Tag Archives: feedback

Leadership and Feedback

This has been a very interesting week.  Work is getting tougher and tougher as we approach a major deadline but I’m enjoying it tremendously.  However, there are a number of challenges in our project that need to be addressed.

Surprisingly, we had a forum where our executive leadership allowed us to discuss our problems.  I thought it was a great idea.  However, there were two unexpected outcomes:
– I discovered that there were people suffering from the same challenges who had not been vocal about it before.  This was very reassuring.
– The people who had been vocal about problems did not want to speak up.  This was incredibly disconcerting.

I asked my question to leadership and they addressed it as well as they could.  It seemed like they were recording my thoughts for future action.  This made me happy.  However, right after the meeting, I felt worried.  Many of my peers felt like the forum was not the right place to discuss certain problems and that specific questions would be “career limiting moves”.

I feel like I made the right decision in voicing my concerns but I appreciate the challenge that executives face when searching for feedback.  How do you create an environment where concerns can be heard while people do not feel threatened? .