In the early days of my career as a manager at a product development company, I got a Slack message from my boss: “Did you read the latest Glassdoor review about the culture here!? This isn’t good!”
I was taken by complete surprise. Anecdotal evidence showed that employees had embraced the changes I initiated and loved the company’s new direction. But Glassdoor ratings were a bellwether at this company. My company was proud of its high Glassdoor ratings, which tended to hover at a favorable 4 out of 5. Any poor review was highly scrutinized by department leaders. Apparently, it was my turn.
After my boss Slacked me, I braced myself and jumped on Glassdoor. In the review, the anonymous employee accused me of “destroying the engineering culture,” “pushing new agendas without fully understanding the implications,” and “hiring cronies” to sow division inside the organization with the ulterior motive of pushing out the old guard.
None of their beefs had anything to do with my management approach. I’m a fairly calm person, but the review had me seeing red. More than anything else, I was upset with my boss: he knew who I was, and how I worked. How dare he believe this — and use it to insinuate that something was wrong in my department? I knew my team better than anyone else, and I knew things were better than ever. Still, there was an employee who wasn’t thrilled, who had expressed it, and now I had to face my boss.
That led me to realize something. As a manager, I have always been the one who calms down employees when they are stressed, who coaches them on what not to do or say, who helps them learn how to deal with bad news. It was time to remind myself what of the lessons I shared with my teams. When bad news comes your way — particularly when a boss or a manager has come kind of criticism of how you’re doing your job, you want to be level-headed about how you receive the information. Reacting badly could just make it worse, putting you on shaky ground and potentially costing you standing in your team. It could jeopardize your chance of being considered for a project or even a promotion. Here’s what to do instead:
Practice doing the “pause.” When you get hit sideways by a scathing message, there is no need to reply that instant. If your boss really wanted an immediate response, they would have called you. I can almost guarantee that if you decide to reply to it in the moment, you will send something that you will regret later. Anger and frustration grow exponentially when you feed them.
Figure out if there is a real ask from your manager or not. The only situations where responding in text is appropriate are execution-related questions like project delays. Anything else, like personnel issues, requires a live conversation.
Start the conversation by acknowledging that your manager’s issue is a real issue worth solving. If you start the conversation by questioning your boss’s point of view, you won’t get far. Stay pleasant, stay empathetic, don’t get defensive, and start by giving your manager the benefit of the doubt. Managers are expected to absorb a lot of crap, and the higher you go the bigger the serving. I always assume my manager is as stressed as me, if not more.
Your goal in the first meeting is to dig for facts. Use the “five whys” technique to get to the real issue. This technique, developed by Toyota, asks why five times to attempt to get to the root cause (or close) to a problem. Once you have established the evidence your manager has, arrange a next meeting to either provide counter evidence or a plan to fix the issue your manager has raised.
If you dropped the ball, fess up and ask your manager to help prioritize. The key to making this all work is being self-critical all the way. If you get defensive, it will never work.
Try to get to the root of your manager’s behavior by establishing a relationship based on empathy and vulnerability. It might be that the real issue your manager is dealing with is hidden beneath the surface. Being a manager can often be lonely and the stress increases as you ascend corporate America. It is like climbing Mount Everest without an oxygen mask or a guide, surrounded by an all-encompassing, lifeless landscape.
Learning how to receive difficult feedback is a huge part of being in a workplace culture of trust, transparency, and growth within your organization. Of course the other part of that is how managers and bosses convey that feedback. They need to know how to communicate effectively and constructively. It’s a far better practice to avoid setting off alarm bells with a punctuation-laden message on Slack — which, believe me, I would never do.
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