I’ve always struggled to get valuable and much needed feedback in my current role. After a motivating conversation with an inspiring agile coach, it’s got me thinking about how I can get the feedback – both positive and constructive – that I need to improve.
The agile coach I met with (a young female of about my age) came across as confident and driven, and was full of ideas. I think we all need conversations with people like her every now and again. I guess that’s what coaching and mentoring are all about.
Impact assessments
It’s not just getting feedback that’s important, it’s giving it too. This is a great simple way of keeping feedback objective:
- Describe the situation (“In the finance meeting last Wednesday…”)
- Describe the behaviour (“…you folded your arms and looked away while I was speaking…”)
- Describe the impact: how it made you feel (“…and that made me feel like you didn’t care about what I was saying.”)
This opens up the way for a constructive conversation that gets to real intentions and positive changes going forward, rather than defensiveness, arguments and bad feelings.
Skills evaluation
When it comes to agile coaching, there’s a nice model by Lyssa Adkins that helps agile coaches to think about where their skills lie. The concept of self-evaluation can be applied to any role.
Encouraging feedback
There have been times where my colleagues have given me feedback, and I’ve tried to take it well, but I think I can take it even better. There’s always a momentary disappointment that I’ve done (or am regularly doing) something wrong, but once that’s passed, I hugely value the input. I need to remember to always thank my colleagues when they do this. I want to encourage a culture of feedback, even when it’s constructive – especially when it’s constructive.
Quick health checks
I often worry about taking up too much of my colleagues’ time, especially when it comes to asking for subjective feedback. Conversations about improvements, whether individual or as a team, can easily turn into long discussions.
I’m now armed with a great idea which I’m keen to try out at the next opportunity:
- List areas of the business that most affect team members
- Ask each individual to rate their view of each area currently: 🙂 😐 😦
- Then get an improvement indicator (i.e. do they feel that the area has improved, remained the same, or got worse): /\ <> \/
- Get a rating out of 10 for how important each area is to the individual
- Note down any comments or discussion points that come out of this
And there you have it – a super simple method for health checking individuals and teams, in order to work out which areas are best to focus on for improvement.
Are annual reviews enough?
Personally I’d love a monthly one-to-one, but in the absence of management time, I’m going to keep working on ideas for other ways we as a team can give each other honest feedback.
Imperfectly Flawless 