Not getting feedback at work? It’s your mom’s fault.

Last week I had lunch with a client. When I returned from lunch I saw a friend who told me I had something stuck in my teeth.  I was embarrassed and wondered why my client hadn’t told me.

It’s quite possible he hadn’t noticed.  In fact, knowing this guy and how much work I’ve done with his firm on being candid, it’s probable he hadn’t noticed. But we all know people who notice and say nothing. We could walk around all day with toilet paper on our shoe, lipstick on our teeth, or our fly down, and the people around us won’t tell us.

If you read my blog weekly, you already know that people have been trained not to tell you the truth.

But I think there is more preventing people from telling us the truth. Complete this sentence:  “If you have nothing nice to say, _________________________________. Who told you that?  Your mother!!!

I do think there’s something to this. We’re raised to believe that it’s not nice to say something to another person that isn’t positive.  And in the past, when we did speak up, it’s likely the other person got defensive.  So it’s no wonder that we don’t readily give people bad news.

Here are five tips for getting feedback from the people around you:

1. Establish a core team of people who will always tell you the truth. These can be friends, coworkers, clients, vendors, your boss, etc.
2. Give people permission, to be honest with you.  “Let’s make a deal. I always want you to tell me the truth. If I have something stuck in my teeth, or I’m inappropriately dressed for a meeting, or I’m doing something that damages my reputation, I want you to tell me.”
3. Make it easy to tell you the truth. “I promise no matter what you tell me and how hard it is to hear, I will say thank you. I won’t get defensive. And if I do, I’ll apologize and try to do better next time.”
4. Offer to do the same for them. “And if you want me to do the same thing for you, I’m happy to do it.”
5. Periodically check in with people and ask for feedback.  “A few months ago I asked you to tell me anything I said, did, or wore that got in the way of my success.  Is there anything you’ve seen that you want to tell me?”

Every time you ask for feedback and take it graciously, you train the person to give you more feedback. On the contrary, every time you get defensive, you make it hard for people to give you feedback, making it likely they won’t do it again.

If you don’t want to walk around looking silly all day, create a safe environment where co-workers can tell the truth.

Seven Ways to Be Easy to Work With

It’s often not the work we do that makes work hard; sometimes it’s the people we work with that makes work harder than it has to be.

Below are seven practices that distinguish people we want to work with from those we wish would go work for a competitor.

How to Be Easy to Work with Tip Number One: The simplest thing you can do right now to be easy to work with is to put all of your contact information in your email salutation in a format that can be easily copied and pasted or called from a cell phone, aka not an image.

How to Be Easy to Work with Tip Number Two; Update your out-of-office message when you return from a trip.

How to Be Easy to Work with Tip Number Three: Accept and deny meeting requests when you receive them, even if you’re not sure you’ll be able to attend. Knowing who can and can’t attend helps the meeting organizer plan. You can always update your status if something changes.

How to Be Easy to Work with Tip Number Four: Reply to emails within 48-hours, even if you don’t have the information for which you’re being asked. Tell people you got their message and when they can expect to receive the information they asked for.

How to Be Easy to Work with Tip Number Five: Don’t gossip. I could say a lot about this, but you don’t have time to read it. So I won’t. I’ll leave it at this, don’t talk about other people when they’re not present and you’ll be someone people will line up to work with.

How to Be Easy to Work with Tip Number Six: Do the things you say you will do, when you say you will do them. When you realize you can’t keep a commitment, tell people as soon as you know, so they can plan. Most of us don’t want to admit that we’re going to miss a deadline, so we wait until the 11^th hour to tell the people who will be impacted. Waiting to renegotiate a deadline puts people in a worse position than telling people as soon as you know.

How to Be Easy to Work with Tip Number Seven: Avoid doing the things that you know annoy others. I’ll get us started with a list of the things that most commonly annoy people at work. Please add a comment to the blog with all the things I missed. It will be fun! Sanctioned venting. Who can turn that down?

• Leaving dishes in the sink like mommy works there
• Taking phone calls from a cubicle via speaker phone
• Almost finishing a pot of coffee, but not making more
• Listening to music and videos without headphones from your desk
• Having lots of regular visitors or loud phone conversations from your cubicle
• Surfing the internet versus working
• Leaving your alerts on your cell phone, so everyone in your vicinity knows each time you get a text message

I could go on, but I’ll leave the rest to you. Add a comment with the simple things people can start or stop doing to be easy to work with!