Red Faces Construct Green Faces
By Steven Andrew Schultz
The bathroom at the Gerald Ford International Airport in Michigan sought more feedback from me than the company I’ve worked for the last fourteens years ever has. As you exit the restroom there is a color-coated sign I’ve never seen anywhere before with three buttons at the bottom. The sign asked: How satisfied are you with the cleanliness of this restroom today? There is a green button with a smiley face, a yellow flat face, and a red sad face. It’s created by www.feedbacknow.com and gives instant data to the airport staff and communicates to me that the airport cares about my customer experience. My second thought was: I wish companies and organizations sought feedback like this not just from customers experience, but from their employees working experience.
I walked out, impressed, but also saddened, as never once, in my entire career, have any of my bosses ever sought my satisfaction with the cleanliness of where I work, or the friendliness, or welcomeness, or safeness, effectiveness, or any “ness” word you want. I’ve never been asked: Is there anything you need? What can we do better? How can we serve you? Or any other form of earnest feedback seeking that would show a modicum of care.
I often get emails from companies I have purchased products or services from. Just yesterday a company called to see how the AC repair service was. I recently received an email from Hoag Hospital to see how my experience at their Urgent Care facility went. Also, some companies I purchased some clothes from want to know how I am enjoying the product and the buying process. Why isn’t leadership in every organization also seeking this kind of data from their employees about the effectiveness of their leadership?
My grandpa Hill used to say to me: “If you see something wrong, see to it that it’s made right.” Too often, executives aren’t able to make things right because they refuse to see anything wrong in how they’re leading. When I started coaching high school basketball when I was nineteen years old, I gave anonymous feedback surveys to all my players to see what their experience was like and how I could be a better coach next year. When I started teaching English classes at the high school, I continued that tradition with my students. When a veteran teacher found out, he asked why I would do such a thing and recommended I stop. When I asked what’s wrong with it? He replied, “Teenagers can be so blunt and brutal. That stuff hurts. I don’t want to hear any of that?” I replied, “Yes, but how else do we get better?” He said, “I’m fine the way I am” and he walked away.
Praise makes us feel better, but critique makes us become better. In my feedback forms there was mostly praise, but also, I asked specific questions to garner feedback on ways I could be better. A big part of growth is learning what to listen to and what to ignore. Some people are just rude, yes, but the truth only hurts because we aren’t used to hearing it. And any winning culture seeks the truth. Instead of leaders thinking it will hurt to hear this, think about how your people have been hurting every day because you haven’t heard and keep doing behaviors that make their work experience red button sad face.
A few years into teaching I realized my feedback survey was coming too late. I was giving it the last week of school. While that helped me reflect and reform things for the next school year, it did nothing for the students who just spent a year in my class. So, I started giving out the surveys at the end of the first semester so I could make adjustments in the middle of the year and have a blue mailbox in my classroom where students can drop an anonymous note any time for ways they think I can improve my teaching/leading of them. Now just because one student or one employee has a complaint or makes a suggestion doesn’t mean you need to make major changes, but it is worth at least considering. The key is not to take it personally, but see it as an opportunity to become a better person. The better person you are, the better leader you are.
The truth of leadership is this:
1. Bad leaders ignore all feedback.
2. Good leaders listen to feedback.
3. Loving leaders seek feedback.
I had a principal once who told me he had his wife read all his end of the year evaluations he has his staff do and remove any negative comments so when he reads them, he only reads positive praise. I asked, “So, the point of your survey is not to improve yourself but to flatter yourself?” He responded, “Why would I want to read negative comments?” I said, “It’s not a negative comment if you become better from it. Feedback that shows how you can improve and thus makes this organization more prosperous because your employees are happier is a positive comment. By having your wife remove all constructive feedback, you can’t begin construction on building something better. Both you and your people are hurting by your fear of feedback that might momentarily sting. Look at it like a shot at the doctor’s office. It hurts for a few seconds, but makes you stronger forever. Take a shot and start seeking out constructive feedback so construction can begin on becoming better. That’s not negative, but always positive.” I keep a hard hat and a fake toy shot on my desk to remind me to seek feedback and sometimes have to give feedback that momentarily hurts, but makes me and them healthier long-term and remind me that there can be no construction to build better without seeking constructive feedback first.
All too often bosses look at feedback as something they give, instead of something they should be receiving. Feedback is not just what you say, but what you seek. When I was in college, I mailed a three page letter to a former high school basketball coach of mine. I was letting him know I had started coaching and seeing the other side opened my eyes. The first two pages were praising him and thanking him. Half of the third page was some things he did that I did not like, that hurt me instead of helping me, and how I hope he could make it better for his future teams. He ripped off that half page with my feedback and mailed the torn half page back to me with the message: next time you write to me I only want the praise. Throw this part away.”
We never spoke again after that and a few years later we both applied for the same job. I got it and he did not, and he has been bitter towards me ever since. Imagine if one of his players said to their coach when their coach was telling them how to get better: “I only want to hear praise, throw the rest away.” Most bosses don’t have the Gerald Ford Airport Feedbacknow mindset and thus they don’t grow. I had a CEO hire me once to do some leadership coaching for him because his team was in disarray and morale was low and he could not figure out why. He told me he was doing the things he always had done that used to work but his employees weren’t really responding to him anymore and the tension was rising.
The first thing I did after listening to his perspective on what he thought the situation was and what his goals were was to meet with his team without him in the room. He asked, “Why can’t I be in the room?” I said, because you are their boss and so they won’t be open and honest with what their issues are if you are in the room. You have to be open to the feedback I will bring you, but I can’t bring you the truth if you are in the room. He agreed.
After about an hour with his team, trust had been built and people really started opening up and breakthroughs were being made. Evidently, unbeknownst to me, the boss has been listening in behind the conference room door and burst into the room and started ripping into an employee who was in the middle of explaining how his feelings were hurt by something the boss had said to him in public and how he kept regularly mocking him in front of the whole team going on two weeks now. The boss, in a rage of defensiveness, starts ripping into this guy, and cussing out other people and yelling at them that he doesn’t need to change, but they need to change. He just ruined all the gains I made in starting to heal his team. What he didn’t understand, is acknowledging and listening to someone’s feelings is not the same as endorsing or agreeing to them. But only after someone feels heard, can they heal.
The work I had been doing was just sabotaged and ruined. The CEO and I met privately after his broken promise to me by coming into the room and I told him how his behavior was out of line and not only hurting his team but eroding any efforts of mine to help him. He yelled at me, “I didn’t hire you so you can go in there and have my team tell me that I am the problem. I sent you in there so you could tell them that they were the problem.” Needless to say, there was no helping this guy or his poor team. He, like far too many CEOs, suffer from not having a CFO Chief Feedback Officer.
Any leadership team that doesn’t have a Chief Feedback Officer is not serious about building a better organization, but only wants obedient workers who will do what they’re told and not question power. That kind of mindset might build the ego of the CEO, but it won’t build the business into something better. You can’t neglect the voice of your people and claim you care you about your people. The first act of leadership is listening. The highest act of leadership is loving those you lead. Mister Rogers once said, “Listening is where love begins.” In all the ways you will fail as a leader (and we all have failure points) never let it be a failure to show those you lead that you love them. Lead by listening. Seek out their feedback. Put on your hard hat and be ready for construction and remember the power of taking a shot (Doctor’s kind). If you don’t listen to them, why should they listen to you? Be better than a bathroom.
