Fun with Feedback

Being an Agile Coach & Trainer for Prowareness, I use different types of games, tools and practices every week during meetings, workshops and trainings. Some of these I've invented myself, but most already existed and have only been changed slightly to a format that suits me best. The upcoming period I want to share some of these games, tools and practices. I will share the what-why-how-when and what worked well and what didn't. By sharing my experiences I hope to inspire you to give these tools and practices a try for yourself, improve it and hopefully share the perfected version in return.

What is 'Fun with Feedback' about?
It's an exercise that gives a team the opportunity to share feedback within a very short amount of time. If you want to lift your team up with some positive energy, this exercise will do the job!

What's the source?
My colleague Wiger Middelkamp thought of it during our team meeting. Although the exercise for sure isn’t rocket science and probably done quite often by others; it's the simplicity what I really like about it.

Duration
15 minutes.

How I've used it
I have used it during the team meeting at Prowareness. We wanted to gather some feedback within the team but only had 15 minutes available. Therefore we decided to give everyone some sticky notes for writing down the feedback. We chose to focus on positive feedback only. Standing in a circle, one colleague stepped forward. Everyone gave this colleague positive feedback by writing it on a sticky note, explaining it briefly and then placing the sticky note on his/her shirt, arms, face etc. Within 15 minutes everyone had given each other feedback and most important: we had a lot of fun.

What you need

• Sticky notes
• Markers and pens

How to do this

• Give everyone some sticky notes and a marker
• Stand in a circle with one person in the middle
• Everyone writes down some positive feedback on a sticky note, steps forward to briefly explain it and sticks it on the team member
• When everyone has given feedback, another team member steps into the circle
• The exercise is done when everyone has given and received feedback

Some examples of the result
I've added a picture of the exercise we have done within our team lately. In case you're wondering why someone is covered with a colourful powder; as Prowareness we were also celebrating the Holi festival this afternoon...

Of course you don't have to focus on positive feedback only, but we wanted to bring some energy into the team and this works best when you focus on the positive instead on the negative. And for sure this isn't a replacement of a retrospective; it's just a fun and interactive exercise to do once in a while.

I hope this blog post inspires you to give this exercise a try yourself. If so, I would really like to hear your experiences!