Thread by @jlengstorf

I’ve had a few conversations about work stress lately & I’ve seen a common thread that’s really heartbreaking: It’s so, SO easy for someone to feel like any mistake will be the end of their career. And I think a lot of this fear comes from poor leadership and management. <thread>

A huge problem I hear in a lot of these stories is that people don’t get feedback unless it‘s negative.

If we, as leaders and managers, don’t take the time to remind our teams that we value them, we’re letting people’s imaginations fill in the gaps. That’s a recipe for stress.

Something we should really focus on in leadership positions is giving consistent feedback.

It’s really easy to adopt a “no news is good news” policy as a manager/leader, and only provide feedback when something goes wrong. But this is a bad idea on multiple levels.

1. It makes it harder for you, as a leader, to give feedback because you don’t have a steady feedback stream open with your team — instead, you have to create the space to give that feedback each time.

2. It adds *so much stress* to your team members’ lives. Without feedback, your team will write make up own story: “They haven’t talked to me because I’m doing a terrible job and they’re waiting to fire me.” “They’re too nice to tell me that they hate my work.”

3. It creates a negative association around meeting with your team. Asking for a meeting with a team member who’s not used to getting regular feedback may cause them to panic — “oh no, they want to talk to me *alone*? I’m so getting fired.”

To short-circuit these problems, we don’t need to do much — we just need to provide steady feedback, both positive and negative, to our teams.

1. Call out good work when you see it. Yes, you’re praising someone for doing their job. That validation is critical, especially with how prevalent impostor syndrome is in this industry.

2. Set up a regular cadence for 1-on-1 meetings. Weekly is ideal. This should be a check-in on how they’re feeling, feedback on how they’re doing, and a chance for them to raise any concerns or questions in a safe space.

3. Give constructive feedback *fast*. And preferably on a video call or in person. Ideally this would come up in the weekly 1-on-1 so it’s seen as part of the normal feedback loop.

I know several people who have said some variation of, “Being told I’m doing well is worth as much to me as my paycheck.”

We have the power, as leaders and managers, to eliminate a huge source of stress and to create a strong sense of belonging, safety, and self-worth — all we have to do is give feedback about the good stuff *and* bad stuff on a regular cadence. </thread>