I disagree : don't refuse to do it, because it will lead to "why" questions or so, and it wont do good. Just delay. If he insists, tell him what he want to ear.
Depends on the questions, doesn't it? Asking employees for feedback on how the business is running and how it might be improved seems reasonable to me. Possibly even encouraging.
Don't answer questions you don't feel comfortable answering, for whatever reason. If that's a problem for the CEO then it's their problem; your integrity is worth more than your job, right?
Meritocracy is a lie, competence is circumstance, self reliance is antisocial, criminality is environment. We are all exactly the same and any difference is due to the outside. You are better than no one. Nothing within yourself gives you any more integrity than any other person, so you might as well do what any other gray person would- your job.
It's better to assume incompetence than malice. Some bosses legitimately want to follow up on feedback. But yeah, it's pretty dumb - he won't actually get honest answers this way.
I would shoot straight. Not once in my career have I ever suffered for an honest assessment given humbly. And you'll sleep better at night for it.
> I would shoot straight. Not once in my career have I ever suffered for an honest assessment given humbly
Same. It is frightening how many comments point to the exact opposite, presumably with the ulterior motive that this increases the chance of self-preservation.
But at the same time nothing can be improved by this. Although a team should have exactly this as a goal: improvement of the product/service.
This is exactly what you should tell athletes, especially ones in team based games. Going to the coach and demanding more play time will usually get better results than just silently being a good player.
Obviously this doesn't apply in individual pursuits like swimming [edit] or in situations where the coach is beholden to other parties (a paying audience).
[edit] To clarify: A coach should incentivize things they believe win games. An athlete should do those things so that the coach gives them playtime. An athlete should also promote the fact that they are doing those things to the coach.
People can have opposite experiences from the same situation, and all of them are equally valid. People are complicated and social structures are even more so.
It's valuable to provide people with context when giving advice from personal experience. The person hearing the advice needs to understand how the situation you presented mirrors theirs and also have an idea of how similarly they are going to be perceived compared to how you were.
> Not once in my career have I ever suffered for an honest assessment given humbly
Same here. People also learn they can trust you to tell them the truth and help them figure out a solution.
However, I have a low tolerance for bad work environments so YMMV but if you can't be honest with people or trust them, you probably want to look for an exit.
The possession of power implies a social obligation to use that power responsibly. Incompetence while exercising power is harmful to those forced to suffer such incompetence, and therefore tantamount to malice.
being asked to provide accountable, non-anonymous feedback that only the ceo will read sounds a bit more honest than being asked to provide 'anonymous' feedback that hr and also all of the managers will be able to read
Is it actually more convenient if it’s not true? Because if things actually suck, but you lie and say things are great, aren’t you just consenting to the status quo and even giving permission for things to suck more in the future? I’m the long run this sounds less convenient than dealing with it up front or just finding another job.
One person isn't going to steer the ship of a large company. To make meaningful change, people have to come together as a group and work together.
Individual surveys are the antithesis of coming together to solve problems. You're basically hoping that other people will say the same things as you, and that the people in charge will come up with a good strategy to fix them.
In other words, he's asking you a question and you're answering him? But it's a series of questions so it's in a survey form? As long as he's not claiming it's anonymous or something, a boss or CEO asking employees about things is pretty normal.
Now, if he's giving the impression it's anonymous but it's not, that's another kettle of fish.
Just fill it out as you would if you are speaking face to face with him. Remind any colleagues that the survey is not face to face. If you get the chance to provide feedback mention that respondents might be more candid with an anonymous survey.
Even "anonymous" surveys can be deanonymized though. I have had multiple times in my career where management asked to talk to me about responses I had written in nominally anonymous surveys. Luckily, nothing too negative came out of it - but it's something to be aware of.
Surveys at work are sketchy. I worked at a Fortune 500 company that did Gallup surveys. They were anonymous and “optional”. But if we didn’t fill out the surveys, it counted against our direct managers performance reviews. As did negative surveys. So they essentially forced us to create positive surveys because the direct managers were actually cool and we didn’t want to get them in trouble, all the problems were many management layers above them. I actually reported this to Gallup directly, they didn’t give any fucks. And the company I worked for them would tout their workplace engagement and happiness based on these coerced surveys.
This is really just an automated way of the CEO having a one-on-one with you and asking you a question. Answer how you would answer if he asked you face-to-face, being mindful of the limitations of written communication.
There's not nearly enough context here to give a meaningful answer.
Is this a 10 person company and you have a personal relationship with the CEO? Then say whatever you'd feel comfortable saying in a private meeting (within reason).
