Management and Leadership Surveys...

Soldato
Joined
11 Sep 2009
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France, Alsace
I used to tailor my writing style for the freetext survey elements, flattening it out into almost bullet points (very little use of commas, brackets etc). To someone who knew me it could probably still be attributed if they looked hard enough, but there wasn't really a confrontational culture anyway so worst case scenario would be having an honest conversation about perceived issues.
Ha! I mean, I didn't really give two turds, I was happy to discuss it in person as I had valid points! It's just the whole way it's done in a survey like that which is stupid.
 
Man of Honour
Joined
25 Oct 2002
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31,707
Location
Hampshire
One thing we did was have a neutral facilitator to gather feedback in person from the teams, in case people didn't feel comfortable giving feedback directly to the leadership team.
Still not perfect though, as there's always a risk things get lost in translation. You can dance around issues all you want, but sometimes the only way to truly get the message across is direct conversation between the people that understand the topic.

Finally, as a manager I always valued constructive criticism, as it helps me see my blind spots and know what areas to focus on. There was the odd occasion I might take umbrage to feedback if I felt it was genuinely unjustified - for example I once had feedback that I was a bit too set in my ways and wasn't letting one of my team try their own ideas, when I felt it was kind of the opposite, I was actually giving them a fairly free reign to change things even when I didn't 100% agree with the approach, in some cases to the detriment of the wider team.
 
Soldato
Joined
6 Mar 2008
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10,078
Location
Stoke area
they are absolutely useless, I've had them before some are great some just make up any old nonsense and some people will put things down that will damage your career. Mine was "X isn't working well with Y as Y now has a position above him and it's obvious he's jealous!"

In actuality, I had turned down the job that Y now had, and then coached Y to get the job so he went from being directly over me to being my manager as well. Thankfully Y corrected it :D

We've also had some bloke phone around our business asking for feedback on the company, directors etc. It's totally anonymous... so how the hell does he have my phone number and called me my name when he phoned up? How do I know what I say won't be recorded against my name?

You are much better having an environment where you can talk openly about gripes directly with the person. I've just told my manager I'm not impressed after he emailed out a comment about someone in my team that I'd written in a 1-2-1 meeting. Nothing too bad but it was about him refusing his vaccines and causing issues with getting the team in. But to send it directly too him and ask about caused massive issues with him demanding to see anything written about him in the future.
 
Man of Honour
Joined
17 Oct 2002
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29,074
Location
Ottakring, Vienna.
As a leader, I value feedback from my team - I'm not bothered whether that's in person directly or via an anonymous feedback tool.

I would absolutely want my team members to be honest with me, and I wouldn't (and never have) used their feedback against them.
 
Soldato
Joined
21 Oct 2012
Posts
10,832
Location
London/S Korea
Ericsson U.K. used to do these surveys annually and the response to the first one was honest feedback and magically, the teams which pointed out management failings suddenly got given additional performance targets to improve the team’s performance.

Every year afterwards, the response was the survey equivalent of the “This is fine” meme where the character is drinking coffee in a burning room.

It was hilarious watching HR’s brains explode trying to figure out why everyone said it was great and yet staff were leaving in droves.
We had that as well. People were very honest on the first one which caused a bad reaction to those teams that didn’t respond as expected. Funnily enough our team went from bottom on the 1st one to top on the 2nd only a few months later. :rolleyes:

If you want real honesty from people then get them in the pub. It’s far more productive and builds a lot of trust.
 
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