What do you do if your project team is struggling to provide objective and unbiased feedback?

Foster a Culture of Psychological Safety: Create an environment where team members feel safe and comfortable expressing their opinions and providing feedback. Encourage open communication, respect diverse perspectives, and emphasize the importance of constructive criticism.

Openness is the true form of weapon here and as a team leader we have to develop a team that is bold , dynamic , unbiased and which is open to criticism and feedback.

To build trust, one thing I have found effective is to sit down with your team and work with each team member, bonding with them (not all day, not all the time, not more than an hour a day) and working with them. Don't tell them what to do or how to do it. Simply sit as an equal and develop ideas, concepts and results together, asking lots of questions to help them guide the process. Naturally, they will ask you back questions, and you will help them get the answers using their ideas. To do this, you must first be open to trusting them, so that you can use all the information they give you and foster that well desired trust.

Set Clear Expectations: Clearly communicate the importance of providing objective and unbiased feedback to the team. Emphasize that constructive criticism is essential for the project's success. Encourage Open Communication: Foster an environment where team members feel comfortable expressing their opinions and concerns openly. Encourage active listening and respectful dialogue during meetings and discussions. Lead by Example: As a leader, demonstrate the importance of objective and unbiased feedback by providing it yourself. Be open to receiving feedback from team members and show appreciation for their input.

If my project team is struggling to provide objective and unbiased feedback, I would first assess the situation to understand the root cause. Then, I would implement strategies such as anonymous feedback mechanisms, clear guidelines for constructive criticism, and team-building exercises to foster trust and open communication. Additionally, providing training on the importance of objective feedback and addressing any underlying issues within the team dynamics would be essential.

A feedback should be taken as a healthy tool until and unless it is in the criterion of bully. One should learns more if he or she starts learning the core objective behind a feedback i.e to construct one’s personality by pointing out the traits.

Be careful with setting guidelines. If they spend too much time worrying about how it should be written, they will either 1) completely alter their answer so it fits your curricula or 2) not write it at all.

Be careful that the training doesn't feel like an admonishment of something that was brought up in the feedback forms or that singles out a person. It should feel like the training session is to lift up the entire team.

As with anything, it's best to take some time to step back and re-establish the priorities. If the project is at the point of moving into the next phase, I personally find it really useful to regularly bring in fresh eyes in the form of the wider stakeholder group, as well as staff who the project won't effect at all. This way you can gather unbiased feedback and ensure the correct decisions are being made. It's very easy to take ownership of a project and not recognise your own bias/team bias due to the hours of work put into it. This is why communication is absolutely key to ensure any decisions made are in harmony with the planned product. A change log is an important tool when managing a project to ensure budget constraints are met.

If you're a recent leader, understand and respect the existing team culture. Observe how people communicate, their perspectives, and who they are before making changes. Opt for subtle adjustments that honor the current culture while introducing your vision. When setting goals, involve your team in brainstorming. Use the company's objectives for alignment. Collaborate on SMART plans for individual goals, with agreed methods for tracking progress and providing feedback. Build your identity within the team through openness, trustworthiness, and genuine interest.

?? To paraphrase Fromm? The faculty to think objectively is reason; the emotional attitude behind reason is that of humility. Honesty, truth, and sincerity, being dependent on the relative absence of some traits, require the development of humility, objectivity, and reason. One may see the difference between a picture of a person and his/her behavior, as it may be distorted, and the person's reality as it exists regardless of one's interests, needs, and fears. ?? It seems that there are occasions when less may become more. Pure simplicity (pretty) often remains the best way to uncover objectivity while confronting reality with one's work /v. one of Einstein's ifs: ("If you are out to describe the truth, leave elegance to the tailor").??