Is it a 200 person company and the CEO doesn't know your name? Probably safe to keep it that way, keep the answers bland and the scores 4s and 5s.
The safe thing to do is default to being bland and only deviate if you think it will be received well. I've worked with a CEO that I trusted not to use my honest feedback against me, but gossip travels fast. It's not like you're going to get a raise out of anything you say so what's the point?
Do not tell your bosses what they want to hear unless it is true or unless you desperately need the job until you find a new one. If you lie and tell them things are great when they aren’t, things will continue to suck. You are enabling poor work environments. But absolutely be humble and diplomatic with your criticism. You also don’t want to hurt their ego because that won’t go well either.
My company been doing this for years. My company administers the survey via a 3rd party who anonymizes the data (in fact there's no way to trace the responses back to you). Once the survey is taken, it's primarily 1-5 gradings, the gradings are made available to everybody, while written responses are not. You don't even have to write a response, you can just do the 1-5 gradings. Written responses are only used to clarify an issue - don't treat it as an opportunity to gripe and complain, you're being constructive!
All the teams then get a summary of their results and go over them and decide what would be best for them to focus on in the upcoming year.
The big thing for us has been discussing what the 1-5 mean, especially the 4 or 5. A lot of people are hesitant to grade something at a 5 because they can think of ways to make that better - but you should already be in an environment of continual improvement so you know you can always make something better. Therefore for us a 5 means it's going well and there isn't anything to address that the normal continual improvement process wouldn't address. A 4 then means mostly well, but it's not quite where it should be, a 3 means its well enough, and a 2 or under means here's an opportunity to improve things that will have a big impact on our processes.
It's all about identifying your sore spots and where to expend your effort at getting better.
Just so you know, surveys are rarely truly anonymous at companies. Feedback may be anonymized, so, for instance, a manager can receive more honest feedback from their direct reports. But if you include a racist tirade in your feedback, it's very likely HR will be able to track you down.
Avoid personal accusations of incompetence ("Dave in Marketing is a waste of a coveted cubicle seat!") and give your honest opinions backed up where possible with data ("The attached measures indicate our marketing effectiveness ranks in the bottom quartile per dollar spend compared to similarly sized companies in similar markets"). Reality will exist somewhere between those extremes since you likely don't have extensive data and likely know quite well of personal incompetence.
Treat this as an exercise in clear thinking and expression.
I was once asked to fill out a detailed questionnaire at work for a personality type test administered by a 3rd party (Taibi Kahler model). We were told the result would be confidential. Then my boss asked to see my report - telling me that all the rest of his team had shared theirs.
I gave him the report. He was surprised when he read it because he didn't think it was like me at all. But then I had answered every question as if he was reading the answers. This kind of situation is entirely predictable unfortunately.
At least in your case he's not pretending it's anonymous.
I used to administer instruments (tests) like that.
In most cases it was a successful and enjoyable activity, and there wasn't this confidentiality issue because we structured around that.
However I also made it clear that the whole point was understanding how to embrace differences. So sharing one's personal reported result, while optional, was done a lot.
But in a couple of cases, people like the boss took the activity way too seriously, no matter what caveats or warnings they received. So either the (non)-sharer or the requester raised the stakes for themselves without realizing what they were doing, and I had to have a talk with them.
It's not really a good idea to seriously rely on results from a test with some known, significant, and published (by the authors) accuracy, validity, and test-retest error. This is why the "reported result" is generally considered inferior on its own. It's also known to repeat back to you what you tell it, but in different words / models.
So, since the boss may decide to raise the stakes like that and make things awkward, etc--these days along with a bunch of other colleagues in the field I use a format that's more like a flexible, open-ended sorting exercise. It's less about who you are, and more about ways you might tend to think about things, for example.
This works around the issues above, and naturally accommodates other conclusions, like yep, some people will rate themselves differently here at work than they would at home in private, for example.
But also: We can train people to recognize the processes that they use to communicate and to take in information. Thus it doesn't matter so much what they think they "are", or what someone else thinks. The process speaks for itself. It's no longer an identity issue so much.
It's an interesting field in which there have been a lot of changes since the personality tests of the 1960s...
61 comments
[ 4.0 ms ] story [ 125 ms ] threadDo you not care if you keep working here? Then fill out the survey honestly, OR refuse to fill it out at all.
It's bait.
Don't answer questions you don't feel comfortable answering, for whatever reason. If that's a problem for the CEO then it's their problem; your integrity is worth more than your job, right?
