Nobody Will Tell You That You Did Well, Or That You Did Not

Praise and honest correction both dry up at the same time, and the second loss is the dangerous one.

The disappearance of praise is the more commonly noticed. People assume the chief executive does not need it, or feel awkward offering it upward, and the board comments on performance only at set moments and usually in aggregate. Most people underestimate how much of their motivation was maintained by ordinary acknowledgement until it stops. It is worth knowing in advance that this will happen, so that its absence is not read as evidence that things are going badly when the actual evidence is neutral.

The serious problem is the other half. People stop telling you things. Not out of dishonesty, but because the cost of raising a concern with the person who decides your future is now high, and the cost of saying nothing is low and deferred. Information reaching you has been filtered by everyone it passed through, each of whom rounded it slightly toward what they believed you wanted. By the time it arrives it is not false, but it is smoother than reality, and you will make decisions on the smoothed version.

Counteracting this requires effort proportionate to the distortion. Ask specific questions rather than general ones, because open invitations to disagree produce nothing. Go to where the work happens and listen rather than visit. Notice who has told you something you did not want to hear and make sure it went well for them, visibly, because the whole organisation is watching what happens to that person. And treat any long period without unwelcome news as a warning rather than as reassurance.