management

open door to an office

Speaking up: How to share feedback with leadership thoughtfully and effectively

For most of us, giving feedback “up the chain” can feel intimidating. Whether it’s your team lead, your VP, or the CEO, it’s easy to second-guess yourself: “Is this worth bringing up?”,“What if I sound like I’m complaining?”, “Will this actually change anything?”

I venture to say that most leaders want and appreciate your feedback not because it’s always easy to hear, but because they know they can’t fix what they don’t know. And when delivered thoughtfully and with care, your feedback becomes a powerful tool for driving improvement and creating a better workplace for everyone.

Here are some tips from personal experience to help you speak up effectively and constructively.

Start with the intent, not the gripe

Get clear on your reason why you’re giving constructive feedback. Are you trying to improve a process? Make communication clearer? Prevent customer churn? Framing your feedback as a desire to make things better, rather than just airing frustration or venting, makes it far more actionable and easier to receive.

Instead of “These meetings are a waste of time”, try: “Maybe we could tighten up the agenda and finish with clear next steps, so our meetings feel more productive and energizing.”

Perhaps instead of “People don’t pull their weight on projects,” you could say: “I think we could be even more effective if we set clearer expectations and ownership for each project phase upfront.”

Or instead of “Why are you letting this person get away with…”, consider “I’m concerned that when expectations aren’t consistently reinforced, it can create confusion or frustration for the rest of the team. Can we talk about how we want to handle situations like this?”

Be as specific as possible

Vague feedback like “we need better communication” leaves leaders guessing. It’s best to give real-world examples and describe the impact. Specifics make it easier to understand the issue and start solving it.

Here’s an example: “During the last launch, a lot of us didn’t know about the changes until clients started asking questions. A heads-up would have helped us feel more prepared and confident.”

Offer a suggestion for finding a path forward

Personally, I don’t like the phrase “Don’t come to me with problems, come with solutions.” You need to be able to voice a concern without having a perfect solution figured out. That said, even a basic suggestion shows that you’ve thought about the issue in good faith, and it invites a collaborative response.

Example: “Could we do a five-minute rundown of key initiatives during team meetings so we stay aligned?”

Even something as simple as, “Would you be open to brainstorming solutions together?” keeps the door open.

Speak for yourself, not for a group

When giving feedback, it’s often tempting to strengthen your position by saying something like,
“Everyone feels this way” or “A lot of people are frustrated.” Sure, it probably feels safer, because it implies that you’re not the only one with a particular concern, and you may think that it will make your point more compelling. But it can also backfire. Saying ‘everyone’ can make leaders feel attacked and put them on the defensive, which can shut down the conversation before it even starts. Consider owning your perspective with confidence, and use language like “I’ve noticed’, “From my experience”, or “Something I’ve been concerned about lately”. 

This approach helps keep the conversation grounded in your firsthand experience and invites dialog rather than a dynamic of defending against “everyone”. It also tends to feel more genuine and can even encourage others who feel the same to add their voices without pressure. 

A quick example would be going from “everyone thinks this new process is a disaster” to “I’ve found this new process a bit challenging because…I’d love to brainstorm some ideas to make it smoother”. Big difference!

Pick the right time and channel

Context matters. Some feedback is best shared face-to-face, while other points can be captured clearly in writing. Don’t bury important feedback in a quick chat message that could get lost, especially when leaders are often juggling hundreds of messages and carving out heads-down time for high-priority work.

If the feedback is significant, ask for time directly and be clear about your intent, like “There’s something I’d love to talk through with you. Do you have a few minutes this week?”

For less urgent feedback, asynchronous options like Slack, internal surveys, or feedback forms can work well, as long as you make sure the message is easy to spot and digest.

Assume positive intent

Not every decision will go your way. No leader will get it right 100% of the time . And sometimes, they simply can’t share all of the information with you. My recommendation is to focus on what you know for sure, and try not to speculate. 

Starting from a place of curiosity rather than confrontation helps keep the conversation productive and collaborative.

Thoughtful feedback creates clarity, uncovers blind spots, and helps foster better and more effective working relationships. If you care about your company and your team, speaking up with respect and purpose is one of the most valuable things you can do, because it helps everyone. 

Giving feedback to leadership doesn’t have to be intimidating. When you focus on intent, specificity, and collaboration, you turn feedback into a tool for growth for yourself, your leaders, and your organization.