Meritocracy is a lie, competence is circumstance, self reliance is antisocial, criminality is environment. We are all exactly the same and any difference is due to the outside. You are better than no one. Nothing within yourself gives you any more integrity than any other person, so you might as well do what any other gray person would- your job.
I would shoot straight. Not once in my career have I ever suffered for an honest assessment given humbly. And you'll sleep better at night for it.
Same. It is frightening how many comments point to the exact opposite, presumably with the ulterior motive that this increases the chance of self-preservation.
But at the same time nothing can be improved by this. Although a team should have exactly this as a goal: improvement of the product/service.
Your personal goal should be to satisfy whoever writes your performance review.
Obviously this doesn't apply in individual pursuits like swimming [edit] or in situations where the coach is beholden to other parties (a paying audience).
[edit] To clarify: A coach should incentivize things they believe win games. An athlete should do those things so that the coach gives them playtime. An athlete should also promote the fact that they are doing those things to the coach.
It's valuable to provide people with context when giving advice from personal experience. The person hearing the advice needs to understand how the situation you presented mirrors theirs and also have an idea of how similarly they are going to be perceived compared to how you were.
Same here. People also learn they can trust you to tell them the truth and help them figure out a solution.
However, I have a low tolerance for bad work environments so YMMV but if you can't be honest with people or trust them, you probably want to look for an exit.
It's still 0 information, but more convenient for you
Individual surveys are the antithesis of coming together to solve problems. You're basically hoping that other people will say the same things as you, and that the people in charge will come up with a good strategy to fix them.
Now, if he's giving the impression it's anonymous but it's not, that's another kettle of fish.
Even "anonymous" surveys can be deanonymized though. I have had multiple times in my career where management asked to talk to me about responses I had written in nominally anonymous surveys. Luckily, nothing too negative came out of it - but it's something to be aware of.
Is this a 10 person company and you have a personal relationship with the CEO? Then say whatever you'd feel comfortable saying in a private meeting (within reason).
Is it a 200 person company and the CEO doesn't know your name? Probably safe to keep it that way, keep the answers bland and the scores 4s and 5s.
The safe thing to do is default to being bland and only deviate if you think it will be received well. I've worked with a CEO that I trusted not to use my honest feedback against me, but gossip travels fast. It's not like you're going to get a raise out of anything you say so what's the point?
The point is to not stand out.
I would hurry up and fill it out if i were you.
All the teams then get a summary of their results and go over them and decide what would be best for them to focus on in the upcoming year.
The big thing for us has been discussing what the 1-5 mean, especially the 4 or 5. A lot of people are hesitant to grade something at a 5 because they can think of ways to make that better - but you should already be in an environment of continual improvement so you know you can always make something better. Therefore for us a 5 means it's going well and there isn't anything to address that the normal continual improvement process wouldn't address. A 4 then means mostly well, but it's not quite where it should be, a 3 means its well enough, and a 2 or under means here's an opportunity to improve things that will have a big impact on our processes.
It's all about identifying your sore spots and where to expend your effort at getting better.
Treat this as an exercise in clear thinking and expression.
I gave him the report. He was surprised when he read it because he didn't think it was like me at all. But then I had answered every question as if he was reading the answers. This kind of situation is entirely predictable unfortunately.
At least in your case he's not pretending it's anonymous.
In most cases it was a successful and enjoyable activity, and there wasn't this confidentiality issue because we structured around that.
However I also made it clear that the whole point was understanding how to embrace differences. So sharing one's personal reported result, while optional, was done a lot.
But in a couple of cases, people like the boss took the activity way too seriously, no matter what caveats or warnings they received. So either the (non)-sharer or the requester raised the stakes for themselves without realizing what they were doing, and I had to have a talk with them.
It's not really a good idea to seriously rely on results from a test with some known, significant, and published (by the authors) accuracy, validity, and test-retest error. This is why the "reported result" is generally considered inferior on its own. It's also known to repeat back to you what you tell it, but in different words / models.
So, since the boss may decide to raise the stakes like that and make things awkward, etc--these days along with a bunch of other colleagues in the field I use a format that's more like a flexible, open-ended sorting exercise. It's less about who you are, and more about ways you might tend to think about things, for example.
This works around the issues above, and naturally accommodates other conclusions, like yep, some people will rate themselves differently here at work than they would at home in private, for example.
But also: We can train people to recognize the processes that they use to communicate and to take in information. Thus it doesn't matter so much what they think they "are", or what someone else thinks. The process speaks for itself. It's no longer an identity issue so much.
It's an interesting field in which there have been a lot of changes since the personality tests of the 1960s...