MBA1021 How To Get Feedback About You From Your Team

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Heyo. Welcome to the $100 NBA show. Hard hitting Business building truths for you every single day with our daily 10 minute business lessons for the real world. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher Omar Zenholm. I'm also the co founder of the Hundred Dollar MBA, a complete business training and community online over at 100mba.net and in today's lesson, you will learn how to get feedback about you from your team. You as the owner, as the founder, as the leader of your business, you need feedback. You need to make sure that you're getting better and better. Being a business owner is all about making refinements, fine tuning how you run your business and the best people to tell you how to do that. The best people to show you how you can improve are the people that are affected most by your leadership. Your team, your employees, your staff, whatever you want to call them. But getting honest, straightforward feedback can be tricky, especially when you're talking about the big boss. The goal here is to improve. So we don't want lip service to so how do we get people that work for you to tell you the truth about how you're doing so you can improve and your business can get to the next level? That's what you'll learn in today's episode. So let's get down to business. The dynamic between you and your staff is a tricky one even for those who have been working with you for quite some time. You might have built a rapport and you're friendly and they like working for you, but they may not be totally comfortable giving you honest feedback, telling you things about Your management style or how the business is being run, the procedures that you have, feedback about the product or the service that you offer, or their overall job satisfaction. They may not want to rock the boat, they don't want to upset you, or even they might fear their job will be affected in some way. But how do you get the truth? Well, that's what we're going to get to the bottom of in today's episode. Now, I've tried all kinds of different strategies when it comes to getting honest feedback about myself from my team. I want to start off with some of the strategies that didn't work for me. I'm hoping that sharing these things will save you some time and energy. One of the things I found that was very ineffective is asking for feedback when you're one on one. Now with all our teammates, we have, you know, evaluations, whether it's a first six months evaluation or an annual evaluation. And in that chat, in that video conference, in that whatever, there's some time at the end of that discussion where I ask them, can you give me some feedback about your experience working for our company as well as some feedback about our relationship? And usually it was just dead silence, or usually it was just like, I'm having a good time or everything's great, everything's fine. And usually it's just dead silence. Or at the very best they say, no, everything's great, everything's fine. I even tried this question via email or via survey. But when it's one on one, there's just too much pressure and spotlight on them. It's a little bit awkward. They can't escape from the moment. And it takes a certain type of person to be able to give you that one on one feedback. And most people just shy away from that confrontation. Now this may work, getting feedback one on one with some higher ups in your team, maybe like a co founder, a president, you know, a senior manager, somebody actually sympathizes with your situation and looks for feedback for themselves as a leader. But often you want to get feedback from every member from the team and you want to hear straight from them, whether it's your customer service agents, whether it's your writers, your bloggers, whether it's your developers, whatever it is. As the leader of the team, you want to know how it is to be working for your company. What are some improvements that you can make as a leader. So getting feedback when you're in a one on one usually don't work. And that's my experience. That question that I ask at the End of the session really is a waste of time. Now let me share with you what I feel does work. Now, I want to preface this by saying that this does take some time. It takes repetition, especially when you're transitioning from not doing this to doing this, or I should say doing something else versus doing this. And I find that when you have a team meeting where several of their teammates are present, it's a lot easier to get feedback. The dynamics are completely different. Now you have to set this up so people understand you're expecting to get feedback. So if you have a regular team meeting or a staff meeting with your team, whether it's once a month or once a quarter, and this could be a department or it could be your whole team, depending on the size of your team. But prior to the staff meeting, you gotta send out an agenda. Agendas are so important when you have meetings because you want to set expectations and you want your team to be prepared. And on that agenda is an agenda item that says feedback. And you got to get specific on that agenda and say, I will be asking for feedback about working here, about how you like working for us, or my relationship with you. And we'll be going around the room or going around the video conference asking for your feedback. So right off the bat, they know in advance, a few days in advance, that they're going to be expected to speak up. So they're already going to start thinking about some of the feedback they want to give, some of the things they've been thinking about. And you can ask specific questions on the agenda so you can help them a bit. Questions that you want answers to, like how satisfied are you from scale to 1 to 10 with your job? Or you can get really specific and let's say, for example, you run a software company and you want to ask how do you like our procedure when it comes to fixing bugs? Or how do you like the new software you're using to answer customer support tickets. Now, when it's time for the meeting and you're sitting down with your team and you get to that point in the meeting where you're going to ask for feedback, it's helpful to give a heads up to one of your managers, somebody that is comfortable with going first. Remember the first time I did this, I didn't do the heads up. I didn't actually give my manager a heads up. But luckily they kind of understood that it was their job to kind of go first. And she went first, which was great. Now by somebody going first, it gets the ball rolling. It's actually a message to everybody else that, hey, it's okay to give feedback. I could be honest. And it gives them a chance to see your reaction that you're not going to be barking down their throat. And they are receptive the feedback and you're actually welcoming it and you're thanking them for speaking up. So you got your manager going first. They're giving their feedback. And your job isn't to solve the problem right then and there. Your job is just to take on the feedback, take, take some notes and acknowledge that, hey, I heard you, and that this is something I'm definitely going to consider. Sometimes when they give you feedback, you may be able to even say, hey, that's something I've been thinking about, or that's something we're working on that I haven't mentioned yet. Here are some details. Now, once your manager is gone, you can just go to the next person that's next to them, or you can go alphabetical or whatever. And remember, you've given them enough time to prepare to think about this, and they've actually seen an example before. It's time for them to talk. So you're not really putting them on the spot. And they have the support of their peers around them. They're kind of like, yeah, thanks for saying that, because I've been thinking about that as well. Whenever I try this, I get the best feedback. I get so much honest feedback. I don't get those, everything's fine and I'm doing dandy. There's always room for improvement. There's always things that can get better. And sometimes when you go around, you'll get somebody who says, you know, actually, I'm doing okay. I think everything's fine. If I had to pick something, if I had to say something needs improvement, it would be this area. But it's not a big deal. And I do get that, but I do jot it down. Because, hey, if we can improve and make that person's job better and more, you know, enjoyable, why not? Once your meeting's over, you gotta follow up. You gotta show your team that their feedback didn't just, you know, go in one ear and go out the other. How do you do that? Because how you handle that feedback after the meeting is really gonna make a big difference about their impression of you and their overall impression of working for your company.

