Recruiter Reveals The Biggest Mistake People Make In Their Careers — 'Companies Want Yes Men'
If you're the type to give feedback and suggestions in the workplace, you might want to rethink that.
instaphotos / Canva Pro For all but the luckiest among us, we learn a lot of lessons the hard way throughout our careers. One recruiter pointed out an all too common example of this and revealed how to avoid falling into this trap in your own work life.
According to the recruiter, the biggest mistake people make in their careers is saying what they really think at work.
How to give constructive feedback in the office is a topic many work and career gurus spend a lot of time advising on. It's obviously such a delicate dance, especially when you're giving feedback to someone senior to you.
Recruiter Joel Lalgee is known for his no-nonsense career advice. And when it comes to giving feedback at work, his advice isn't to handle it delicately — it's to simply not do it at all.
The recruiter said that most companies' requests for your feedback are insincere.
"One of the biggest mistakes I made in my career was telling people what I really thought, telling people what I thought about processes and how they could be improved, telling people what I thought about their management style and how they could be a better manager," Lalgee said in his video.
Many of you are probably nodding your heads right now. Asking for feedback is pretty standard practice in corporate environments, but all too often when you actually follow through, it either falls on deaf ears or does something far worse — it earns you the "problem child" label.
Lalgee says most of the time, these requests for feedback are not sincere. It's good optics, of course, and makes employees feel more valued and accepted, and all those warm fuzzy feelings employers hope their staff will feel so that they don't quit their jobs.
But Lalgee says feedback is not usually what employers truly want — they want 'yes men' who will fall in line.
"What I realized was most companies don't want people who are going to disagree or not approve of what they do or even try and offer suggestions and improve," Lalgee said.
He went on to explain that sometimes employers and leadership do actually want this and will ask for it accordingly. But even then, he says, most of the time it ends up being a trap.
"If you volunteer that information, it's not going to be received in a good way," he said. "They want yes men. They want people who are going to follow processes, that are going to do what they're told."
This dynamic goes one step further if you want to be promoted. "You actually have to encourage other people to do the same thing, to follow the process, to not ask questions, to basically just do what they're told," Laglee explained.
A senior HR executive told us there is some truth to Lalgee's perspective, and workers should be critical of company culture.
Melissa St. Clair, a 17-year veteran of HR and corporate leadership development (and, full disclosure, a close personal friend of mine), told us that while there's truth to Lalgee's take, he might be painting with too wide a brush.
"There are pockets of bad leadership everywhere," she said, but there are also many exceptions, especially as younger generations rise into leadership. "There's been a shift with more Gen X and millennials in leadership positions," St. Clair continued. "We're kinder, more open."
But she agreed that workers must do their due diligence "to know whether the values that the company espouses are in alignment with how they behave." And crucially, St. Clair advised a zero-tolerance policy for any deviations. "The first indicator that that's not the case, it's time to run."
Or, from Lalgee's point of view, just keep your head down and go with the flow. It's a more cynical take, to be sure. But how many articles, videos, social media posts, and stories from friends and family do we hear every day about employers simply not caring about employees as people anymore?
Our workplaces are ultimately about making money, after all — it's not personal, it's business, as the old saying goes. Accepting that and working around it can help you make the culture work for you instead of against you.
"When you hear things like 'we have a great culture,'" Lalgee said, "just remember that in the root word of culture is the word cult, meaning they want people who think and do things the same way without asking any questions."
As St. Clair pointed out, there are many exceptions to this rule, and your healthy skepticism just might be proven wrong if you're lucky enough to land in a great company. But better to be pleasantly surprised by being proven wrong, than to learn you've been naive the hard way.
John Sundholm is a news and entertainment writer who covers pop culture, social justice and human interest topics.