What about you? What are your tips on how to give feedback to leadership?

illustration of target customers

Making customer count a prime metric

Net Revenue Retention (NRR) has been a key indicator of business health in SaaS for a long time, and for good reasons. It tells you how well you’re expanding within your existing customer base. But while NRR is a highly valuable metric, it can also be misleading, because it may mask challenges, especially when it comes to acquiring new customers. That’s why you may consider shifting your focus to something more fundamental: the number of (good-fit) customers.

Don’t over-rely on NRR as the main indicator of success

A high NRR can make a company look successful on paper, but if customer acquisition is stagnant, focusing too much on NRR might make you ignore signs of trouble. In addition, relying too heavily on expansion revenue within an existing customer base creates a ceiling on growth. Eventually, there’s only so much revenue you can farm from our current customers, no matter how much value you add. 

While retaining and expanding within your customer base remains important (Hannon Hill‘s retention rate in the last two years exceeded 97%!), sustainable long-term growth depends on consistently bringing in new customers. By prioritizing customer count as a key metric, you ensure that your business remains viable and competitive.

Why customer count helps paint a truer picture

Of course, it’s not all about customer count, and we all know that getting a new customer signed just for the count without considering if they fit into your ideal customer profile is a flawed approach. However, let’s look at some of the benefits of identifying the number of customers as a key metric. 

  • Driving new business and competitiveness
    Expanding your customer base means actively selling your product to new organizations. This not only generates new revenue streams but also reinforces the value and relevance of your offering in the market.
  • Building a more expansive customer community
    More customers mean a broader range of success stories, testimonials, and case studies. A thriving customer community adds credibility, strengthens brand advocacy, and enhances your ability to attract even more customers.
  • Enabling better product decisions with diverse feedback
    A growing customer base provides a more diverse set of perspectives, use cases, and challenges. This variety helps you make more informed product decisions, ensuring your platform evolves in a way that benefits a wide range of users.
  • Ensuring long-term sustainability
    A business that prioritizes new customer acquisition (again, only if the customer is a fit – don’t pursue bad fits, as this is a lose-lose scenario) is better positioned for long-term success. Over-relying on upsells and expansions can create an illusion of growth, but without a steady influx of new customers, churn and market saturation will eventually limit progress.

Of course, retention still matters – a lot

This shift in focus doesn’t mean retention no longer matters. Keeping existing customers happy is still critical. However, retention should support, rather than overshadow, the primary goal of increasing your customer count. A balanced approach ensures that you continue to provide value to your current customers while also expanding your reach.

At the end of the day…

Ultimately, long-term success in SaaS isn’t just about getting more revenue from your existing base by providing more value, but it’s about continuously bringing new organizations into your ecosystem. By making customer count a core metric, you may better position yourself for sustainable, scalable growth. 

What are your thoughts?

Venting: The not-so-silent culture killer

We’ve all been there. We experience frustration with a certain situation, or we simply disagree with a decision. Oh, how tempting it is to find a sympathetic ear and vent “to get it out”! Naturally, as we vent, our stories become colored with assumptions and are less focused on problem-solving. But that is just one of the many downsides of venting, which don’t just negatively affect you, but often your team and the company culture. Let’s take a deeper look at why we vent, why it’s bad for us, and how we can transition to a better approach.

Why we vent and let others vent

Venting makes you feel closer to the person that you’re venting to, says Ethan Cross in his article in EdWeek. When we are frustrated with something or someone, we look for allies and seek validation of our righteous indignation. In a post-pandemic world, a rather strange economic and quite divisive social climate, we crave a sense of support. Bonding over a perceived shared grievance seems to be an easy solution. We vent or we indulge someone else’s venting. For example, a new manager who wants to ingratiate themselves with their direct reports might not just listen to them complain, but actually fan the flames because it creates a sense of bonding. A team member who has been feeling disconnected might engage in venting with a colleague to feel a sense of camaraderie. 

Venting causes energy-levels to go up. A disengaged employee will feel energized, albeit in a negative and counter-productive way when complaining to a team member about a perceived injustice, unwanted behavior or decision. After all, the spurt of energy feels better than indifference or disengagement. 

Another reason why we vent is rooted in the misconception that it will make you feel better, which has been perpetuated for decades. It is often our go-to strategy. Even if we don’t vent in the workplace, we may go home and unleash our frustrations and the stories we’ve told ourselves on our spouses and partners, who may or may not be equipped to redirect the conversation into something more productive. 

