“Has he done it yet?”

After joining the company, it often occurred to me that students came to me with feedback, or to coaches, team leaders or team members. The second time this situation occurred, he first calculated the entire feedback and at the end there was always one question: “Have you seen this feedback yet?” It was interesting to watch how this question came to everyone so shocked and did not even think of giving feedback to the first time. With these questions, the first step on the journey to the culture of feedback began.

It took a bit of a meeting, but at some point we already got to the point where the guys came to me with feedback and finished the article and at the same time they were already asking me “I would probably have had to give it a try, wouldn't it?”. Of course, it will not be pleasant for everyone, because still the nature of such a primary culture is not rooted — so help the child lend a helping hand and make sure that you help me formulate the feedback correctly so that there is the most constructive (e.g. AID model alebo non-violent communication).

Start with yourself

I think this time probably won't faze anyone, but there are still little things worth picking up. During the cleaning session, it happened to me that I asked for feedback at the 1on1 meeting and received classic answers that everything was in order, I was doing my role well, etc. When you have realized the importance of it, you can answer the question correctly. In fact, in the context of this conversation, someone asked something more specific — for example, “What would you improve on our last planning?” or “What are you talking about at our last retrospective? Do I have any other way to do it?” So I betray the one who came away with a lot of advice on what could be improved. If you want to start from yourself, do not settle with the team that you asked your colleagues for feedback and got you how to answer (There is nothing in the style of “It's ok.” or “I have nothing.”). Walk around, ask for details, and do it regularly. This way, you will get used to the fact that you work with feedback on a regular basis. And, of course, it is very important to work with this solid work and, on the basis of these inputs, to do things in the company. This is where the key to motivation lies, so that they give feedback and encouragement.

Regularity and habit

He thought about the team how to make feedback a regular part of what was going on in the company. It started out as simple as getting feedback from 1-5 on the value and effectiveness of the meeting at the end of each meeting — a simple vote with a raise of your hand was enough. And in cases where you saw a low number, you should go into the details so that you know what to improve. It was certainly the other way around — if he perceived that the meeting was not fully in line with the company's values (if you do not have any, then in terms of basic decency), then after the meeting he went to the person and gave him feedback (of course he would be constructive, with a suggestion as to how it might work out to get better). At this point, of course, it is absolutely true that even for a girl who has a positive thing to say — for example, he needs to make a super presentation or help with a super idea — followed by positive feedback soon after the meeting. It became clear that the more information about the little things became known, the team working in the company gradually began to take it for sure — from a completely simple result, because even then they began to improve things.

One is enough to clean up

We do not see it either by chance or fate, but at the same time he had great pleasure in the excellent thing in which he, as a coach, contributed. Specifically, in the sense that, on the one hand, the team leader was completely open to all new ideas and they were experimenting with new techniques (either on the technical side or on the software side). I figured there might be a better step in that. Already from last company som mal very good skúsenosť with perforated plate 360 (details can be found in our old article — in the simplicity of reading from all over our sessions in the city and giving you feedback first) and so as to decide that in this we have to throw up as an idea.

A short digression - I remind you that the first time he came to the head of the branch and the manager of the entire development with this idea, and both of them came up so unpresentable that they did not present it in the company in any case. Feedback has always been given by “us” to the email team leader, and he had to apply everything for the task and hand it over to a specific person. You probably see what was said when a person wanted to ask for details — either he didn't get a response because he knew what he got in the mail, or the other guy sent it first to the person who wrote the feedback for the details.

Let's start with a team in one, which is opened by a new experiment that was simple enough. In the framework of the closest feedback cycle, he first wanted to get one, already reminded of this, but he decided to do it with another team lead, who thought it was a good idea and so the two teams started it. Not surprisingly, it could have been concluded with the team that it saved him the work of predation and aggregation of feedback from raw children, but it probably helped in the cleanup 🙂 According to the principles in point 3, both information meetings ended with an assessment of how relevant it was for everyone. Our percentages were somewhere around 95% of the satisfaction of what I have to manage to beat me, and at the same time I felt that on this front we already “have won”. Because, as it were, successful things are on their own — about a year after this experiment, feedback for the team was already working in 90% of the subjects.

Feedback Culture Ambassadors

Building a corporate culture is a huge thing, and it is something that cannot be described as a “lone wolf”. In our case, we were blessed with agile coaches and somewhat innovative team leaders, who spread their ideas and lived each day in their own way. Whether it is to provide feedback after some kind of meeting or work on 1on1s, every company, and by our own exception, needs a group of students who will take the idea and culture as their own. On the one hand, this is the knowledge of the idea of a wide range of speed, and at the same time it is the key to making this culture last, when the one who set the whole thing in motion dies. Before that, all of us in this group were interested in expanding the category of “ambassadors”, some of the joy of long-term veterans, but there were newcomers, among whom it was clear that this particular function was close. After all, such a culture will stand on solid foundations and in the end result, it may even have a huge competitive advantage for the company, because even if the student prefers an open culture and if nothing works in the company, it is very wide and very fast on the labor market.

Experiment — The Idea Is Not Evil

After the realization of everything about what he wrote above, brilliant ideas began to arise from the Russian children of the subjects. For example, we give a team leader a custom implementation Happiness door, who has received feedback on meetings on Slack. All we had to do was write the right message, and Slack started voting, where we always asked people and not for higher ratings to give us some comment to improve it.

Further experiments could have improved the already mentioned team 360, which we have gradually adjusted in this way. One of the ideas that caught on was, for example, that before meeting the students, they identified 1-2 specific areas on which they want to explicitly receive feedback. For example, a junior developer on the quality of your code or a Scrum Master on moderating meetings and the like.

Even though it may seem like a trifle, with these small improvements and experiments you could already see that the culture of first feedback has become a “new normal” in the company and takes it as its own thing, not a small group.

Zaver

If you want to go on this journey, keep in mind that it is not quick or easy — just in advance, what you read in this article covers a period of about 2.5 years of work in the company. But the results are worth it. Or is it in the fact that people from other companies, who have started, have a positive impact from such a culture, or, for example, in the fact that they consider it as important when they do not even consider joining their company. Of course, each company has a different context, what they wrote is for example a specific company and my preferences, but I believe that there you will find at least a small amount of inspiration to start building a culture of feedback in your company 🙂