How do I find out what my team really thinks of me?

Why doesn’t my team tell me the truth?

Mostly because speaking up to a boss feels risky, and staying quiet feels safe. In one study of 40 employees across consulting, finance, media and other industries, 85% (34 of 40) said they had at least once felt unable to raise an issue with their boss, even though they thought it mattered.

The most common reason was the fear of being viewed or labelled negatively, and damaging a relationship they valued. Not fear of being fired. Fear of being seen as the difficult one.

Amy Edmondson of Harvard Business School and James Detert, who study speaking up at work, put it bluntly: “no news is not good news”. They also found that people can be afraid to speak up to their own boss even when the wider organisation seems open. Your team’s silence is about the relationship with you, not the poster in the kitchen.

Does it get worse as I get more senior?

Yes. The higher you go, the more the truth gets filtered on its way to you. Tasha Eurich, writing in Harvard Business Review, describes a study of more than 3,600 leaders in which, relative to lower-level leaders, higher-level leaders more significantly overvalued their skills compared with how others saw them. The pattern showed up in 19 of the 20 competencies measured.

Her explanation is simple. Senior leaders have fewer people above them who can give candid feedback, and the more power a leader holds, the less comfortable people feel giving it. Some cultures add another layer: where deference to rank runs deep, “yes” can mean “I heard you”, not “I agree”.

None of this means your team is dishonest. It means the route from their heads to your ears has a toll on it, and you set the price.

What should I ask instead of “any feedback?”

Ask something small and specific. “Any feedback?” is a big, vague door, and the safe reply is “all good”. A narrow question gives people a low-risk way in.

Try one of these in your next one-on-one:

• “What’s one thing I do in team meetings that makes it harder for you to speak?”
• “What’s something I said yes to this month that you’d have said no to?”
• “If you were me, what would you stop doing first?”
• “When was the last time I got in the way of your work?”
• “What do people on the team say about how decisions get made, when I’m not there?”

Then stop talking. Count to 10 in your head if you need to. The first answer is often a test balloon: something minor, to see how you react. How you handle the small one decides whether you ever hear the big one.

A few habits help:

• Go first. Name something you’re already working on: “I know I jump in with answers too fast. Where else does that show up?”
• Make it normal. Ask one feedback question in every one-on-one, not once a year. Routine lowers the stakes.
• Thank, don’t defend. “That’s useful, thank you” is the whole reply. Explaining yourself teaches people that feedback starts an argument.

If you’re newly promoted from inside the team, this is even harder, because people are also working out what changed between you. There’s more on that in going from peer to boss.

How do skip-levels and anonymous feedback help?

They lower the personal cost of being honest. The silence research is clear that people weigh what speaking up might cost them. Change the cost, and you change what they say.

Skip-levels. If you manage managers, meet their teams without them, in small groups or one to one. Keep the questions about the system, not the individual: “What slows you down?”, “What do you wish leadership understood?” Never use a skip-level to collect evidence about a manager. Make it clear before you start that it’s not that kind of meeting.

Anonymous input. A short anonymous survey, run by someone other than you, gives quieter people a voice. Keep it to 5–10 questions. Ask about behaviours you can actually change: “My manager tells me where I stand” works better than “Rate your manager’s communication”.

Two rules matter more than the tool:

• Small teams need care. Picture a team of 4. If 1 person writes a sharp comment, everyone will guess who it was. Wait until you have at least 4 or 5 responses before you read results, and group comments into themes rather than sharing them word for word.
• Never hunt for the author. Not even in your head, and especially not out loud. The moment people think you’re guessing, honest input stops, for everyone.

The aim is a pattern you can work on. It is never a person to find.

Is a 360 review worth it?

A 360 is worth it if you use it to see the gap, not to collect a score. It gathers ratings from people above you, beside you and below you, and puts them next to your own view.

The gap is where the learning is. A meta-analysis in The Leadership Quarterly found that agreement between leaders’ self-ratings and observers’ ratings was generally moderate. Leaders also tended to rate themselves higher on relationship-oriented behaviours, the people side of the job. In other words, the part you’re most sure about may be the part worth checking.

That gap is the idea behind our Blind Spot test. Today you rate yourself on 14 behaviours your team sees every day, from clarity to mood, and get your self-view area by area; the team version, coming next, will ask your team the same questions anonymously and show the gap. For a wider look at your own side, take the 42 Test, a free, private self-test of 42 everyday leadership behaviours.

Some ground rules for any 360:

• Use it for your growth, not for pay or promotion decisions. People rate more honestly when there’s less riding on it.
• Look for themes across several people, not single outliers.
• Read it twice, a day apart. The first read is for your feelings. The second is for the data.

How do I keep people telling me the truth?

Act on what you hear, visibly and fast. Edmondson and Detert put it this way: voice must be seen as both safe and worthwhile. Safety gets them talking once. Seeing something change is what gets them talking again.

The silence study backs this up. A quarter of respondents described futility: the sense that speaking up wouldn’t make any difference, so why bother.

So close the loop out loud:

1. Say what you heard. “A few of you said our Monday meeting is mostly me talking.”
2. Say what you’ll try. “For the next 4 weeks, I’ll speak last.”
3. Report back. At week 4, ask whether it’s better. Keep it or drop it, and say which.

You don’t have to fix everything. You do have to show that the feedback landed somewhere. “I heard that, and I’m not changing it, here’s why” still beats silence.

Over time, this builds what Google’s re:Work team, drawing on Edmondson, calls psychological safety: “a shared belief held by members of a team that the team is safe for interpersonal risk taking”. In Google’s research on what makes teams effective, it sits first of the 5 dynamics they list. People on those teams feel safe taking risks even when they might look ignorant, incompetent, negative or disruptive. Telling the boss something unwelcome is exactly that kind of risk.

Where do I start on Monday?

Start with one question and one change. Pick a single specific question from the list above and ask it in every one-on-one this week. Write down what you hear, without replying to it in the moment.

At the end of the week, choose one thing to change and tell the team what it is. Then ask again in a month.

If you’re new to managing, there’s more for this stage of the job in our guide for new managers. The truth is out there in your team already. Your job is to make it cheap to say and worth saying.