How can you (re)establish trust and inspire confidence in your developers?
“I don’t trust that anything meaningful will come from this.”
What a gut punch!
This is an all too common sentiment when it comes to soliciting feedback from your people.
Why do they feel this way?
You might say:
“Can’t they see all the plans and changes I’ve put in place to better the organization? To better them?”
…well, can they?
How would the average developer attach the feedback they’ve given you to actions you’ve taken?
From their perspective, they voice their opinions but nothing comes of it. Then 2 months later a generic organizational announcement arrives in their inbox…
There is nothing that tells them that their voices were heard or that their comments were acted on.
There is nothing to attach their trust to your action.
What can you do?
- Start by coming clean, be vulnerable and transparent. You don’t have to come across as weak and pathetic, simply take ownership for the gap.
- Begin to clearly communicate when you’re acting based on feedback you’ve received. Acknowledge the trust that you’ve been given.
- Continue to collect feedback from your teams that are doing the work.
Best,
Andre
P.S. If you need help getting amazing feedback from your developers, generating a prioritized list of high-value issues that are crushing your developer’s performance, PLUS roadmaps on how to solve them,
go to my website or REPLY here.
It’s my specialty.