. Not like, do you like me as a person? Do you want a different job to do on this team? We’re keeping it in the realm of this is the kind of stuff we’re talking about. We could also say there, yeah. And obviously if there’s anything else you’d like to share with me that I can do better, please do let me know.

So you don’t have to lock them into that thing about the micromanaging. But again, you’ve given an example of the type of feedback that you are soliciting. And you showed it’s about you and your performance. You and how you’re showing up for them. I think if you want to talk about that person’s interest in their role and their motivation and how they’re doing, that’s actually not feedback to you. That’s not feedback about you as a manager, their work assignments.

Not necessarily. It often is not. That’s about something totally different. Their interests, their skills, their career path, the business needs of the team and the company, all that about their job satisfaction is a little bit different. Did you know that I do team workshops on all of the stuff that I talk about on this show with large companies like Google and also with startups and small businesses like marketing agencies, law firms, and med spas? Whether it’s making those feedback conversations a little less awkward, how to support your team through all of the change and uncertainty making us all, well, a little on edge right now, or delegating to empower your team to step up as owners.

I come into your teams and give you the tools you need to wrestle with all this tough stuff and feel like you’ve got it handled. Really, it’s about you and your team. Reach out at hello at leahgarvin.com or pass my info along to the decision maker in your company, and let’s make all this team stuff easier and a lot more fun. If you’re not showing up well for them, that will impact their job satisfaction, but you’re talking about your behavior and how you can show up better again, right?

So that’s why I like to offer an example. Now, if your team member says, yeah, I’m just really unmotivated in my job, and they bring it back to that, then you’d say, hey, let’s have a conversation about that and make sure that we’re addressing it. But again, it’s different than if they’re sharing feedback about you as a manager. And I think if we dip in and we’re always being redirected to talking about that person’s job performance, they’ve actually never given us feedback about how we could be doing better.

So we’re not actually getting the feedback. Now, again, if it’s not the culture in your company to make feedback a two-way street, I say you change it, right? Model a culture that you want to have. You got to create the culture you want to see. And people are giving us feedback, whether they’re telling it to our face or not. Okay. Examples of feedback that’s not to our face are, well, at the very worst case, people quitting and leaving the team.

That’s a piece of feedback like, no, thank you. I’m finished here. That’s feedback. People’s performance going down, even when they were operating at a really high level of output, and now that’s decreased. That’s feedback. When people are having a lot of absences, they’re calling sick a lot, or they used to be always at team lunches and culture events and the morale building things, and now they’re not showing up. That’s feedback. So people give us feedback in direct and indirect ways.

And if you’re noticing some of these indirect things, it’s another great opportunity to say, hey, I wanted to check in. You used to be really a part of a lot of this team stuff that we were doing, and of course, it’s not required, but we loved the energy that you brought, and I want to make sure, what else can I do to make sure that you feel supported? Again, you see, I caught myself. I was going to say, is there any…

I really like to abstain from yes or no questions, because typically people will say, nope, it’s all good, and when it’s not all good, and if we say, what something I can do, or how can I better support you, they’re a lot more inclined to say something. But again, we don’t need to push. We just open the door up again and again. If you ask and someone says, no, everything’s great, say, okay, well, I’ll check back in with you in a couple of weeks or next month, and I always want to hear from you if something comes up in the meantime, do let me know.

All right, so that’s how we ask our team members for feedback on our behaviors as a manager, on how we’re showing up, because the more we know, the more we can do something about it. A lot of times, things like being too far in the weeds, or not giving our team members space to make decisions, or kind of, maybe it’s a work-life boundaries kind of thing. Sometimes, hey, I understand there’s a lot going on, but when I get a chat from you, or a text from you, like in the middle of dinner, I get really nervous, and I can’t kind of focus back on my family.

If something comes up, would you mind sending it an email, right? Maybe someone gives us that kind of feedback, and we’re like, oh my god, I was just totally trying to get off my plate. I said, don’t need to read it right now. We need to hear from our team members the things that we’re doing that prevent them from feeling the best and being their best, okay? So, and how do we know? We’ve got to ask them, and we have to ask them more than once, because people might not have anything that moment, okay?

But we want to keep the door open, all right? So, whether it is the facts of your company or not, let’s make it the facts of your team. Feedback is a two-way street. We ask for feedback on an ongoing basis, and we make it safe to share, all right? See you next time. That’s all I have for today. Thank you so much for tuning in to the Managing Made Simple podcast, where my goal is to demystify the job of people management, so that together we can make the workplace somewhere everyone can thrive.

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