I want to know what we can do better—and one employee won’t tell me.
EXPERT OPINION BY ALISON GREEN, INC.COM COLUMNIST @ASKAMANAGER
Inc.com columnist Alison Green answers questions about workplace and management issues—everything fromhow to deal with a micromanaging bossto how to talk to someone on your teamabout body odor.
I’m relatively new to management. All of my friends who have been people managers say the worst part of their day is dealing with people who do nothing but complain. That was a fear of mine as well, but instead I am finding myself complaining about the lack of complaints from my team.
My company and team are pretty lean
My company and team are pretty lean. Half of my team is fully remote. They’re high-performing and, I couldn’t have asked for a better group of people.
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However, like every other company on the planet, we sometimes do silly, stupid, or wasteful things. I have repeatedly asked my staff, in both team meetings and one-on-ones to complain in a variety of ways: “If you could change any one thing about System X, what would you want?” … “What’s frustrating you about work this week?” … “What can I do to make your day here easier?” … and the more direct, “Please bring me your problems and challenges. I know not everything is perfect, you have to have something that frustrates you, I want to help fix it.”
One of my employees, Frank, won’t complain. At all. About anything. Ever. He is a fantastic and reliable employee and I’m thankful to have him. He produces great work, but I cannot get him to identify anything we should improve at.
If I had to suggest a root cause for this, I suspect it’s because he has a military background and he’s very much a soldier — do as you’re told, don’t question authority, fall in line and get the job done. How do I coax him out of this while still respecting his personal moral code? How do I approach this so I can get quality feedback about things that could be scary for him to talk about, like me?
Source: www.inc.com
