Today, I want to talk about harnessing the power of feedback.
For a lot of folks (myself included), feedback can feel pretty scary. It's emotionally taxing to be in either the receiving or giving side of feedback. On the receiving side, it's easy to write-off positive feedback and to dwell on the constructive side as personal, unchangeable failings. On the giving side, you're never quite sure how the other person will react -- maybe they'll take it gracefully, or maybe you'll make a permanent enemy (which then could affect your career opportunities, or get you fired altogether).
But feedback is also one of the most powerful and important strategies for success -- and it's not just limited to interpersonal situations. Every person, team, and organization has blindspots; feedback helps highlight those. No one can predict the future, but if you have to try, gathering insights from a group is more likely to be closer to accurate. And teams gel faster when individual members are able and willing to address issues directly.
Giving, receiving, and cultivating feedback is an integral part of being an effective manager. Unfortunately, becoming a manager does not magically convey upon you those skills -- so here are the tips I have for building a culture where feedback is frequently and uneventfully given.
Scenario. FakeStuff Inc has been having a rough time recently. They just launched a new product that has flopped, and their competitors are catching up to their flagship offering. The leadership team decides to call an emergency all-hands to gather ideas and feedback from the team. At that meeting, Pat, who joined only two weeks ago, suggests an idea that had been tried a year before, but ended up not being effective.
Destructive Path. The CEO responds, "you mean like we did last year? when we crashed and burned? the whole reason we're in this situation now? yeah, great idea." Pat is embarrassed, along with Pat's manager, friends, and the person who proposed the idea originally. It's clear to everyone that presenting an idea is a huge risk, and the meeting ends up being a failure.
Constructive Path. The CEO responds, "That's a solid idea, and actually we had tried exactly that last year. Unfortunately, our customers weren't very interested at the time -- but if you have some data that points to trying again, let's have a conversation about it." While Pat doesn't have data to support trying anyways, the CEO's response opens the floor to several more people speaking up, including someone who does have a set of metrics that define a clear area where FakeStuff could focus to solve new-but-related customer problems.
You can't build a culture of feedback if your team doesn't feel safe giving feedback. No amount of training, cajoling, or requiring will outweigh an environment where emotionally or professionally, giving feedback is punished. I'd say that's reason enough to build psychological safety, but there's many more benefits that come from laying this groundwork.
Even if you're at an organization that doesn't demonstrate psychological safety from the top down, you can cultivate it within your sphere of influence. Here are some strategies I recommend.
Build spaces where your team can share feedback, through different mediums and levels of anonymity. Having an unofficial (or official) ombudsperson (who is NOT the manager of the team) can help make this less daunting if historically feedback has been taken poorly; this role entails listening and documenting feedback from any and all members of the team, and anonymizing that feedback along with any patterns or trends.
Share practices for receiving feedback as part of onboarding and continuing education for every member of your team. This doesn't have to be complicated; my go-to phrase is "thank you for the feedback", and if I'm feeling emotionally challenged by the feedback, following it with "can I take some time to think about how to address this?"
Celebrating the people who gave you constructive feedback can go a long way in demonstrating that you're walking the walk, not just talking the talk. This doesn't have to be very in-depth either, but I've found the best impact comes when you can share generally what the feedback was about, and ideally who shared it. "I got some constructive feedback yesterday -- thank you!" doesn't have quite the same ring as "Sam made an excellent point in our 1:1 yesterday -- I've been talking a lot in our team meetings, but I'd really rather be hearing from all of you. I'm going to be more mindful of how I contribute -- thank you Sam for bringing this to my attention!"
Scenario. Alex has been a manager for just about a year, but still hasn't been able to get a clear answer on whether she's doing well in this new role. She asks for feedback regularly, but it never seems to go much farther than "you're doing fine", though every once in a while she gets a particular request, which she always makes sure to address immediately.
Not-so-great approach. Alex continues to ask for feedback, which continues to gather lack-luster responses. Performance reviews also continue that trend, where it's clear Alex is an adequate manager with room to improve, but not the specific skills or areas where she should be improving.
