Advisor I Mentor

Sparring partner

Piotr

Kania

Conference room on the second floor of an international corporation’s office building. Glass walls, coffee in a paper cup with the company logo, a quick “hi” and a casual “let’s sit down for a moment.” A meeting without an agenda. Nothing unusual but still a bit of uncertainty and curiosity about what’s going on.

 

“You probably remember that PulseCheck launches next week,” says the director. “I just wanted to touch base before everything kicks off.”

The tone is calm, almost friendly. But you already know there’s more behind that “touch base.”

 

“I know the past few weeks haven’t been easy. You had shifts in the team, several issues piled up, you’re pushing to close the quarter… Well, nothing new for you, normal at this scale. But that’s exactly why we should come out of this edition looking better.”

 

A brief pause.

 

“I’m not sure if you remember the corporate report. We were second to last in the region recently. There’s already some noise upstairs about how we look and expectations that this time will be better… And of course participation. We need to make sure people engage.”

 

Another look over the coffee cup.

 

“I’m not saying you should plaster over things. Just… it’d be good if the numbers went up… You don’t need me to explain. Do what you can.”

No specific figures or instructions were given, but the message is clear.

 

The moment is approaching that will not only show the team’s mood, but also evaluate you as a leader. Informally, but very real. Your boss is watching. HR is watching. HQ is watching.

 

A survey that suddenly weighs too much

 

No one who leads a team needs an explanation for how these conversations go. When employee satisfaction surveys approach, tension rises. Not because something might happen, but because something already did. Somewhere, a decision was made that this score must be better. Someone higher up is already watching. Though no one says it outright, everyone knows it’s not just about team morale.

 

Yet employee surveys were originally designed for something completely different. They were meant to enable dialogue, be a way to better understand what’s happening in teams. To give voice to those who aren’t always heard. To pick up signals too subtle to surface in daily work, but too important to ignore.

 

Well-used surveys often reveal what’s not immediately visible. They show not only satisfaction levels but also directions for change, sources of tension, barriers to cooperation. They can highlight team strengths, but also areas needing support. They’re a starting point for conversations not just about moods, but about how the organization operates daily and how that translates into real employee experiences.

 

This matters especially now, as thinking about work is changing rapidly. More people openly talk about the need for balance, meaning, and healthy boundaries. Generations and expectations change. Increasingly, it’s not only what we do that matters, but how we do it and under what conditions.

Naturally, to make surveys effective, managers must take them seriously. Answering feedback and suggestions should be followed by concrete action so employees see that we not only ask but act on what we hear.

 

Everything becomes complicated when a tool for dialogue turns into a tool for judgment. The survey figures start to count more than the conversation they could spark. Answers stop inspiring action and instead become a basis for comparison between departments, teams, and leaders.

Unfortunately, that often happens with eNPS, quarterly satisfaction surveys, engagement studies, or 360 evaluations. It’s no longer just feedback, but a summary of a whole quarter’s emotions—a report from the heart of the team. For many managers, the main test to pass.

 

Sadly, it often doesn’t matter that this is just one tool, once it starts weighing more than everything else, its purpose changes. From a support tool to a source of tension; from an intention to listen to an expectation of a result.

 

Then it’s no longer just a mood check. It’s a system that can work against the people it’s supposed to help, especially when you, as a leader, are stuck between your team and expectations from above.

 

Everything becomes complicated when a tool for dialogue turns into a tool for judgment. The survey figures start to count more than the conversation they could spark. Answers stop inspiring action and instead become a basis for comparison between departments, teams, and leaders.

 

 

Where purpose ends and survey-driven leadership begins

 

When a survey stops being a tool for conversation and becomes a tool for evaluation, the way decisions are made begins to shift. The focus is no longer on the team, its development, or the actual situation. Instead, there’s a growing need to control moods, smooth over potential tensions, and avoid decisions that might cause dissatisfaction.

 

The team stops being a teamnand becomes a source of points.

 

The result? Leaders begin acting more cautiously. They weigh pros and cons, calculate risks. Often, they abandon difficult but necessary decisions. They delay reorganizations, postpone tough conversations, refrain from raising expectations, and avoid changes to team structure. They avoid risk. They know that one person, one comment, one emotion can influence the score and that score ends up in a presentation…

 

Unpopular decisions simply don’t happen before the survey. They wait until “it’s all over.”

 

From the outside, it looks like stability. In practice, it’s management driven by measurement.

