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When someone gives you feedback (even if it’s not wrapped completely effectively), it’s important to thank them for taking the time to do so. As long as you uncover the important elements of effective feedback together, and agree on actions helping you Strengthen Confidence and Improve Effectiveness, then you personally benefited from the situation.

Avoid the need to justify every single part of the feedback and start with a “Thanks!” Acknowledging the person trying to help you goes a long way. Affirming the value of each piece of feedback helps the donor feel at ease. It assures them you are listening and aren’t reacting badly to their feedback. Creating this safe environment for the donor lets them focus on giving effective feedback, boosting their confidence as they continue with the rest of the feedback.

There’s no need to go all gushy and shower them with gratitudes. Start simple, using short positive affirmations, indicating to the donor you are listening to their feedback focusing on what it is they are trying to tell you.

Effective feedback takes time to give, and as a recipient you should thank the donor for taking their time to help you strengthen your confidence or improve your effectiveness.

Picture above comes from Fave’s Flickr stream under the Creative Commons licence

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A key principle to keep in mind when giving effective feedback is to do so in a timely manner. Feedback only helps the recipient if they have an opportunity to do something about it. It’s difficult to change a specific behaviour if a project’s finished or the feedback comes a year later.

If someone gives you the gift of feedback and you agree upon actions, seek the nearest opportunity to apply it. Applying the actions immediately reinforces the value of feedback. When the feedback donor sees a change in behaviour, they see that it helped the recipient become more effective. Applying it sooner than later creates opportunities for the donor to give new feedback, focused on strengthening confidence and encouraging more of the desired behaviours. More than helping the donor realise the value in their feedback, the agreed upon actions should help improve or continue the recipients’ effectiveness in what context they are working in.

As an example, when you’re out skiing, applying actions from feedback will improve your effectiveness the most by applying it immediately. It may take some time to master it, to change conscious behaviour but it’s only useful if you do it while you’re on the slopes, not when you’re back from your skiing holiday.

Remember that not executing on actions immediately has other negative effects. Not doing anything about agreed upon actions sends a message that you don’t value the feedback, decreasing the likelihood the donor will give any feedback in the future (whether or not its focused on Strengthening Confidence or Improving Effectiveness). Not applying the actions immediately also makes it easier to forget what behaviour needs to change and it will be harder to get affirmation about if your effectiveness has improved.

Photo taken from Sunflower Dave’s Flickr stream under the Creative Commons licence

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The biggest mistake when giving feedback is telling someone what to do (or what not to do). Ever been on the receiving end of feedback like that? Do you immediately recoil and feel yourself saying no? It’s natural because you don’t know how following their recommendation makes you more effective. When someone recommends a specific action, unwind the (ineffective) feedback to see how they ended at their recommendation. Find out what key behaviour triggered they observed and what impact it had. Here’s how you might do it:

Follow these steps:

1. Acknowledge
2. Establish what you’re about to do
3. Ask for specific behaviour
4. Ask for observed impact
5. Generate alternative actions
6. Agree on an action

Only after you both share the same context and background do you then want to move onto Agreeing on the Action. Asking someone to change their behaviour assumes it will fix the problem. Many times people suggest one thing not having the full context and actually, a better solution is something completely different.

Ensure that you both agree on the action because it will make the person receiving the feedback more effective, not because someone told them to.

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The less that something is run, the more likely it will be broken.

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Let’s be honest. People aren’t used to hearing feedback, let alone listening out for characteristics of effective feedback. It’s easy to jump to feeling defensive and trying to justify everything and look for reasons why you behaved as you did. People with backgrounds in programming are also often quick to apply the labels: “Good” and “Bad”.

When receiving feedback, consciously slow down your reactions. Focus on understanding the situation, the facts. Then assess the impact. Avoid the temptation label the feedback as positive or negative, good or bad. Placing a value judgement immediately leads you to agreeing or disagreeing with it. Really listen to the feedback and confirm what you heard, first asking for the specific behaviour, followed by understanding how they perceive the impact.

Here’s an example:

Donor: “Last week I noticed you turning up for stand up three of out five days. I’m concerned because I think it indicates to other team members that their time is not valuable to them.”
Recipient: “You’re saying that I turned up late three out of five days?”
Donor: “Yes”
Recipient: “I only thought I was late for just one day. You’re also saying that my team mates are being affected by this? How are they expressing that their time is not valuable?”
Donor: “I’ve heard a few of them talk about if you’re not turning up on time, why should they?”
Recipient: “I had no idea about this”

The person giving the feedback will often give feedback that is ineffective, therefore as the recipient you may need to ask them questions to get back to the original observations. Focus on facts. Then focus on interpretative. Leave the action until last.

Donor: “You need to turn up on time for stand ups.”
Recipient: “It’s helpful for me to understand some specific examples. Have I not been turning up for stand ups on time?”
Donor: “No. You arrived late last week.”
Recipient: “I only thought I was late for just one day. Was I late more than that last week?”
Donor: “Yes. I thought you arrived late during stand up at least three times last week. It’s so annoying.”
Recipient: “I’m sorry to hear that you see it as annoying. It’d be helpful for me to understand why you see that as annoying.”
Donor: “It’s annoying because other team members have been complaining about if you’re not turning up, why should they.”
Recipient: “Ahh. So you’re saying that because I’m turned up late three times last week, then everyone else feels like they shouldn’t have to either.”
Donor: “Exactly.”