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All right, you had your team meeting. You got some really good feedback from around the table and around the room. What now? Now one of the simplest things you can do is send out an email or post a message on whatever your project management tool is, Basecamp, Trello, whatever it is, to the team, to the members that were at the meeting with some notes, some simple bullet points will do. This is going to take you five minutes, but you're going to acknowledge that, hey, I wrote down these pieces of feedback that you gave me and you don't have to get really specific and say, you know, Barbara said this and James said that you can just bullet point all the pieces of feedback that you're going to be working on. You can just simply say, thanks for all the great feedback and this is definitely something I'll be working on in the coming weeks. What this does is that it acknowledges that their voice matters so that you're listening to them and that you really want to improve the business and improve their quality of life when it comes to work. And there's just something about when you write something down, it makes it real. It also holds you accountable. You actually want to implement, you want to actually do something with this feedback. And by having this written down somewhere, you can refer to it and you can start checking things off based on how you are improving those situations. I know this seems really small, but it makes a huge difference to your team. Remember, your job is to lead, is to make this work environment for them as pleasant as possible and as efficient as possible. And their feedback is sort of your to do list. So it shows that you're willing to work and roll up your sleeves and do your job. We all can look back at our careers, at our work experiences, and think of a boss that took no interest in us and took no interest in improving things, just did the status quo to get their paycheck by. Actually, you don't want to be that kind of boss right now. Writing things down, writing those bullet points, those minutes, and sharing it with the team, that's a good initial step, but you need to update them as you progress. So if you make a dent, if you actually make an improvement and act on one of the pieces of feedback that they give you, let them know. That's why it's such a good idea to post this in some sort of form or project management tool like Basecamp or Trello, like I mentioned, because you can follow up and you can add to the thread and say, hey, update guys, when it comes to this item or this thing, this is a change I've made. This is what I've looked to do. You guys were unhappy with the software we're using for customer service. I did some research and here are some two alternatives I think might make you happy or might make the job easier or better or more efficient. Here are two short videos explaining each one. Give me your feedback. Tell me which one you think is better. Again, this shows you're taking action. It also gives credibility and importance to their feedback. So when you ask for feedback the next time you're like, okay, I shouldn't just say anything because this person is actually going to do something with what I say. So I got to think a little bit hard about the feedback I give. All in all, I find this to be an incredibly healthy exercise to do with your team. It brings you closer together and also helps you keep turnover down. Everybody hates turnover in business. You want to keep your employees happy and don't waste any time trying to replace people that leave you now. Sometimes it's going to happen. It's inevitable. People move on, people retire, whatever it is. But you want to do your best to optimize your workforce, your staff, and keep them where they're at. Thank you so much for listening to the $100 MBA show I hope you found today's lesson useful. If you did, let me know. Let me know in an itunes rating and review by leaving us an itunes, a rating and a review, you enter our weekly random draw we call Free Ride Friday. Every Friday, we give away a lifetime membership to one of our programs. This month, we're giving away Easy course over at easycourse co. It's a $500 course on how to launch your own online course. In 30 days. It's yours for free. If you win our random draw, all you gotta do is leave us an itunes rating and review and listen on Friday to see who won the free ride. Once you leave us a review, you enter the draw every week until you win. All right, before I go, I want to leave you with this. One of the things I had to learn over the years when asking for feedback is you really need to make a conscious effort to check your ego at the door when you ask for feedback. It's not time for you to get defensive or explain why you made certain decisions. I used to try to explain things too much? No, it's time to listen, jot things down and just absorb what is going on. It's their time to talk and express themselves, not yours. All right. Thank you so much for listening to the $100 NBA show. I'll check you in tomorrow's episode Free Ride Friday. I'll see you then. Take care.

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