 

For the manager, it means living in constant tension between what they should do as a leader and what the system expects. Every decision is analyzed not just on its merits, but for “survey risk. Will the team take it well? Will someone feel offended? And most importantly will the score drop?

 

Score pressure changes how leaders think. Instead of planning for a quarter or a year, managers start thinking in survey cycles. From one survey to the next. Measurement to measurement.This creates fatigue. Burns out decision-making. Limits courage.Because it’s hard to lead when the spreadsheet not the team is always in your mind.

 

Leader, you’re being let go...

 

Over time, fatigue sets in, not with the work itself, but with everything around it. Surveys that were meant to support become unpredictable elements with growing influence over decisions, atmosphere, and how a leader’s performance is judged.

 

Helplessness creeps in. You can’t control who fills out the survey, when they do it, or what mood they’re in. You can’t control what they remember, what they focus on, or what they ignore. All you know is that the moment is coming again when you’ll be judged.

 

With every new cycle, stress and caution grow and slowly turn into resignation. It’s hard to lead a team when everything starts to revolve around one report.

Meanwhile, the topic of surveys is getting louder.In many companies, people talk more about eNPS and participation rates than about actual business goals. There are charts, rankings, percentages from the last round. They’re mentioned at company meetings and quarterly wrap-ups. Leaders who “got great results” are praised.

 

In many teams, encouraging survey participation turns into pressure. It’s no longer a request, it’s a mandate.Sometimes it’s said outright: “You have to take part, our evaluation depends on it. Other times, nothing needs to be said, everyone knows who disappointed last time.

 

Without a good score, a manager can forget about promotions, projects, or recognition. Everyone sees it, especially the team.

 

And that awareness becomes a game. Employees know their voice now carries more weight than ever. They know the score can strengthen or weaken their leader’s position and they increasingly use that power consciously. Sometimes low ratings aren’t due to real dissatisfaction, but as a form of pressure, a message: “We don’t want them. Sometimes it’s said directly, more often as a joke, between the lines but the effect is real. When that signal shows up in the results, organizations rarely seek context. They just see numbers and draw conclusions.

 

In this situation, the manager stops being a leader. They lose influence, stop making decisions. They don’t lead, they try to survive. They wait for the score, knowing it will determine whether the company still sees them as “delivering” or not.

 

But that’s not how it was supposed to be. Surveys were meant to be a support tool, to help understand the team, improve communication, catch problems before they grow.

 

Yet when a survey score starts determining a leader’s future, it’s easy to lose the original purpose.

 

 

When an organization weakens its own potential

 

The pressure that companies often unknowingly place on managers begins, in the long run, to affect not only them but also the overall effectiveness of the organization. When a survey result becomes the primary metric for evaluating a leader, decisions are made with increasing caution. The priority shifts from addressing real business needs to avoiding declines in satisfaction.

 

Instead of implementing changes that could bring benefits, leaders delay reorganizations, postpone difficult decisions, and hold back initiatives that carry the risk of team dissatisfaction. Actions are evaluated not based on their impact on growth or productivity but through the lens of how they will be perceived.

 

This is not due to a lack of knowledge or competence. Many managers know exactly what needs to be done, but the question arises: is it worth it? Even the most reasonable and pro-innovation decisions may not outweigh a drop in morale, especially if such a result is presented in a comparison of departments, regions, and leaders.

 

As a result, the organization gradually loses its momentum, flexibility, and readiness to act. Caution grows, ideas are overly filtered, decision-making becomes paralyzed. Changes are postponed, and the space for initiative and experimentation systematically shrinks. Although everything may appear fine on the surface, internally, the company begins to lose its drive.

 

The greatest loss, however, is the people who fuel growth. Those who wanted to build leave the organization. Ambitious, engaged individuals with initiative. Leaders who wanted to take on challenges and responsibility but increasingly felt that every decision was judged not by its effectiveness but by its impact on the satisfaction score. In such a culture, it’s difficult for them to maintain motivation and a sense of purpose. Instead of developing their team, they start looking for an environment where they can act with courage and accountability without fear that every change might be seen as a mistake.

 

The cost of such departures isn’t immediately visible. Yet its impact on the organization turns out to be very real. A company that loses people capable of making bold decisions also loses its ability to grow, adapt, and build a competitive advantage.

 

Creating a workplace that combines team satisfaction with organizational resilience and effectiveness requires a new, compromise-driven approach. One that offers space and trust to both employees and leaders. It’s not about choosing one side but about building a system that can sustain both.

