It’s good to talk (and even better to listen)

One of my male colleagues recently had to take time off due to burn out from the project he was working on. He could have kept it quiet, but instead chose to change our whole company by being open about it. We now have a mental health channel on Slack, he’s leading the conversation, and he’ll be giving a talk on burnout and depression/anxiety at an upcoming tech meetup.

It’s amazing what one voice can do. He said that during his first conversations on the subject it was hard to even get the words out. Now he’s bringing it up in team meetings.

It triggered me to start getting one to one feedback from our team – armed with a list of simple metrics to gather, I’m trying to gain as much information as I can on how people at work are feeling about the way we do things as a company.

People’s views can be so different. For some of the team, the lack of regular feedback is a huge problem in the company, for others, it’s barely on their radar. Some people like our slightly unstructured approach, while others find it frustrating.

I’m trying to focus on listening. In my role, there’s a delicate balance between listening – letting people say all they have to say – and making suggestions and keeping things moving. It can be a tricky tightrope to walk. I’m part traditional project manager (tasks, timelines and budgets), part agile coach (continuous improvement and facilitation).

I’ve reached out to another agile coach to practice my listening skills while giving and receiving feedback and advice, and I’m always on the look out for new people to learn from. We all need to be heard in order to grow as people, both professionally and personally.

 

How do I know if I’m any good?

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:

1. Describe the situation (“In the finance meeting last Wednesday…”)
2. Describe the behaviour (“…you folded your arms and looked away while I was speaking…”)
3. 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:

1. List areas of the business that most affect team members
2. Ask each individual to rate their view of each area currently: 🙂 😐 😦
3. Then get an improvement indicator (i.e. do they feel that the area has improved, remained the same, or got worse): /\ <> \/
4. Get a rating out of 10 for how important each area is to the individual
5. 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.