Lose the Excuses - Make Your People Feel Seen and Heard

I expect most of us reading this haven’t even seen it even if we lived in London as we’re mostly working remotely but there’s a TFL campaign running in the tube that goes beyond “Cover your face” and “Be Kind” - it talks about patience, resilience, empathy and often returns to “make sure others feel seen”. Much as we love to hate TFL every time they pull out those overcrowding barriers and make our commute a living hell, they constantly get it right on human topics and they are leading the way both internally and to the public. 

Feeling heard and seen is a far cry from how employees should really feel understood or cared for, but it’s the absolute and mandatory first step to it. We’ve spoken about this many times before and I stand by how we said: 

“By the time we systematically feel like we are never being heard, it has already become such a big problem that it can’t be salvaged as we have resorted to completely disengaging emotionally with the team and its leader and we are simply going through the motions on automated pilot.”

It was a problem before Sudden-Remote, it’s a bigger problem today.  

Everyone is edging closer and closer to burnout, complete disengagement and a depression epidemic which, make no qualms about it, is going to immediately reflect in $ signs for companies who chose to ignore it. It may not be evident as we go through the motions and we have moments of glee and perceived normality, but we are collectively approaching the point where we will be completely out of any resilience reserves. 

Had the pandemic found enterprises everywhere in a better position in terms of their monumental “human debt” then they would have already had people work fundamentals in place and we would have been in a different place today. They would have kept mighty close to their employees and truly held their hand and deeply supported them through it , instead of leaving them to their own devices to figure out both work and life while hoping for the best. Sadly, they did the latter.  

The past few months would have been a fest of over communication if they had been in a different place - a flurry of constant, kind and understanding questions asked; a bevvy of meaningful meetings across teams and cutting through hierarchy; new connections created, old connections forged; true check-ins; hands-on suggestions of how to get through it, common design session of creating the new reality together, etc. 

No one had that. Not even Silicon Valley types. We were all too paralysed. Then again they didn’t need it. They had high Psychological Safety in teams already which meant those teams could to do the above people work at their own level and ensure everyone is accounted for emotionally instinctively and consistently. 

They could afford the silence, they have very little “human debt” to pay off. The rest of us who went through the motions and pretended we don’t see the naked emperor of how taxing this is to the emotions of our employees, we’re accruing interest by the day. 

Here are some of the excuses we’ve all heard or used:

• “We can’t ask too often, once every few months is enough.” - It absolutely isn’t. And you know it.
• “We tell our team managers what their people said in the big surveys, and they don’t do anything about it” - How could they? You made their people work feel secondary and inconsequential. You spent no time training them in the human bits, they have no coaching, no ability to raise their EQ and no tools. 
• “People don’t tell us the truth when we ask” - They would if they weren’t afraid of you. After years of punitive interactions, it will take a long while to show they can trust you to speak up. 
• “When we asked if they wanted more surveys they said no” - Of course they did. Who does? Especially of the dry, painful, multi-choice, wooden-language sort that you’ve subjected them to? Do you? No. Make the asking better and the answering will come. 
• “They hate filling these in, they think of them as a chore!” - It is a chore. It’s not a dialogue. It’s an imposed and possibly dangerous monologue or at best, screaming in a forest. Make it a true communication channel that’s trusted and helpful and watch it become welcomed instead of dreaded. 
• “We have too many surveys, we can’t ask too often - we don’t want survey fatigue” - Nice try but survey fatigue doesn’t come from frequency but how we haven’t spent enough time to build trust, show short feedback loops and make it engaging to answer. Fix that first. Oh, and stop calling them “surveys”.
• “We can’t afford the time and tools to do the people work” - You can’t afford not to. 

Ask yourself: “If there were a magical way to plug into the hearts and minds of your employees to really know how they feel and think about work would they let you do that? Why not?” Once you know, start chipping at those. That shortcut doesn’t exist and even if it did, it wouldn’t be usable as we need our people to want to tell us. 

In tomorrow’s article and video, we’ll share some hands-on ideas of what to do at the team level to make “You are being heard” ring true, but meanwhile, at an organisation level - lose the excuses and ask! Not once a year, not every 3 months, not in a vacuum where there are no feedback loops and no none knows you heard their answers, not without following it with an open and honest human conversation. 

Stop and feel, look your employees in the eye and ask. 

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Don't send your teams home with a laptop, a Jira and Slack account and a prayer!

Get in touch for our Team Psychological Safety Dashboard and our Stay-Connected-When-Remote question pack at www.psychologicalsafety.works or reach out at [email protected] and let's help your team become healthy, happy and highly performant.