More useful approach. Alex spends some time thinking about the skills she had to spend the most time learning, and the ones that were easiest to pick up. She then shares this list with her team, along with her own estimation on how far she's come and how much farther she needs to go. With this list in front of them, her team is able to highlight an area where Alex underrated herself, another area that she thought was a strength but actually needs a lot of improvement, and one skill that hadn't made her list at all. Now, Alex has the information she needs to be a better manager for her team, and a path to get there.
One of the reasons it's so challenging to give good feedback is the scale at which we're usually asked to give feedback (e.g. performance reviews); you can't keep in your head all of the interactions you've had with a person over a large span of time. So most of the time, we default to general reflections of whether we like working with the person or not. These are usually not specific enough to actually help someone improve.
This anecdote is very closely based on my own experience as a new manager (and the foundation of Skippering), but it's not something I see commonly highlighted -- which I'd argue is a big missed opportunity. Here are some ways to help ensure you're supporting useful and actionable feedback.
Build your own set of perceived strengths and weaknesses, and share them with your team to give feedback about them. Encourage your team to do the same, and share to the degree they feel comfortable. Skippering can be a great tool for this, since it's specifically designed for this type of focused feedback.
Create expectations and skill matrices that define the expectations for your team members that can be a foundation for feedback. Having a set of phrases that evoke a concept (e.g. "You really demonstrated 'we succeed together' in that last project, where you took on that extra presentation when Jamie got sick") can make this easier as well.
Use your own path as an example of how change happens, and encourage others to do the same. One of the frustrating parts around giving feedback is how slow it can be to be adopted. Even if you're not where you or your team want you to be, the act of sharing that you're focused on addressing that feedback can be affirming. Open opportunities for your team to do the same, and make sure to celebrate those who are brave enough to do so.
Scenario. Ty has just stepped into management, and in his very first week as a manager, he has to have a hard conversation with Rex, one of the senior members of the team (with years more of experience than Ty). Rex has a reputation for prickliness, and this conversation is definitely going to get painful.
Avoidant Approach. Ty decides his first week as a manager is the wrong time to tackle this conversation, and decides to push it off until next week -- and then the week after, then the week after that. Each week, the feedback becomes more critical to give, but it also gets more daunting, since what was a single instance of not-so-great behavior has now become a pattern. When Ty finally shares the feedback with Rex, it (as expected) goes poorly, and both Ty and Rex have a hard time rebuilding their professional relationship.
Head-on Approach. Ty knows this conversation is going to be rough, so he goes to his manager to ask for advice. They end up spending hours discussing the feedback, roleplaying how Rex might react and how Ty could respond to that reaction. By the end of their discussion, Ty has a rough script in his head for his next conversation with Rex. Though the feedback sharing is still rough, the next day, Rex reaches out to Ty to talk about resolving the behavior; part of their every subsequent 1:1 involves talking about the progress (or lack thereof) Rex is making in this area, and each time, that conversation gets more comfortable for both of them.
This scenario too is loosely based on my own journey; I found it very easy to push off feedback conversations in my first year as a manager. What I realized from the experience, though, is if you're not building a habit of giving feedback, you're building a habit of avoiding it. Kim Scott does a wonderful job highlighting why avoiding criticism is problematic in her seminal work Radical Candor, and I highly recommend giving it a read.
I don't think giving feedback ever gets easy, but it does get easier with practice. You only get practice if you actually give feedback, and you only get the full benefits of a feedback culture when feedback is given in a timely and focused way; ensuring that you're spending the time to make a habit of giving feedback can level up you and your team. Here are the strategies I've found useful.
Share feedback whenever you get the opportunity. This is usually much easier with positive feedback, which can also happen in public or private settings (unlike constructive feedback, which almost always should be private). Highlighting positive feedback in public not only helps you practice the act of noting and sharing feedback, but also reinforces the psychological safety of the team.
