When working with staff, one of the behaviors that supervisors are frequently interested in improving is “accepting feedback appropriately.” It seems completely reasonable. Anyone who has worked awhile has run into a person they were trying to train who just would not accept any feedback. This can show up in a variety of ways. The person might get belligerent. The person might say they are doing that already. The person might blame others. The person might start crying. The person might “yes” you to death, then keep doing it the way they want to do it. It can be a difficult and frustrating experience. So, of course, supervisors are interested in improving this behavior.
A major problem comes for those of us who are interested in Poogi. One great source of improvement ideas comes from our staff. If you are giving staff a lot of reinforcement and feedback on “accepting feedback appropriately,” how likely is it that they are going to tell you when there is something wrong? Sure, it is easy to say that you also will reinforce staff when they suggest improvements in an appropriate manner. But that isn’t easy. Will staff really feel comfortable telling you about problems? Will staff tell you why the intervention you are suggesting won’t work? What if staff give you suggestions that are terrible?
It is very hard to get data on this potential negative side effect because how will you know when staff don’t tell you what’s bothering them? It will show up in places like high turnover and toxic gossip. But it is very difficult to know in the moment if it is happening.
Most supervisors think that they are approachable and staff will feel comfortable telling them about problems, but in my experience, usually they are completely wrong about that. I don’t claim to have the full answer to this problem, but I have two suggestions that I believe are good steps in the right direction. First, we need to recognize the importance of having conversations with staff. It is easy to get busy and dramatically underestimate how important it is to have a conversation rather than just communicate in brief interactions, texts, and emails. Second, is to have a culture of POOGI. If everyone really believes that you are interested in doing everything possible to improve the system and that you really care about this, you will increase the likelihood that staff will tell you about the problems. Will this completely solve the issue? No, more work is needed. But when I’ve done these two things well, the improvements are obvious.