Happiness Door: How to collect honest feedback faster

Happiness door, from Management 3.0 , is a way to collect feedback from a group of people in the end of a session (meetings, workshops or trainings). The idea is to understand how?they feel?and?what they want us to know?about their event’s experience. Like an improvement, a compliment, a recognition or just thanks for that time together.

Feedback generates more understanding and collaboration in personal and professional relationships and even with ourselves.

The practice is simple, however very effective. All you have to do is to create a place where people can write their feedback or include sticky-notes. Usually, this place is near to the exit door, this explains the name “Happiness Door”. That way, everyone before leaves the room can share their ideas or comments.

Two positive points from Happiness Door is the fact that every opinion put up is made visible publicly and anyone has the freedom to raise any number of ideas and comments as wish - There is no constraint in terms of the number of sticky-notes even if it is good or bad.

I have used this practice physically; my last experience was during a meeting in the company I work for today. Me and another coach were facilitating the session for more than four leaders presented.

In the end, we explained the whole concept of it and kindly ask for the leaders to share their feedback:?ideas, comments or even their mood, in a window near to the exit door.

We asked some questions just to help them with process. Such as:

• How do you feel after this session?
• Was this presentation good?
• What can we improve for or next sessions?
• What did you like from this session?
• Did you learn something new?
• There is anything feedback you would like to share with us?

They enjoyed it and said that was different from the other practices they had experienced in the past – Happiness door was uncomplicated, quick and effortless.

Lesson learned: As a facilitator is important to explain the exercise before you asked for the participants to share their feedback. If you use sticky-notes, make sure you will have enough for everyone, including pens.

I also learned that people involved were happy to feel their voice and opinion were heard. Listening to the leaders’ feedback has a positive effect on fostering a culture of feedback and trust.

The fact of obtaining feedback on real-time about the session allowed us to analyze it right after the meeting. Me and the coach discussed the improvements for the next session and had great ideas to boost the upcoming workshops.

Details of this practice can be found at:?https://management30.com/practice/happiness-door/. Go there to learn more about it.