 

Instead of implementing changes that could bring benefits, leaders hold back on reorganizations, postpone difficult decisions, and suppress initiatives that carry the risk of team dissatisfaction. Actions are analyzed not in terms of their impact on growth or productivity, but through the lens of how they will be perceived.

 

 

A conscious approach: how to support leaders without losing the voice of the team

 

If employee satisfaction surveys are truly meant to help the company rather than slow it down, a new approach to this tool is needed. An approach that integrates surveys into a broader system of evaluation and development, and that balances the interests of the team and the responsibility of the manager. The issue does not lie in asking people for their opinion, but in the fact that this opinion is often interpreted out of context.

 

Company boards must realize that a well-conducted survey is one of the most important sources of information, but it cannot be the only one. Therefore, if we want to understand the team, we should look at more than just moods. Equally important are:

• the changes that have taken place and their effects after a few months,
• the development of competencies within the team,
• the quality of decisions and the speed of their implementation,
• the actual effectiveness of the leader, which often becomes visible only over time.

 

A survey shows a fragment. The rest has to be understood, and that requires conversation, understanding of context and circumstances, not just the result. That’s why, once the survey is complete, the manager should not be left alone with a PDF and graphs. What is needed is a shared perspective: theirs, their supervisor’s, and HR’s. What happened in the past few months? What decisions were made? What could have influenced the perception? Is a drop in ratings a real problem, or the result of courage and change?

 

Such meetings, if held honestly and with the intention of understanding, can take the pressure off the leader, but also point to real areas for development. They give the leader a sense of agency and teach the courage to interpret feedback. Because it’s not about changing nothing. It’s about learning to read “between the numbers” and act wisely.

 

The second element of a more comprehensive approach is activating the manager in working with the result. They cannot play the role of a passive recipient, but should be a partner in this process. A leader who can clearly indicate what they did, what worked, what didn’t bring results, and what they learned in the process strengthens their position. It’s not about justifying or defending, but about clearly presenting their intentions, drawing conclusions, and planning further actions—both in the area of communication and relationships, and in strategic areas such as team development or work reorganization.

 

The third pillar is balanced evaluation. A leader should not be assessed solely on the basis of the sympathy they receive from the team, nor judged only through the lens of business results. What matters is that the company defines its own set of criteria, which includes:

• achievement of goals,
• team development,
• the quality of relationships, organizational culture, and work climate.

 

It is important that none of these elements exist in isolation from the others. A good leader is not someone who only achieves goals, nor someone who is simply liked. It is a person who can balance both aspects: builds trust and respect in the team, and at the same time clearly sets direction and supports development. In such an approach, the survey regains its true value. It becomes a tool that supports dialogue, not a final evaluation or judgment.

 

Only when these three elements work together does the manager gain space for real leadership. They can make decisions with courage, rather than according to momentary moods. They can act consistently, without fear that every change will be reduced to a single number.

 

Such balance does not take the voice away from employees and does not weaken the feedback culture—on the contrary, it gives it depth and meaning. It empowers leaders and raises the quality of the entire organization, which no longer has to choose between relationships and effectiveness. It begins to build both.

 

A good leader is not someone who only achieves goals, nor someone who is simply well-liked. It is a person who can balance both aspects: building trust and respect within the team while clearly setting direction and supporting growth.

 

 

Summary: From system to leadership

 

In the whole discussion about surveys, scores, and top-down expectations, it’s easy to lose sight of what matters most—intention. It’s not about achieving a high score for the sake of it, nor about avoiding evaluation. It’s about making sure the system supports what truly builds a strong organization: trust, responsibility, courage, and growth.

 

A well-conducted survey can be a powerful tool. It can reveal tensions, inspire change, and build dialogue. But its true value only emerges when it operates within a broader context—not as the sole indicator, but as one element of a comprehensive approach to evaluating and strengthening leadership.

 

Organizations should not have to choose between supporting teams and empowering leaders. They must learn to integrate both. The leaders who can both listen and lead are the most valuable asset any company has today. These leaders must not be lost to oversimplified metrics, superficial interpretations, or short-term thinking.

 

If a company’s goal is true employee engagement, it must go hand in hand with the willingness to support leaders—not only when things are going well, but also when they are making decisions that are difficult but necessary.

 

A mature organization is one that knows how to listen and to expect, that understands employee satisfaction is valuable only when it stems from real influence, a clear vision, and a shared sense of purpose—not from avoidance or inertia.

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If you are a leader, you don’t have to choose between closeness and effectiveness. You have the right to ask, to explain, to show the context. You have the right not to fear courage. Because where the fear of evaluation ends, real leadership begins.