Why venting is bad for us 

Contrary to popular belief, venting does not have the healing effects that we often attribute to it. Jill Suttie outlines the dark sides of venting in her article on Greater Good Magazine. “emotional venting likely doesn’t soothe anger as much as augment it. That’s because encouraging people to act out their anger makes them relive it in their bodies, strengthening the neural pathways for anger and making it easier to get angry the next time around”. So as we are venting, we don’t release our frustrations and grievances, but we’re making ourselves go through them again, often augmenting them, thus releasing higher cortisol levels into our bodies, which can result in a higher heart rate and even higher blood pressure, the long-term effects of which can’t be underestimated. 

Anna Maravelas’ book “Creating a Drama-Free Workplace” dedicates an entire section to the perils of venting. She points out the adverse impact on our health as well as the effects on our professional standing and credibility, and our company culture. When we’re in a venting mindset, she says, we’re “flooded”, which greatly impairs our ability to problem-solve. She also points out that venting can damage your relationships with your colleagues, who might know that if you speak ill of someone else, you likely speak ill of them as well. We could also be considered hypocritical. For example, if Bob unloads on John a litany of why Jane is unqualified, lazy, and just doesn’t care about the team and then acts delighted when interacting with Jane, John might consider Bob a hypocrite and assume that Bob will have no qualms talking poorly about him. This clearly does not foster a culture of trust. Instead, Bob does what Maravelas calls “bankrolling drama at the expense of seeking solutions.” It can even have a bigger ripple effect. If the venting revolves around the assumption that key players or leadership just “don’t care” why would team members feel that they are part of something great? Why would they continue to be engaged?

The “feel-good” sensation that we experience when venting can be compared to scratching a mosquito bite or rubbing our itchy eyes. It might feel good at the moment, but it doesn’t help. In fact, you irritate your body even more and crave more scratching. Now think about what you’re doing to the person that you’re venting to: you’re essentially scratching them or rubbing their eyes. Does that seem like a good idea? 

How to stop it

The good news is that we are capable of change. We just have to learn better techniques once we recognize the negative impact of venting. 

In preparation for one of our company meetings, we asked everyone to watch Cy Wakeman’s clip entitled “Why venting is unhealthy and wrong”. The discussion that ensued was wonderful. Many of us acknowledged that we had always thought that venting had a positive effect by getting frustration out of our system. We also admitted that we all vented at times. Looking at it from a new perspective was eye-opening. Awareness is the first step to improvement. 

Following Wakeman’s philosophy of reality-based leadership provides a great framework for establishing a culture of accountability and support. Before you go down a downward spiral, ask yourself “What do you know for sure?” For example, you may think that a team member doesn’t care about your department’s success because they missed a deadline. What do you know for sure? They missed a deadline. That’s it. Everything else is an assumption. If we follow the guideline of “the only acceptable assumption is to assume good intentions”, then we could stop our negative thoughts and start determining how we can help the situation and the team member. Similarly, we can help others by redirecting the conversation accordingly. Instead of fanning the flames of Mary’s indignation about Jack’s attitude/lack of respect/know-it-allism, you can make simple suggestions about how Mary can help Jack. This may be frustrating to Mary at first, but in the long term, you are increasing your chances of a better relationship between the two and an elevated company culture. Instead of getting a high from venting, help Mary get a “helper’s high,” as Maravelis calls it. 

You may also stress the importance of locus of control, which could be part of your company values. The team members who are most appreciated and most successful focus on things that they can control, not on external factors. They don’t play the blame game, they don’t form alliances against others, but they solve problems. Consider making locus of control part of your check-ins. 

Another technique involves talking about your own feelings and the impact on your own solution-finding abilities. How about showing vulnerability by saying “Steven, I want us to have a productive conversation that will be a win-win situation, but the way you’re communicating right now is not allowing me to problem-solve. Could we reconvene later today and focus on facts and how we all can help contribute to a solution?”

Hold yourself and your team members accountable. Stop yourself when you have the itch to vent. Find things to be grateful for, suggests Dr. Firdaus S. Dhabhar, Ph.D., a professor at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine’s Department of Psychiatry. He also recommends channeling your energy into productive, healthy activities like exercise, spending time in nature, working on your hobbies, listening to music, meditating, or sleeping. Most importantly, “spend time with people you have meaningful connections with and focus on positive things.”

As there is overwhelming evidence about the negative effects of venting, let’s help each other develop healthier and more productive ways to handle frustrations. We’ll be better off as individuals and as a team. 

What about you? What are your ideas for eliminating venting and fostering a more cohesive, healthy, and positive company culture?