Practice hard feedback conversations with a trusted partner before having the real conversation. This could be your manager, or it could be a manager peer -- but it should be a manager, from both a privacy and relevant experience standpoint. Roleplaying the scenario can be very useful, especially through the difficult ways someone might take feedback (e.g. anger, denial, dismissal).
Create cadences in which your team can build the habit of giving feedback as well. Setting up post-project retrospectives, or monthly check-ins can help everyone get more comfortable giving feedback, and can facilitate direct feedback between peers (which can be a lot more effective and relevant than feedback channelled through a manager).
Try out some feedback scripts to see if any work well for you (e.g. NVC, SBI, SKS); having a structured way to give useful feedback helps reduce some of the cognitive load on the individuals providing feedback, making it more likely that the feedback actually gets shared.
Scenario. Jay just hired Cece, who's excellent at her work, but sometimes is a little blunter than her peers. Jay really appreciates her candor, and regularly shares that they want her to continue to be straight-forward about her concerns. However, Bill, one of Cece's male peers ended up sharing in a 1:1 that he felt Cece was stepping over the line to rudeness. Bill also has a tendency towards bluntness, but until Cece joined, was the only outspoken person on the team.
Abdicating ownership. Even though Jay has some concerns about a double standard being applied to Cece, they don't want Cece to be caught blindsided by a poor relationship with Bill. Jay ends up sharing this feedback (anonymously) with Cece, and changes their own feedback to reflect a more conciliatory message. Cece no longer feels comfortable sharing in meetings, and ends up leaving the organization.
Embracing ownership. Jay thinks on the situation, and ends up taking two steps. First, they do share this anonymous feedback with Cece, but emphasize that this is feedback they disagree with, and they want to collaboratively find a strategy that doesn't sacrifice Cece's comfort in speaking up. Second, Jay has another conversation with Bill about the double standard, specifically in the context of how women are more likely to be held to an agreeableness standard that men are not. Jay makes sure not to assume that Bill was acting out of bias, but also does not shy away from talking through how the feedback perpetuated bias. Bill is resistant to this feedback, but agrees that he and Cece should be held to the same standard. Jay ends up framing this scenario as an open question to the team, who then define expectations for critiques that allow everyone to contribute.
Not all feedback is useful feedback. Sometimes, the feedback just isn't very relevant to the role that someone holds (you probably don't need a member of customer support to also have great engineering chops, for example). Other times, like in the example above, feedback might reflect an unconscious bias or stereotype that would be actively harmful to reinforce.
Part of a manager's role is to look at the forest of feedback, rather than just the individual trees. Being able to do so helps ensure that the actions taken by you or your team better reflect the change that is actually needed. Here are some ways to do that.
Put more weight on patterns than single instances. If you have a team member who had a single rough call with a customer, you should still talk to them about it -- but it's probably not the start of the end of their tenure at the organization. However, if that first rough call is followed by three more rough calls, you should start having that hard conversation around skill and/or organization fit.
Give feedback to the feedback giver. If someone shared feedback that reinforced a stereotype, bias, or seemed to be given in bad faith, try to have a conversation with the feedback giver about why that feedback was problematic. Keep the conversation focused on the feedback and not the giver -- but watch for patterns of similar behavior. If the feedback is given anonymously, you can bring it up as a group learning opportunity (without identifying the subject of the feedback) as a way to prevent future instances of similarly problematic feedback. It's called unconscious bias for a reason -- sometimes simple awareness of the problem is enough to make change.
Consider carefully whether feedback that reflects a bias needs to be shared at all with the subject. I don't have all the answers for this. I try to evaluate whether there's anything within the feedback that could be acted on, and if so, share just that aspect, but I've probably missed as many marks as I've hit. I welcome tips on finding the right balance!
It's hard to build up a culture of regular feedback, but it is well worth it. Even if in the end, you're the only person who embraces frequent feedback, it can still set you and your team up for success. If you're really excited about building a culture of feedback, I recommend taking a look at Skippering; everything I shared here (and generally in this publication) is part of the ecosystem we're building.