OST LEADERS (the less than great ones) can become afraid of learning their employees’ true feelings towards the company and its overall structure. In turn, they shy away from even initiating such conversations and asking the important questions.

Strong leaders, on the other hand, happily ask these questions with an eye on making things better for their team. When everyone is heard and acknowledged, only then can a leader make the right decisions and give each employee what he or she needs. If you don’t ask, who will?

1. What is your overall satisfaction with your team?
This question is pretty straightforward, but perhaps the most powerful. As a manager, it allows you to gain access to the big picture—providing key understanding of what’s working and what isn’t, directly from your staff. It’s no secret that dissatisfaction with overall team performance is a primary reason for top talent to exit. Taking the initiative to ask your employees for feedback, and frequently, will not only provide you with valuable insight but put you in a position to rectify concerns before the damage is done.

2. If the best place you’ve ever worked was a 10, please rate your current company.
You’ll either be the 10, or you won’t. If you are not, don’t become defensive or offended, ask what specifically was better at your employee’s previous company. Then compare it to your current team and ask yourself, as the leader, would it be possible to adopt some of those successful strategies?

3. How well does your leader do with supporting and developing you? (Consider time, tools and training.)
One of the top responses on employee satisfaction surveys, across the board, is how well we do with making our people a better version of themselves. If you are not actively investing in your employees, they will eventually move on to find someone who will. Do you give them enough of your time? Do you give them the right tools to compete and win? Do you train them in new skills and technologies that allow them to be more effective?

4. How well does your leader hold you accountable?
This is very important to a high-performance culture. Highly engaged and highly accountable teams outperform those who lack both. When you have the right people in the right seats, the best employees don’t mind being held accountable for their actions and their results. Those standards are what make them feel “elite.” After all, who wants to be part of a team that anyone can be a part of? If they are accountable, they know others are held accountable too, and that’s one of the main ingredients to employees giving their best day in and day out.

5. How well does your leader hold OTHERS accountable?
This question smokes out if your employees feel like there is any favoritism or double standards in play at your company. Obviously, you want to treat everyone on the team the same, but sometimes that doesn’t happen. Oftentimes you’ll discover that leadership and the “favorites” get a pass and the troops get the stick. When leaders are held to a higher standard and not a special one, you’ll find that it’s much easier to get buy-in and acceptance for so many things that seem tough to get. This is particularly relevant to family-owned businesses, where your last name matters more than it should.

6. How well does your leader communicate with you?
When discussing performance issues with their employees, I often find leaders have failed to communicate clear expectations and a clearly defined process of how they expect their employees to perform. The leaders are then bewildered that the task hasn’t been accomplished to their satisfaction. Leaders need to ensure that proper communication has been achieved before moving on to work on other things. An easy way to accomplish this is to simply ask, “OK, do you feel like you’ve got it?” (Almost always expect a “yes” answer, even when it’s really a “kind of” or a “no.”) Then say, “Great! Now echo that back to me, just to make sure I’ve explained this well to you?” By doing so, you’ll then have the opportunity to get crystal clear with them. Without this important step, prepare for some fuzziness in your employees’ results.

7. How likely are you to recommend your company to a friend that is looking for work?
This is like the Net Promoter Score for you as a leader, and for the company at large. If they were at a BBQ with their friends on a weekend and the topic came up, how do you think your team would respond? Would your employee say, “You’d be lucky to get hired. My company is world-class!” Or would the conversation be more like, “Well, if you can get past a ton of B.S., politics and red tape, you can grind out a living just like I do!”

8. Rate your team “health.”
To give you a gauge for their response, a 10 is when trust is very high, there is healthy conflict, nothing is personal, when something is called out for not being ideal, no one gets defensive or upset because everyone is there to make things as good as they can possibly be. A one is when people are not speaking the truth, everyone is walking around on eggshells, and it’s better for your career to not rock the boat and to go with the flow.

9. Do you feel adequately recognized for your contributions to the team?
This is another top response that I see on employee satisfaction surveys. Employees work hard, sometimes stay late, give their all and go above and beyond. If they aren’t recognized for these sacrifices, they will usually stop these activities because they don’t seem to matter. Sometimes others unjustly steal credit for their work, or leaders are simply oblivious to their contributions. What is your format to make sure this doesn’t happen at your company?

10. How likely are you to seek advancement at your company?
This is a great way to identify your next leaders. It also speaks to how your leaders are perceived by the staff. If they feel your managers are a bit of a joke, are clueless and cannot imagine themselves being one of those types, you might have a bigger issue on your hands. Not everyone wants to be a leader, and that is perfectly OK. If they say no, ask why, but don’t try to “sell” management to them. It’s better to understand what their reasons are and to respect them.

The sum of all of these questions together will give you valuable information on where you are doing well and where needs immediate attention. If you ask these 10 questions every 90 days, you can compare your team’s last quarter responses and spot any problem areas before things get too caustic to your beloved culture. Again, if you don’t ask, you are guessing, and that might not work out well for you, or for your team!

* * *
This post is by Chris Hallberg. Chris is ranked #9 on Inc.’s “Top 50 Leadership and Management Experts,” is a seasoned business consultant, turnaround expert, United States Army veteran, and author of The Business Sergeant’s Field Manual. You will find his blog at Business Sergeant.

* * *
Like us on Instagram and Facebook for additional leadership and personal development ideas.

* * *

 

Posted by Michael McKinney at 08:05 AM
Permalink | Comments (0) | This post is about Human Resources