AMA: Managing Negative Comments in Town Halls

A subscriber asks: "What are your thoughts on making an upcoming employee Q&A session at the town hall completely non-anonymous? The leadership team is leaning towards this approach to discourage negative or unconstructive comments. However, I'm wondering how this might impact psychological safety or reduce genuine feedback. Have you seen this work well, or backfire?"

This question touches on several important workplace dynamics that I know are top of mind for many communicators: leadership transparency, candor between leaders and employees, and psychological safety in the workplace. (Speaking of psychological safety, I'll have an article from Harvard Business Review on this topic in this week's issue that you'll find relevant.)

I've seen town halls managed with a variety of styles depending on the context—from completely open formats to completely moderated ones, with many variations in between. I'm assuming your town halls are conducted over Zoom, Teams, or some combination of in-person and virtual formats. Without knowing the specific nature of the negative or unconstructive comments you're concerned about, here are several approaches to consider as you structure your town hall:

Address the Behavior Head-On

There may be some benefit to leaders calling out unproductive comments, not in a personal way where a leader would call someone out by name (unless there is truly unacceptable behavior) during discussion, but at the beginning of the town hall. In your next town hall, the leader could open by saying something like: "We want to have a constructive dialogue and hear from you. Let’s keep our discussion professional and aligned with the company's values."

In this way, you can invoke your company's values as the foundation for the kind of dialogue you want to foster. Hopefully, your organization's values include themes related to respect, productive conversation, and candor without disrespect.

At the same time, don't forget to positively reinforce the behavior you want to see. When you receive thoughtful or constructive questions during the town hall, leaders should acknowledge them in real-time: "That's exactly the kind of question that helps us have productive dialogue," or "I appreciate how you framed that—it helps us dig into the real issues.

Consider Middle-Ground Approaches

You are right to be concerned about losing feedback or stifling open discussion if you make the Q&A completely non-anonymous. Here are some alternatives:

• Pre-event anonymous survey: Collect questions through an anonymous survey before the event, then address them during the live town hall. You can add in live Q&A where people are identified (i.e., there’s a blend of anonymous and non-anonymous question opportunities).

• Moderated questions: Use a moderator who receives all questions and only publishes appropriate ones to the chat, where everyone can see them. If people are deliberately making negative or unprofessional comments, those get filtered out. (You may already be doing this.)

• Encouraging employee voting and commenting: Depending on the platform you're using—whether it's Teams, Zoom, or something else—most have the ability to like, react with emojis, or comment on someone else's message. Leaders can highlight and encourage this feature at the top of the town hall, and other leadership team members can role model this behavior in the chat by liking productive and thoughtful comments. For negative or unproductive comments, consider the strategic use of a thumbs-down reaction or simply the absence of likes to show that those comments aren't appreciated. When employees posting negative, unproductive, or unprofessional comments see that their messages don't receive likes and appreciation from colleagues and leaders, it can create an environment that naturally encourages healthier, more constructive conversations in the town hall.

Examine the Town Hall Structure Itself

Consider whether negative comments might reflect employees' frustration that they don't feel heard or that the negative comments, coupled with a lack of positive or neutral comments, reflect a lack of engagement with the overall town hall format.

Without knowing more about your current format, there could be opportunities to mix things up by bringing in:

• Breakouts or small group discussions during the town hall

• More interactive segments where leaders engage in Q&A with a range of employees, not just the top team

• Guest speakers from other areas of the business or a relevant external speaker

Role-Modeling

Town halls provide you and your leadership team a high-impact platform to do something really important: role modeling.

If employees see authentic dialogue between leaders and employees from across organizational levels as a prominent feature of the town hall, that will be a positive reinforcing mechanism, showing the employee population the kind of dialogue, candor, and exchange of ideas that are valued and celebrated. If leaders are worried about receiving negative comments, it’s reasonable to ask what they are doing to create an environment in the town halls for productive dialogue. In other words, the burden of making good town hall discussion does not fall on the employees/attendees alone.

Granted, this kind of thinking may take some coaching and may be an aspirational goal. Try to think long-term…nobody wants a boring town hall, and supporting healthy dialogue and candor throughout the organization, using town halls as a forum for role modeling, could help with engagement and foster benefits over the long run.

Don't Forget Post-Event Follow-Up

Another approach I've seen work well: comprehensive post-event follow-up. When you have a lively town hall discussion with lots of questions and answers, you inevitably don't get to every topic or cover every pre-submitted question. A thoughtful post-event wrap-up can be incredibly helpful—and in your specific situation, it's a perfect opportunity to reinforce the behaviors leadership wants to see from employees.

To the extent anonymous questions generate unproductive questions or comments, you can address those individually, thematically, or not at all — and you’ll have more time to be thoughtful in how you manage that.

The follow-up email from leadership can also include:

• Top themes and key takeaways from the discussion

• Any questions that were missed during the live session, with responses

• Specific topics that managers can follow up on with their teams

• Most importantly, celebrate the questions that led to really good discussions and the energy or insights they created

This approach serves multiple purposes: it ensures no important questions fall through the cracks, it models the kind of engagement leadership values, and it reinforces positive behavior rather than just trying to eliminate negative behavior.

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The key is finding an approach that maintains psychological safety while also encouraging the professional, constructive dialogue your leadership team wants to foster.

Good luck!