Whether or not a donor is giving you effective or ineffective feedback, they are trying to tell you something. Use the opportunity to listen to what they are trying to tell you, even if it is masked by emotion and suggested actions. Use the opportunity to uncover the elements of effective feedback. Avoid agreeing or disagreeing with a person immediately. Confirm what you are hearing. Uncover the facts and understand how they perceive the impact and both of you will understand what actions need to be taken and more importantly why.

Photo above taken from Borghetti’s flickr stream under the Creative Commons licence

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I’m writing this guide to answer a question a trusted colleague asked me the other day. I think there are plenty of resources for how to give effective feedback (I’ve written a few myself) yet I can’t find as many about the other end, or how to go about receiving feedback. I’m planning on writing a series of these posts, so my first tip in this series is: Ask For Feedback.

I’m amazed at how many people go through life without asking for feedback. There are plenty of reasons why people don’t do so. Perhaps it’s because people are ineffective at giving feedback, perhaps people are fearful of the consequences it may have on their status, on their career, or their current position. Many organisations, teams and processes don’t really create a safe environment for people to receive effective feedback, only serving to fuel the cycle of not wanting to provide effective feedback. Poor HR processes tie performance evaluations to annual reviews that only occur once a year, adding to the vicious cycle of providing poor quality feedback.

Remember that effective feedback should be about Strengthening Confidence and Improving Effectiveness for the person receiving it. Anything else is ineffective.

The first step that you, as the person benefiting from the feedback, should do to break the cycle is simple; ask for it. Asking for feedback (particularly detached from performance evaluation cycles) starts to create a safe environment for the person giving feedback. It gives the donor permission to help you understand what things to continue doing (or do more of) and places where you might improve. You could start the conversation off like this:

“I value your opinions and I’d be interested in getting your feedback about how you think things are going. It would be helpful for me to understand specific examples focusing on behaviour where you can help me strengthen my confidence and improve my effectiveness.”

Make sure you give the person the opportunity to think about it:

“I’d like to get that feedback soon and would like to give you some time to think about it. Can we organise a time later in the week to cover this?”

Establish a time that works for the both of you – enough to let the donor collect their thoughts balanced against enough time for it to be relevant for the recipient. More importantly, ask for feedback frequently. Don’t wait until the end of a team, the end of a project or a whole year. You want feedback to be relevant and specific because relating feedback to recent events gives you the opportunity to apply it.

Photo above taken from GreyBlueSkies flickr stream under the Creative Commons licence

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Businesses need to be comfortable that not all projects are going to succeed. Out of a portfolio of projects, people need to be comfortable that these projects will not achieve what they originally set out to do. Don’t expect that, even with agile methods and values guiding your teams, these projects will achieve what they set out to do.

Some projects aren’t set up for success. Poor organisational governance, leading to unrealistic expectations established from the outset often set up a project for a real death march. Or perhaps projects spun out of the whims of one set of people only to not understand what organisational capabilities they really have. Sometimes it comes down running a project with the wrong mix of skills and without a support structure in place that creates a time bomb waiting to explode.

Don’t forget that agile and lean methodologies cannot guarantee success. At the heart of it, agile will surface problems and make them visible. Organisations need to be prepared to confront the truth (many are not ready for this level of transparency) and support changes that will make it better.

For projects destined to fail, your best result is often to Fail Fast, take those lessons and then do something differently. Avoid the situation where a project sucks up resources that could be more effectively allocated. And don’t forget, just because a project didn’t achieve what it set out to do, it’s only a true failure if you don’t learn anything from it.

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Last week reminded me how hard communication is to get right. Last week reminded me of how important it is to be visible with information as early as possible. Last week reminded me of what happens with the people involved don’t have access to information early.

Successful teams applying agile principles quickly involve those impacted by the situation, equipping them with as much information as early as possible. These teams call upon agile practices such as daily stand up meetings, retrospectives, and frequent showcases to achieve this. Better and earlier access to information helps all parties involved come up with more options. More options creates more opportunities to have better conversations, and more opportunities to collaborate to meet everyone’s needs, and ultimately end up with a solution that everyone is more likely to feel committed to.

Compare this to those teams who hoard information, selecting and filtering the information others hear. Filtering and transforming information limits the number of options, often adding additional stress because the team now how to come up with the perfect option. Even with contributions from others, the pool of options will often be tainted by solutions not entirely appropriate or relevant. More importantly, if the people affected by a decision aren’t involved, they will end up less committed to the solution and often, cause more problems because of resentment.

No one likes to be handed decisions. That’s why the Agile Manifesto emphasises “Individuals and Interactions”, and a key principle of Lean Thinking is “Respect for People”.

The moral? Remember to involve the appropriate people in the decision making process as early as possible. Even if you suspect there is only going to be one solution, be transparent with the information you do have in the hope you may end up with more options, or at least, the outcome is no surprise.

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