How to give simple, straight-forward and continuous feedback to your team

In this story, I will share some tips on giving simple, straight-forward and continuous feedback to your team, and how it might help you to keep the team goals clear and enhance its productivity.

Background

I work on IT operations. My team goal is to keep company systems running smoothly, and to keep business projects going through the IT environment without problems and within the deadline. Within the team, I am one of the leaders, so my role is to keep things going on, no more, no less.

Generally speaking, IT engineers are hard to handle. They are smart, resilient and reliable professionals, but needs a lot of space, and like to work on their own way and speed.

One of my hardest goal is to keep a lot of IT engineers working together, being productive and creating a healthy work environment for everyone.

Creating a continuous feedback culture

A continuous feedback culture creates an open and trusty environment. Start by doing feedback sessions with everyone in your team.

Feedback sessions

Feedback sessions are simple and rapid conversations between you and someone of your team. These sessions should be:

1. One-to-one, just you and the person
2. At a neutral place, like the company rest area or a near cafe, avoid to talk at the working desks or meeting rooms
3. 20 minutes long, extend if really necessary
4. Private, the informations should be used by the team lead, but not shared among other team members
5. Regularly, monthly if possible

Start talking openly, take notes.

First, state the feedback session goal:

This feedback session goal is to keep things open and clear between us. You are very important to our team and we want to know how you fell about it.

Then, explain the feedback structure:

First, we will talk about our expectation on you. Right after that, we will talk about our team goal and strategy. Next, you will talk about how you are feeling working with us. Last but not least, we want to know what you think about our team.

Try to keep each part within 5 minutes time windows, extend if really necessary.

Part 1 — Tell about your expectations

In the first 5 minutes, talk about the team lead expectations on the person. Every person is important on a team and should be given a well defined role. Some tips:

1. Try to define the person role in a few words
2. Keep clear that there is a well defined place for the person in the team
3. Take notes about the person reaction and comments

Part 2 — Tell about the team goals

In the next 5 minutes, talk about the team goals, in short, medium and long terms. Every person wants to be on a boat that is going somewhere, and with a good captain. Some tips:

1. Reduce the differences, the team goals are not exclusive to the lead, talk to the person the way you would present the team goals to the board or customers
2. Give some examples on how everyone wins going towards the goals
3. Take notes about the person reactions and comments

Note: keep the team goals details according to your company privacy policy.

Part 3 — Ask how the person feel in the team

Now it is time to change sides. You give the session control to the person you are talking to. Ask how they feel in the team, try to get clear definitions like happy, indifferent or unhappy. Some tips:

1. Let the person comfortable, restating that the session is private and that you are not there to judge, just to listen
2. Work on the person’s feedback, trying to get more details, whether it is a good or not feedback
3. Take notes about the person’s feedback

Part 4 — Ask what the person thinks about the team

In the last 5 minutes, let the person talk about the team, in a general way, stating the best and the worst. Some tips:

1. Every team has qualities and weakness, try to get both from the person, avoid only bad or good feedbacks
2. Do not argue about the problems, just listen
3. Take notes about the person feedback

To finish, restate the person’s feedback, and ask if the person wants to add something else. If not, greet and thank:

That’s all, thanks for your attention, see you in the next session.

Maintaining a continuous feedback culture

Do not stop on the first session. If you are out of time to talk to your team, try to get some, you will get to talk to them one way or another. Try to extend the feedback intervals (every 2 or 3 months instead of monthly) or to get help from another team leader. Just keep it going.

Soon or later, someone on your team will ask:

Hey, what about our feedback session?

The advantages of a continuous feedback culture

To create and maintain a continuous feedback culture, you will need time and discipline. How can you justify this time to your boss?

Continuous feedback culture keeps the team goals clear

Everyone wants to win, but sometimes they are just not aligned with the company goals. Giving constantly feedback about the goals helps to solidify it between the team, embedding it in the team culture.

Redirecting all the team efforts to a common goal increases the chances of team success.

Continuous feedback culture creates a trusty environment

Everyone has something to share, if they feel comfortable to do so. Giving constantly feedback, celebrating the best and openly discussing the worst, increases the chances of getting real information about the team.

Creating a trusty environment reduces the time wasted on futile issues, getting more time to get job done.

Continuous feedback culture solves problems rapidly

Everyone wants to solve problems, sometimes even creating others. Giving — and getting — constantly feedback helps you to know people better, helps to get the “the right person in the right place” mindset.

Knowing people better antecipate problems, problems should be solved as soon as possible.

Conclusion

As a team leader, your job is to get work done by your team: different people, with specific personalities, experiences and skills. It’s a hard task, even harder for those who do not know their team.

A continuous feedback culture keeps the team goals clear, creates a trusty environment and solves problems rapidly, helping to keep your team working and productive.

Here are some final notes:

1. If your team is small (up to 20, like mine) talk to everyone personally, that’s what I do
2. I do not have experience on medium (20 to 100) and large teams (100+). At some point, it will be impossible to talk to everyone. In this scenario, spread the feedback culture within your leaders (you should not manage a lot of people alone), and give them the responsibility to give feedback in batches

Feel free to contribute, sharing and/or commenting.