The Feedback Freeze: Why Your Staff Won't Tell You What's Really Wrong

In this episode of the Healthy Church Staff Podcast, Todd Rhoades discusses the challenges of obtaining honest feedback from staff who may feel hesitant due to past defensive reactions or fear of being labeled negatively. Todd suggests strategies for creating a safer environment for feedback, emphasizing the importance of asking different questions, listening without immediate judgment, and viewing feedback as a means to improve systems rather than critiquing people.• Staff often hesitates to give honest feedback due to fear and past defensiveness.• Creating a safety net for feedback can encourage transparency.• Ask questions that invite constructive criticism, like 'What could work better?'• Resist immediate fixes; encourage staff to voice solutions.• Schedule specific times for feedback, separate from performance reviews.• Focus on improving systems, not critiquing individuals.• Honest feedback can lead to problem-solving before issues escalate.

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Transcript

Why Staff Hesitate To Speak Up

Questions That Invite Real Feedback

Build A Feedback Safety Net

The Payoff Of Honest Communication

Bottom Line And Subscribe

SPEAKER_00 0:08

You ask how the new initiative is going and the staff says, hey, great, everything's fine, but you can see the stress in their eyes. The late nights, the missed deadlines, the way that they change the subject when you bring the topic up to them. Your staff has feedback for you. You just don't give it to you. And it's frustrating. Let's talk about that today. Here on the Healthy Church Staff Podcast. Thanks for joining me. My name's Todd Rhodes. I'm one of the co-founders, along with Batsteen over at chemistrystaffing.com. All right, what's really happening behind the scenes when you ask how something's going and you kind of get the the everything's fine, but you just kind of sense that everything's not real fine. What's really going on behind the scenes? It could be that your staff wants to tell you things. They see what's not working with that project. They know where the gaps are because they're the ones working on them. But at the same time, something stops them every time that they open their mouth. It's not defiance, it's not disloyalty. It could be that it's just a little bit of fear that's wrapped up in respect for you. And that fear has some very specific sources that you might not have ever thought about or even think about right now. So let's talk about it. The source of that might be that when you've gotten feedback in the past, maybe you were a little bit defensive. Maybe not explosive. Maybe you're just explaining, maybe you're justifying why things are the way they are. But it could be that your staff has seen other staff members get labeled as negative for speaking up, and they've noticed which conversations get you energized and which ones drain you and which ones make you a little bit more defensive. So they edit themselves, they protect you from bad news. I see it all the time in churches. They protect themselves from being the messenger. Now, listen, you're not trying to shut them down. You're probably genuinely wanting their input when you ask, but your reactions in the past are teaching them what's safe to share right now. So how do you get beyond this? How do you get honest feedback when your staff doesn't want to give it? And maybe it's not even because you're defensive, maybe your staff just are afraid to tell you what they think. I think you need to start building in some type of a safety net. And it could be that you just need to start asking some different questions. So next time you want an update, don't say, hey, how's everything going? Try something that's a little just from a little bit different angle. Instead of, hey, how's it going? Say something like this. Hey, what's one thing? What's one thing on that project that could work better? And then when they give you some hard feedback, resist the urge to fix it immediately. Don't step in and try and fix it. Say something like this. Tell me more about that. And instead of, hey, here's why we do it that way. Okay? Give them the opportunity to speak into, they've already shared a concern with you. Give them the opportunity to be some of the solution. Thank them for bringing it up even in the first place before you solve it. And then what you can do after that is create some specific times for feedback. Now, these aren't performance reviews, these are times where they've already started to open up the the follow up with them and see how the project's going. And see what if they need any help, then you can offer help. Just don't try and solve it for them. And think about it from this point of view, that you're trying to improve systems, not critique people. Okay? Because here's what happens when you get this right. And just by doing some different questions at the very front end, you very well could hit a breakthrough with your staff because your staff is gonna become your early warning system. They're gonna tell you when things are wrong because they're not scared to tell you when things are wrong. They're gonna catch problems while they're still fixable. They already do, but you're gonna know about them now and you're gonna enable them to be able to fix them. And if they can't, then you can step in and help them. They're gonna bring you solutions, not just complaints or silence. That's even worse. Your team meetings can become strategy sessions instead of status updates, and you stop being surprised by staff departures because staff will depart if they don't feel like they've got your respect and your input. So here's today's bottom line when it comes to this. The feedback you're not getting is more dangerous than the feedback you don't want to hear. Your staff sees things that you don't, and you need to take advantage of that. Create the safety net for them to share it. I hope this has been helpful for you today. That's it for today's Healthy Church Staff Podcast. We have a bunch of really great topics coming up this week on the podcast. Tomorrow we're gonna talk about when your church staff speaks different languages. That'll be interesting. We're gonna talk about second chair leadership on Thursday, and then on Friday, we're gonna talk about uh-oh, what do you do when your budget gets cut mid-year? That never happens in churches. So I hope you'll join me every day. If you're not subscribed, go ahead and hit subscribe wherever you're listening to this podcast or watching it. That way you'll get an update every time we do a new episode, which is every single Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. All right, thanks so much for joining me. You can always reach out to me, Todd.church is my URL. You can send me an email there. And I'll look forward to talking with you, just you and me, right back here.