Side note to executives before your next town hall

If you ask your employees for feedback

in a survey, email, or town hall

and your employees take the time to ask you real and challenging questions

questions that are authentic and nuanced and reflect their concerns for the mission and trajectory of the entire organization as well as their concerns about their personal job security.

Actually answer their questions.

There. I just fixed your culture problem.

New York Subway

Most leaders avoid difficult questions because answering honestly requires admitting uncertainty, and uncertainty feels like weakness when you're supposed to have the answers.

It isn't. Employees aren't looking for a leader who knows everything. They're looking for one who respects them enough to be straight with them - even when the answer is "I don't know yet, but here's how we're thinking about it." Heck, I would even take a "yeah, that's a big challenge right now that we are figuring out" over just straight up ignoring it.

The feedback loop only works if people believe something happens on the other end. Once employees decide their questions disappear into a void, they stop asking real ones. And when that happens, you don't have a feedback problem anymore. You have a trust problem - and that one is much harder to fix.