Leadership Defensiveness (+ Its Devastating Impact on Retention)
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Retention is a big deal and there is no effective way to increase diversity within your organization if you are unable to retain your current talent. Organizations that provide ill-fitting cultures for their workers can expect to see higher turnover. Employees who rate their culture poorly are 24% more likely to leave their organizations within a year’s time. The day-to-day experience of your employees is a huge factor in determining career choices. According to a Hays report, in a survey of 2,000 employees, almost half (43%) said they’re looking for a new job, and corporate culture was the main reason.
Your employees are talking about team culture more often than you think. Whether it be during your 1:1 meeting, by way of other employees, at team meetings, or even in employee engagement surveys, they are sharing their experience.
So, why are you so shocked when your employees of color resign, leaving you with only a vent letter sharing their unhappiness at your organization?
Here at JTC, we have found that managers who are most surprised by the resignation of a person of color are those who have been defending their own experience at the expense of their employee’s experience. In other words, my experience at this company is great, so everyone else’s experience must be the same. If it is not, there must be something wrong with them.
Leaders, what if your defensiveness is creating a barrier for you to hear how your employees are truly feeling?
Image Credit @lindsaybraman (Source)
As a manager, when you defend your experience at all costs, in particular at the cost of employees of color, you run the risk of missing their feedback, losing their trust and ultimately losing talent. You are also insinuating to your employee that this is their problem to carry alone. If your employee comes to you and shares their experience and you respond with defensiveness, you may run the risk of it being the final time you hear their feedback again.
Here are some ways this defensiveness manifests in our leaders.
Do you rationalize? To rationalize is to invent plausible explanations for acts, opinions, etc., that are actually based on other causes. For example, when your employee shares that they do not feel like they have a voice in team meetings and you respond with, “Oh, the team is just filled with talkers; you’ve got to get in where you fit in!”
Do you minimize? To minimize is to represent at the lowest possible amount, value, importance, influence, etc., especially in a disparaging way; belittle. Imagine, when your employee shares that during the team meeting there was a joke about differently textured hair types that they felt was inappropriate and you respond with, “You are being too sensitive. It was just a joke.”
Do you justify? To justify is to defend or uphold as warranted or well-grounded. When your employee shares that they felt excluded from the “good ‘ol boys club,” do you respond with, “All you have to do is X, Y, and Z—I did it and now we are all super close.”
Do you deny? To deny is to state that something declared or believed to be true is not true. For example, when your employee comes to you saying that they are unhappy working on the team, how do you respond? Do you suggest to them that something is wrong with them because everyone else is happy? Do you insinuate that they are the exception?
According to TINYpulse research, employees that don’t feel comfortable giving upward feedback are 16% less likely to stay at their companies. Feedback shouldn’t just flow one way. Open communication is key to understanding the needs and points of improvement for both managers and employees.
According to a Qualtrics report, 60% of U.S. employees reported having a way to provide feedback about their own employee experience. While being able to give feedback is important (workers who are given more frequent opportunities to provide feedback about their experience are less likely to leave) not everyone thinks their company actually turns feedback into positive action. Only 30% of U.S. employees said their feedback is acted upon by their employer. Workers who say their employer acts on their feedback are four times more likely to stay with the company than employees who don’t think their feedback changes anything.
The culture at your company is an ideal. Your employees have different experiences of the current environment on the road to this ideal culture. Listen to the feedback from your employees. They are trying to hold you accountable for this ideal of a culture. The goal is to make sure that everyone feels this ideal no matter how a person identifies. And If there are employees or employee populations who do not experience the culture ideal and share that feedback with you, here are three questions you can ask yourself.
(#1) How am I coping with this negative feedback?
(#2) Am I using defense barriers to cope with the negative feedback?
(#3) How have these defense barriers prevented me from truly hearing my employees?
I was asked a very important question at the end of a monthly Ask Me Anything (AMA) session hosted by Our Collective at the Kapor Center. It went something like this.
"How do I find out what my employees of color are experiencing in the workplace?"
My response? As a manager, all you have to do is listen, because your employees are telling you all the time exactly how they feel about the workplace. As a matter of fact, here’s what I want you to do the next time an employee comes to you and shares that they are unhappy at the organization.
Step #1: Listen. With open ears, an open heart, and an open mind, listen to their experience.
Step #2: Check for understanding. Repeat your understanding of your employee’s experience back to them. Ask clarifying questions where needed. Check to make sure that your reiterations of their experience are accurate.
Step #3: Empathize. Rather than justifying their experience, empathize. Try to put yourself in their shoes. Have you experienced anything similar? If so, share. You do not always have to tell your story, sometimes it can be enough to simply state that you’ve experienced a similar situation before. If you have not experienced it, imagine what it must feel like and share that. Thank the employee for bringing this information your way and acknowledge the level of difficultly it must have been for them. This is also a good time for me to share one other point. Remove the drama. You do not need to cry or get angry with your employee to empathize.
Step #4: Play your role. As a manager, there are some experiences that you must report (e.g., discrimination, sexual harassment, etc.). There is no question about it. Report them immediately. However, not every experience requires you to take swift, formal action. Do not assume that you know the fix that your employee is seeking. Sometimes, the solution comes from your thought partnership and recommendations on your employee’s next action, versus your own.
Step #5: Follow up. Check in with your employees regularly. Find out if their experience has shifted one way or the other.
If you are looking for ways to be even more proactive, try this activity that I used to implement with my former teams. Once a year, I would solicit an employee-volunteer to collect feedback from the entire team based on three questions:
What is your experience working on this team?
What is your experience of working with me, as your leader?
What must I start, stop, and continue doing in order to lead this team more effectively?
The feedback was anonymous. I did not try and figure out who said what. I reviewed it personally first and then I discussed the collective feedback at a repurposed team meeting, guided by the five steps mentioned above. I also invited the team to set up 1:1 meetings with me, as needed, in order to unpack feedback so that I had deeper clarity.
Let’s be honest. We know that these actions will not help you to retain every single employee on your team. And that is okay. Not every employee was meant to stay on your team. What these actions will do is help you build greater trust because your team now feels heard and understood. This is a major step towards building an inclusive environment.
Join the conversation in the comments. Have you ever been called a defensive manager and changed? If yes, how and why did you make that change? OR, have you ever worked for a defensive manager? Tell us that story too!
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