What do you do if your team members give you critical feedback?

Critical feedback sets you up for success and its the most important and critical thing you should be open to. Don't be scared of critical feedback. Critical feedbacks helps you to identify the weakness of your project. Listen the feedback carefully, analyze it and let them know your intent behind it. If the feedback is worth working upon include it in upcoming sprints otherwise let them know why this cant be incorporated. Close looping of feedback helps us to become a great leader.

Managers use critical feedback to help attain positive outcomes by providing an individual with comments, advice, critiques or suggestions appropriate for their life, work or future. Well-delivered feedback is a useful tool in the workplace. It helps create a healthy work environment, influence communication, build loyalty, boost productivity, increase engagement and yield better results. Critical feedback can come in different forms. Sometimes employers deliver this as praise or criticism. Feedback is likely to be more effective if it focuses on the work rather than being a personal attack against the individual. Its outcome can help improve behaviour, provide new perspectives, identify weaknesses and speed up processes.

Listen to their feedback and to other team members and try and pick out a theme, if several members of the team are highlighting the same areas then it may be time to reflect. When I finish on a program I create a simple poll that is anonymous that is related to my management style, this provides me with a tool for me to use going forward and to make me a better manager

We start our Program to build a application, during a retrospective meeting the developers gave feedback on lack of clarity on requirements, caused inefficiencies and delays in such a situation we need to listen actively to the feedback eye contact is also very important, once they speak uninterrupted we need to acknowledge the feedback, the critical feedback is very important and we need to clarify if there is any follow up questions, reflect on feedback received and offer solutions like in the above case it could be comprehensive requirement review. Also close the discussion after defining next steps and follow up to ensure concerns are addressed

Being a good listener is the heart of effective communication, and being a program manager is no different. The challenge comes when you are provided with critical feedback. As humans, it is our natural instinct to become defensive when a finger is raised on us. A seasonal PM knows and understands that no one is perfect and takes the critical feedback positively, listening to it with open ears instead of responding to it immediately. The first and foremost thing to do in such scenarios it make the critic as well as yourself comfortable so that the communication channels stay open and no bad feelings come into force while maintaining the dignity and respect of your position.

Getting into a defensive mode is the bane in such situations, as it takes away objectivity from the discussions and derails the whole communication. The PM must keep his or her composure and gather input or notes from the feedback so that it can be analyzed later on. The PM should work on the premise that the feedback is going to improve his or her skills and competency as a PM. With this attitude, the PM can do a world of good to himself or herself.

Once you have gathered input and insights, the next step is to study and analyze the feedback. Filter out noise and identify the valid inputs. There may be lone instances or oversights that do not warrant any major changes, and there may be some genuine and critical inputs that necessitate certain behavioral and/or functional changes. Reflection give the PM an opportunity to critically analyze the feedback and act on it in an objective manner.

Once analysis is done and the PM has figured out genuine and actionable inputs, a plan needs to be formed to address them. The PM must work diligently on this as well as ensure the actions are communicated to the stakeholders. He or she must acknowledge the gaps, appreciate the feedback and actions being taken to plug them.

One of the most important concepts to remember for building great teams is to aggressively protect the team's sense of psychological safety. They need to feel that the team (and you as their leader) are there to support them and help them even when they're feeling vulnerable. That includes when feeling like they can share tough feedback with you about your own performance. If they feel they can give you feedback, they'll trust the feedback you give them more. Everyone will trust that they can go to anyone on the team for help when they are lost. Model the behavior you want the team to embody.

A crucial principle in fostering excellent teams is to vigorously safeguard their psychological well-being. It's essential that team members believe in the team's (and your) support, especially during times of vulnerability. This encompasses their confidence in sharing candid feedback about your leadership without fear. When team members are comfortable providing feedback, they're more likely to value and trust the critiques you offer them. This mutual trust ensures that everyone feels free to seek assistance from any team member when they're facing difficulties. Lead by example and embody the behaviors you wish to see within your team.

Most Organisations I have worked in are seeking to become more flexible, more adaptable to ever changing markets environments and shifting consumer behaviours. Adaptability and agility is a key competitive advantage in order to survive and thrive. We need to recognise and foster a culture of feedback and change which is not always easy to get right. Every organisation is unique and there can be no-one-size-fits-all, cookie-cutter approach. It is necessary to be clear about the desired outcomes of agility and improving as the primary goal. These measurable outcomes will provide your feedback loop, your compass, to support the continuous improvement of your organisation's ways of working.