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“My manager doesn’t share much feedback with me”

If this is how you’ve been feeling, continue reading. In this post I will share how you can get meaningful feedback that will help you grow and achieve your career or personal goals.

Employee Perspective

I’ve been an Individual contributor for the most of my career so far (12+ years) and have had more than 5 manager changes. And many of them didn’t share any meaningful feedback on an ongoing basis besides “keep doing what you are doing!” or “you’re doing good, keep it up!” without giving any specifics of what was good, and what I could improve or what I should do to aim higher. Often the feedback would be shared, either in the annual performance review or when we were discussing an overdue promotion. And at that point in time, my mind was not ready to listen and work on the feedback, because rewards and promotion were at stake.

In such situations you feel like “Well! What happened to keep doing what you are doing!”. You feel let down and kept in the dark; and now it’s too late to do anything about it. I mean, the fate of rewards/promo in this moment seems to be locked, although you have the opportunity to show improvements for next year’s performance review. We all have heard “There should be no surprises in the annual review!”, well this is what it is all about!

Although it’s manager’s job to keep giving constructive feedback on an ongoing basis, most managers don’t do it proactively and there are several reasons behind it, which I’ll touch upon when touching upon Manager’s perspective below. BTW, I will suggest things that you can do, to get your manager to give you some useful feedback early on.

That said, a manager must give timely feedback, so that the employee has time to work on it. Giving timely feedback is to give someone the opportunity to work on it, before they are evaluated on their performance, down the line.

Lack of constructive and ongoing feedback often creates blind spots for ICs, where they don’t know what they are doing well and where they need to make changes to, for improved results.

Note that feedback is not only about areas of improvement, but it should also capture what one is already doing well.

Because only then, they will know what to do more of, and what to reconsider/change. If managers only focus on what’s wrong, employees may start over indexing on areas of improvement and stop doing the good things they used to do. More on this later.

Manager’s Perspective

Now that I am a manager, I talk to different employees in my team; I often see different reactions to feedback; which range from “Hey just so you know am not looking for higher rewards or a promotion!” to “I’d love some feedback on my work. But only when I ask you for it!”.

One time, in the manager feedback form, an employee wrote “Sometimes letting things play out on their own, is better than coaching in the moment.” And another time an employee said “I’d like to know the harshest truth about my performance, no matter how hard it is for me to hear!”

Basically, Employees exist on the whole spectrum of loving feedback to hating feedback. The meta point here is, that even if your manager intends to give you feedback, they may be walking on eggshells (especially a good manager), while choosing when or who to give feedback! Without employees showing an intent to want feedback, it’s next to impossible for the manager to know who’s ready for it! Or What’s an individual’s feedback acceptance tolerance! In other words, who’ll show Growth Mindset! Yes, Growth Mindset! One approach doesn’t work with all employees. By the way, there are always managers, who just dump feedback every now and then, are over-critical, and only care about project goals; but don’t worry! We’ll touch upon how ideally managers should be giving feedback, below.

So can both of you do something about it!

Of course! You can and your manager can too. Let’s dive into that.

Manager’s ToDos

Let’s start with what manager can do better. If you really care about doing the right thing, then

