Several years in a row I would go to meet with my leader for my annual review. I enjoyed my meetings with my boss generally, and I had always really enjoyed getting my annual review and having those conversation with my employees. I learned after the first year, that with this particular leader, it was a challenging experience.
I would get the list of my accomplishments and what I had done well the past year, which I greatly appreciated. But then would come the part I grew to dread. I would ask if there were any areas that I could improve or areas for growth. The comments would be – someone indicated that you were late a couple times to a meeting – and that is unprofessional, so you need to work on being more professional. Ok – what meeting, and I can likely share the story of the previous meeting ran late, someone caught me in the hall with an urgent question. I ran about 8 meetings a week and attended about 40 meetings a week. The likelihood I could think of a particular time when I was late in the last 52 weeks was not likely. Another piece of feedback I was given was: there was a meeting that you were in that you gave the impression that you favored one service line over another. That made others felt bad. Again – no meeting, no details and of course no opportunity to follow up to find out what the real issue was. This was very frustrating until I learned to just ignore it and no longer ask for suggestions for growth and development. There was no value if I could not understand where my growth could be.
So what are the real issues with vague feedback:
1. There is lack of clarity. It is hard for the employee to understand what the expectations are and how they might have not met those expectations/
2. Frustration and Confusion. As in my case, I felt there was some criticism there but didn’t know what it really was.
3. Missed opportunities for growth. I learned early on if we can give employees specific examples of concerns so that we could have a conversation on where there might be room for growth.
4. Loss of Motivation. As in my case, I stopped asking for suggestions for improvement or growth as it was just an exercise in frustration. I continued to get my own feedback elsewhere to enable growth, but not all employees will do this.
5. Lack of Trust – we question if our leaders are there to help us grow and develop as a professional, so the wall of distrust builds most often.
The good part of this experience is that it reminded me how important it is to give specific and timely feedback in order to support my employees to gain insight and continue to grow in their role and their profession. Let’s provide the best we can to our employees and support them in their professional development and avoid the vague trap.