Developing a feedback culture - Part 4: "Creating culture"
Manuel Drews
Director Of Engineering | Instruments & FX + Developer Platform at Native Instruments
Imagine a workplace where you can talk to any colleague, even the CEO, whenever you feel you have something to say. Imagine it'd be natural to criticize them for yesterday’s presentation or tell them you disagree with their business decision last week. Imagine the worst consequence you would have to worry about is being asked for concrete suggestions on how they could improve. What would that feel like?
Now, I'll be honest here: I have never experienced this myself anywhere yet, let alone that I was involved in creating such an environment. To my knowledge there's only a small handful of companies worldwide that have gone that far with their feedback culture. However, I really do believe that this is a goal worth striving for, and the success of those companies supports that belief (1). So how can you make the first small steps towards that ultimate goal?
Start small
Establishing an open feedback culture will take a lot of patience and perseverance; be prepared. Especially if you're alone on that mission, I strongly suggest that you start small - that is in your own direct working environment. Company-wide initiatives all too often start with great ambitions and then die silently because the daily business robs the protagonists of their time and energy to pursue them. Scepticism and resistance, which you'll definitely encounter, are also much easier to manage if the scope is smaller.
Obviously the lowest hanging fruit is to start with yourself: go and ask your colleagues if they have feedback that they would like to share with you. This can happen at any time, but it's often most fruitful shortly after a meeting, a presentation, a conference call etc. Ideally you also ask colleagues whom you don't know that well for their opinion. And if you're really confident you set up a group feedback session where your colleagues share their feedback with you openly in front of everybody who's interested.
On the other side, start sharing feedback with your colleagues even if they didn't ask for it. Of course you don't want to begin with the short-tempered diva-engineer that everyone dreads but with colleagues whom you trust to accept your feedback gracefully. Maybe you pick someone whom you respect or even like. That makes it much easier to convey constructive criticism with as little emotion and subjectiveness as possible. Start taking notes whenever you notice something worth mentioning so that you don't forget. You can then bring it up whenever you see a good opportunity and don't have to schedule an official meeting for it.
Shape the conversation
What will most likely happen in the beginning is that you will receive only positive and relatively vague feedback, especially if you're a supervisor. Giving honest feedback needs practice and trust, and chances are that both are somewhat lacking in the beginning. But whatever the quality of feedback - it's a start, and you can nudge the conversation to become more concrete by asking specific questions. For example a not particularly meaningful statement like "I found your presentation yesterday very interesting" has a good chance to be turned into useful information when you ask something like "I'm not sure whether I was speaking too fast in the second part, what do you think?". Eventually the feedback will get better automatically.
It's totally fine to keep the sessions at that level for some time until they start to feel natural. However, real improvement comes from being able to be candid with one another, so eventually you want to start adding critical feedback to the mix. You can lower the bar for your colleagues here considerably by explicitly admitting to some of your shortcomings that you'd like to improve on ( "I know I can be impatient at times, do you have the feeling I'm more impatient with you than with others?" ).
And if you're really really confident, you can take it another step further: ask for only critical feedback. Let your colleagues experience first-hand that you are actually welcoming criticism. After a few sessions, they'll have much less problems raising sensitive topics with you. Eventually that'll put you in the comfortable position where you can rely on a routine reality check of your performance at work and how you are perceived by others. Creating a challenge network like that is especially powerful if you're a supervisor, but being explicitly open and positive about constructive criticism will have a huge impact no matter what.
Show that it works
Of course, to make your efforts worthwhile, you have to accept the feedback with grace. Show the people that you're thankful for their openness, that your working relationship does not suffer but actually benefits from it. And ideally in the following weeks you show your colleagues that their feedback has an effect. Take your time to process the messages you got and pick one or two things that you'd like to improve and act on them. Or if you feel you can't do that at this point, try to at least talk about it and / or ask your colleagues for help. Anything is better than giving the impression that the whole feedback initiative is not more than a show.
Encourage your direct reports
Employees who are used to a traditional hierarchy tend to turn to their supervisor to address issues they're having in their working environment. If that happens to you, I strongly recommend that you don't try to solve the problem by involving yourself. Instead, encourage your direct reports to talk to each other directly. You may have to schedule a session to get the conversation started, and you may have to act as a moderator. But that should be it for you. Ultimately the team will almost always be better off in the long run if they learn to address their problems on their own.
Dealing with resistance
You probably will encounter reluctance or even resistance by colleagues who don't feel comfortable giving or receiving feedback that publicly. Arguments might include that open feedback is less honest or that group sessions might be misused for public shaming. My experience does not support these concerns, but it is important to respect them. Nobody should be forced to participate (after all that would defeat the purpose). Just let those colleagues continue to give and receive feedback in written form or a private meeting, but invite them to your sessions to show them that their fears are unfounded. Talk about your experiences every now and then, and wait for time to do its work and slowly convince them.
As said in the beginning: changing a workplace culture will take a lot of time and perseverance on your part. Even if you follow the best advice on feedback you can find you might not see an effect for months. That's normal, just continue doing what you can. Eventually one or two of your colleagues will start following your example. That's when you know that your seed starts to grow roots.
Let me finish with a few bonus tips:
Create a nice atmosphere:
People should look forward to the feedback sessions, so whatever you can do to make your colleagues more comfortable is well invested effort. Ideally you find a location that creates a more relaxed atmosphere than the usual meeting rooms, maybe even outside of your office. Just be sure that the place is quiet enough for a normal conversation. How about providing some cookies or ice-cream (of course only if you're not the one receiving the feedback today)? You also want to make sure that nobody in the round is particularly stressed or preoccupied. Consult with your colleagues which date and time of day works best for them before scheduling a session. A Holacracy-style check-in round (2) at the beginning of the meeting might also be a good idea.
Make the feedback fun:
I have a habit of starting sentences and then not finishing them (usually because I get distracted by another thought that crosses my mind). At one such occasion one of my colleagues stood up, took a piece of paper, wrote the headline "number of unfinished sentences" on it and hung it up on our office wall. Then he drew the first score. That was a brilliant way of telling me totally non-aggressively that he was annoyed by my habit. In the following weeks the whole team laughed a lot whenever they could draw another score there, and ultimately it actually helped me improve. The takeaway here is that feedback doesn't always require a formal context. If you can come up with creative ideas like my colleague that is probably the most effective way of all.
Get feedback on your feedback:
As I said before, giving and receiving feedback are skills that can be practiced. But to be able to practice effectively you need to know what to improve. It can be hard to assess oneself objectivity, also and especially if you are in a team that has worked together for a longer time. So invite people from other teams to your sessions. After all, how do you know your feedback culture is good if you don't get feedback on it from the outside?
That's it from my side on the topic of feedback. Thanks for your time and attention, I hope you enjoyed reading and could draw something useful from it. If you have thoughts on the topic, I'd love to read about them.
Special thanks to my colleague Daniel Hatadi for his creative way of giving me feedback and for reviewing this article.
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