Asking your team what you could do differently: and the mid-year conversation it makes possible.
Trained managers ask their teams for feedback far more often than untrained ones. The question is easy; the discipline is doing one thing with the answer and saying so.
On this page
The question, the silence, the one thing you change, and the mid-year conversation built from your notes rather than from memory.
In the CMI and YouGov study of UK managers (Taking Responsibility, 2023), the trained ones were markedly more likely than the untrained to ask their team for feedback. It is not a personality trait. It is a question asked at the end of a one-to-one, once a quarter, and then acted on.
The question, and how to survive the answer
- Ask it plainly at the end of a one-to-one: “What could I do more of, or less of, that would make your job easier?”
- Then say nothing. The first silence is the person deciding whether you mean it. Wait it out.
- Write the answer down in front of them, in their words. Do not defend, explain or correct. “Thank you, that is useful” is the only reply.
- Pick one thing and do it within a fortnight. Then tell them you did, and ask whether they noticed.
If the answer is “nothing, you are fine”
Make it smaller: “If you had to pick one thing I do that gets in your way, what would it be?” If it is still nothing, accept it this time and ask again next quarter. People answer the second or third time, once they have seen that the first answer did not cost anyone anything.
The mid-year conversation built from your notes
Every six months, set aside thirty minutes away from the weekly slot. Bring your notes: the feedback you gave, what they asked you for and what you changed, the stretch tasks and what they said they learned. Say what you have seen them get better at, what you would like to see next, and what you will do to help. Then ask them the same three about you. An appraisal built from six months of notes is credible; one reconstructed in the week before the form is due is a lottery, and everyone knows it.
Write it down
Per person, per quarter: what they asked for and what you changed. By the end of the year you will have the only honest record of how you manage that exists.
Asking is the free version of this. The independent version, where your team, your manager and others answer to us rather than to you and you get a forward-looking plan back, is FeedForward 360.
The clearest thirty minutes in your week.
Send us your last engagement survey and we’ll show you what it’s missing – no charge, no deck, no obligation. Or start with a pilot or a 30-minute conversation.