10 tips to get your staffers to pipe up
Good leaders communicate well. Great leaders use their voices to help colleagues find theirs. Here’s how to get more substantive feedback from your team.
Excellent communication can strengthen relationships and help your organization solve crucial problems.
Unfortunately, most companies fail to prioritize or extract valuable feedback, opinions, suggestions, ideas and insights from employees. A study from VitalSmarts found that just “one percent of employees felt ‘extremely confident’ when it comes to voicing concerns in the workplace.”
How can you draw more candid, thoughtful feedback from your staffers? Start with these 10 techniques:
1. Get to the root of the problem.
The first step is identifying why people aren’t raising their hands or speaking up.
To glean more about the lack of feedback, try interviewing your team members or conducting focus groups. You could also send surveys to uncover what’s going on. You might find that staffers are afraid of being criticized—or they might just prefer giving feedback in writing. Some might not understand what you expect from them nor grasp how valuable their insights are to you.
Find out what’s preventing people from voicing their opinions, and take concrete steps to correct course.
2. Don’t overwhelm your team.
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