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Posted by on Aug 1, 2012 in Business, Leadership, Return On Morale, Transparency | 5 comments

Click Here To Tell EVERYONE How I’m Doing

Ever see this on the email signature of a frontline employee? ”Click here to let my manager know how I’m doing.”

Funny how you never see that on a manager’s email. Or a vice president’s email. Or the CEO’s, for that matter.

Imagine that for a minute. The CEO could have a link at the bottom of her email signature: “Click here to let my board know how I’m doing.” Or better yet: “Click here to let the entire company know how I’m doing.”

I guess most of the clicks would come from internal customers, which is to say employees within the company, rather than outside customers. So to protect employees from reprisals, it would be best to wash the comments through a third-party verified filter, where the identity of the respondent is obscured.

How would that go, boss? Would you get good comments posted on your company’s intranet?

The future is social, and… guess what? That future is already here. Leaders who play Oz, hiding behind their curtains, do so at their peril. As a leader, do you find that terrifying? Or liberating?

 

Ted Coine (93 Posts)

Author | Speaker | Consultant Ted Coiné is one of the most influential business leaders on Twitter, with a following of over two hundred thousand and growing rapidly. He has been ranked by both Huffington Post and Forbes for his business leadership and social media influence. An inspirational speaker, Ted is author of Five-Star Customer Service and Spoil ’Em Rotten! Prior to writing his first book, Ted was founder and CEO of Coiné Language School, a B2B company he brought from his living room to a $10 million valuation in four years by focusing relentlessly on customer service. He is currently writing his third book, about how social media is transforming leadership and business in this exciting new century. Ted and his family live in Naples, Florida, where he is active in the tech startup scene.


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  • http://m2.atstuff.com Mike Masin

    I agree that most of the comments would be on the internal side of the fence. Consumers typically associate a #fail with the brand and not the individual that makes the decisions. (Excluding some high-profile CEOs that have a talent for attracting bad press.)

    But I wonder how many employees would trust a third-party filter with their anonymity. Privacy verification seals are a paid service and the individual whose privacy is being protected is not the customer in that transaction; garrulus caveat dolo.

  • http://www.shiftandswitch.com Ted Coine

    Mike, great point. I think this comes down to trust of the independent vendor in question. A number of companies pull this off, because they realize that trust is their lifeblood. JD Power and Associates comes to mind. While they may have created too many categories and thus perhaps diluted their brand with its ubiquity, I think the public still trusts that brands can’t buy their favor (I know I still do!)

    A tough nut to crack, but not impossible.

  • http://coworkers.com James Young

    Hi Ted, I found this post thanks to the Talent Anarchy blog. This is a biased response because we are a startup called Coworkers.com and we literally have a service for individuals called HowsMyWork.com that’s designed specifically for the purpose of letting professionals gather feedback to assist in improving their work performance. We’ve long seen the opportunity to help professionals & companies manage a mix of ongoing incremental feedback as well as more typical periodic ‘reviews’. We also have a full-featured SaaS product geared toward work teams and businesses. Thanks for highlighting the importance and value of timely and honest feedback at all levels of the organization.

  • http://www.endgamebusiness.com Steve Borek

    I’m in Mike’s camp regarding anonymity. Not sure how many people would trust the filter.

    It all comes back to the Leader. If they’ve created a trusting relationship with their constituents, the team will feel comfortable providing opinions regarding performance.

    The trust has to be genuine. If there’s an inkling the team member will suffer ramifications for speaking out, there’s no way they’ll hit the send button.

    Leadership begins and ends with credibility.

  • http://www.kehutchinson.com Kate Hutchinson

    I have never seen this sort of link in an email before, but you’re right, it would be better if those sorts of signatures applied to upper management too.

    The concept sounds a lot like those “How am I driving? Call 1-800…” bumper stickers I see on commercial vehicles. I’d be curious to hear a case study from a company that uses the email signatures to survey employee performance to see exactly what they’re tracking/learning from the exercise.