Honoring the Manager Contract

As you prepare to lead your team through an employee engagement survey, it’s crucial to recognize the unique responsibilities you take on as a manager. This unit will help you understand the “manager contract”—a set of core commitments that ensure your team’s feedback is valued and acted upon. By embracing these principles, you’ll foster trust, encourage honest participation, and lay the groundwork for meaningful change. You’ll also see how these commitments connect to the broader goals of employee engagement, from boosting performance to building a culture where everyone feels heard.

There are three essential promises you must make as a manager before starting any engagement survey project.

• Difficult Feedback: First, you need to be ready for difficult feedback. Some survey results may be uncomfortable or surprising, but your role is to listen with an open mind. For example, if you hear that team communication is lacking, resist the urge to defend yourself. Instead, focus on team discussions to explore what’s behind that concern. This approach shows you value honesty and are willing to learn.
• Share Results Transparently: Second, you must share results transparently. Your team deserves to know both the strengths and the areas for improvement revealed by the survey. Avoid hiding or sugarcoating the findings. This openness invites your team to join you in the improvement process.
• Commit to Action: Finally, you must commit to taking action. Discussing results without follow-through will only erode trust and lower engagement. Even small steps matter. The key is to demonstrate that feedback leads to real change, otherwise future survey cycles may result in dwindling employee participation and honestly.

Here’s a realistic conversation between two managers that brings these commitments to life:

• Jessica: I’ve been looking over the engagement survey results, and honestly, some of the feedback about communication and recognition is pretty negative. I’m wondering if we should just focus on the positive parts when we talk to the team—or maybe not share the results at all. I don’t want to bring down morale.
• Ryan: I get where you’re coming from, but I think it’s important that we share the full results, even the tough feedback. If we only highlight the positives or avoid sharing, the team might feel like their input isn’t valued or that we’re not being transparent.
• Jessica: But what if sharing the negatives just makes people more frustrated?
• Ryan: If we’re open and show that we’re willing to listen and take action, it actually builds trust. Hiding the negative feedback could make people stop giving honest input or disengage from future surveys. It’s better to acknowledge the issues and work on them together so the team knows we’re committed to real improvement.

In this exchange, Jessica expresses hesitation about sharing negative survey results with the team, fearing it might hurt morale. Ryan explains the importance of transparency and acting on all feedback, emphasizing that hiding negative results can damage trust and discourage honest participation in the future. By advocating for openness and action, Ryan reinforces best practices for building engagement and trust.