1. Tap into your employees’ motivations: Just like our projects have goals, employees have life and career goals too. Employees thrive when their goals can be met, while working on the project. And projects get delivered, as a byproduct. There’s always something in the project for the organization but think about what’s in it for the employee! Because a motivated employee delivers great results.
2. Learn to care about what they really want out of this job: You may only care about delivering the project on time; but if you don’t care for your employees you are going to lose them sooner or later. Genuinely care about each member of your team, their well-being, their motivations (as mentioned above) and what they really want out of this job in short and long term. This is where empathy plays a key role. Be their ally in their career and show that you care.
3. Put them into the right job/role that fits their motivation: If the role or project you want to assign to an employee doesn’t fit into their motivations; change it immediately. The key responsibility of a manager is to align career/personal interest with the business opportunities of your team. If you treat them all like tiles of Tetris, and just fit a piece wherever you think it fits best, you are not going to be able to build a great high performing team.
4. Empower the employee: The role of a manager is not just to dump problems-to-solve on their employees, but also empower them with the right tools, resources, clarity of goals, definition of success, required trainings for the role, timely guidance and coaching. Unblock them by providing support on things that are outside their circle of influence (simply put, above their pay-grade).
5. Gather data/observations for both good and what-can-be-better: It doesn’t mean you put your employees on surveillance. It just means, you don’t jump to conclusions when you don’t see results being delivered. You just observe how your employee is tackling the challenges of the given project, and how they are navigating them; sometimes making the right choices and sometimes not so much. But when you are gathering observations, you are not concluding, that is, you have not yet decided that the choice they made was right or wrong.
   You must also note down what’s good (as mentioned earlier). Employees need to know what they are doing well, so that they can do more of it. Don’t be just critical in identifying areas of improvement, applaud the good work too.
   Finally, patiently let things play out, because sometimes the employee will self-correct and that’s a great sign of growth-mindset. In those cases, you’d not even need to give them feedback and you let them learn from their own mistakes. Stay out of these scenarios, to let the employee blossom on their own.
6. Create monthly/bi-monthly checkpoints to reflect together: Regardless of an employee doing good or bad; you should always have a recurring check-in in-between your midyear or annual performance reviews. Every 2 months would be good enough, so that you both can sit together and share your observation with one another. Mind you, you are only sharing your observations, not conclusions. In these conversations, your aim as a manager is to let the employee reflect on how they did in a certain project and what they learned from it. If they invite you to share your thoughts, share your “observations” with specific examples and ask them their reasoning behind their actions. This will give you the opportunity to learn the whole truth, because you are naturally not part of every conversation the employee is having with others in the team or project, and you are not observing every single activity/action the employee took to correct the situation. May be, the suggestion you were planning to give, the employee has already exercised that path and haven’t had success. This is a conversation, where you find the truth together.
7. Lastly, discover the final set of improvement areas together: When you both are done sharing your observations and exchanging your suggestions; agree on a specific area of improvement for the employee and then give them resources/trainings/mentors/guidance and most of all, Coaching on how to get better at it. In the next check-in, you’ll circle back on this and see how the employee is improving on it.
8. Unsolicited feedback (Deliver only necessary feedback when employee is not seeking any): At times, you may run into employees who are not as driven or want to hear regular feedback. In these cases, it becomes really tricky to share your observations with someone or give feedback, when they don’t seem to be open to it. In such cases, if you have done #1 to #5, and you believe that their performance is not up to their role’s/level’s expectation, you must not wait till the annual performance review to deliver the hard news. Deliver it at least 3 months in advance or at mid-year performance discussion, so that they have time to improve on it. No matter how hard it is for them to hear, as long as you keep the discussion objective, the employee deserves a reminder for improving on their downward trending performance. It is a manager’s job to give feedback on an ongoing basis, so while it is respectful of you to give employee space for their own learning and growth and wait for them to ask for feedback; it is also crucial for you to be proactive, when someone’s on thin ice and they don’t know it but you do.
   How to keep things objective?
   Check-in with yourself first, what is it that you see they are not doing well. Is it something you personally want them to do or is it something their role or their level at the company expects of them? Have you empowered them enough? Could you have done something more to set them up for success? If you’ve done everything you should have, and the employee is not meeting role/level expectations, just base the conversation on those expectations and how their work is not meeting them and the business need. Leave your personal expectations at the door when you enter this conversation.

Employee ToDos

If you’ve read the Manager’s perspective above, you’d know instantly that you can play a key role in making sure your manager does share feedback with you and does it timely. If you really want honest and constructive feedback, then

1. Share your career/personal goals — If your manager is not initiating these conversations, you need to do so. Tell your manager what your goals are for the next 6 months and ask for opportunities/projects that will help you meet those goals. It could be a promotion that you want, or it could be a certain skill you want to develop. Share it candidly and respectfully and ask for their support.
2. Show the intent to learn or grow — In your 1:1s you should be open with your manager and let them know that you are open for feedback. Without this, they have no way of knowing that you want it. Ask questions like “In the past 2 months, what do you think I am doing well, that I should continue doing? And what is it that I need to reconsider or change?” Bonus points, if you give your manager a heads-up that you’ll be asking them this question in the upcoming 1:1, so that they can come prepared.
3. Create psychological safety — Your manager is as human as you are. They feel scared and uneasy too, when sharing critical feedback. If they have some tough feedback for you, don’t scratch them like an angry cat. Actively listen to what they have to say and ask probing questions. For example, if the feedback is that you could have shared your progress updates with stakeholders throughout the project; ask them “What would be the best way to do so? What’s the right frequency? Who are all the interested parties beyond you/me and X & Y? Were the standup updates lacking clarity?” And ask these questions with curiosity and say things like “I really want to make sure I get better at this, please tell me more!” The more curiosity and openness you show, the more your manager will be able to guide.
4. Growth mindset & Gratitude — Once you agree with the feedback and you understand where the feedback is coming from and what are the next steps; show an intent to improve on it. Ask your manager to circle back in 6 to 8 weeks and check your progress on this feedback. And finally thank them for sharing their perspective. It takes a lot of courage and hard work to gather observations keeping your motivations and career goals in mind; and then bringing them to a conversation with the risk of being blasted at. Acknowledge the effort.
5. Regularly Check-in & Show Progress— Often times, employees just stop at #4 and never bring up the topic again. Don’t do that! Whatever feedback you both agreed to, put it on a sticky note and stick it to your monitor so that you don’t forget it. Actively work on improving and in 6–8 weeks, invite your manager for a reflection. As a manager I can attest that when an employee does that, it shows how committed they are for improving and they immediately earn more trust.
6. When you don’t agree with the feedback: it is possible that your manager doesn’t know the whole truth. In those cases, share your view point respectfully and ask for their opinion. If you both can’t reach a consensus, give them the benefit of doubt and ask for more time to reflect on the feedback, “Can I circle back with you next week on this feedback? I would love some more time to reflect.”

In summary, the one take-away you should have from this is; that it’s a partnership between you and your manager. And it’s not only on you or only on them; to give you feedback. So be intentional and be proactive. Ultimately, the feedback is only going to help you get better. There’s more incentive in this process for you than there is for your manager.

Drive your growth yourself.