Happiness Door
Why give feedback in companies?
The culture of feedback or continuous feedback helps to correctly channel the expectations of employees, gives them confidence in their own work, reinforcing those things that are done well and helps to know where they need to improve and how to solve it.
Sarah K. Yazinski, in her article “” Strategies for Retaining Employees and Minimizing Turnover “(https://hr.blr.com/whitepapers/Staffing-Training/Employee-Turnover/Strategies-for-Retaining-Employees-and-Minimizing -) highlights that 88% of employees leave their jobs for reasons other than remuneration: however, 70% of managers think that employees leave mainly for reasons related to remuneration. Branham says there are seven main reasons why employees leave a company:
1. Employees feel that the job or workplace is not what they expected.
2. There is a mismatch between work and person.
3. There is very little training and feedback.
4. There are very few opportunities for growth and advancement.
5. Employees feel devalued and unrecognized.
6. Employees feel stressed from overwork and have an imbalance between work and life.
7. There is a loss of confidence in top leaders.
Marta Romo highlights the importance of giving good feedback in her article “Overcoming difficult conversations. How to give a good ‘feedback’ ”(https://www.harvard-deusto.com/superando-conversaciones-dificiles-como-dar-un-buen-feedback) reinforces the fact that the importance of developing skills beyond technical training and how this approach has a positive impact on the person and consequently also on business results. Improving in some skill, even if it is only 1%, is a lot: that 1% can change many things. However, being a phenomenon in something specific, but not being able to hold conversations in which to give, receive or ask for ‘feedback’, makes the impact of that 1% negligible. Therefore, focusing on how to give ‘feedback’ correctly can help personal and professional development in an exponential way.
Jurgen Appelo in Management 3.0 states that collective happiness and collaboration comes from sharing the good, the bad and the ugly, which is why it is important to ask for timely, specific and honest feedback. That is why he recommends the practice of the Door of Happiness, it is made up of Post-it notes with comments written on them. This practice combines team collaboration, employee engagement, and open and honest feedback. The details of the practice can be found in The Door to Happiness Measure the Pulse of the Office — Management 3.0 (management30.com)
The team with which I carry out the practice is made up of 7 people, of which he was the Scrum Master, in the company we have worked remotely since March 2020.
In the last months of 2020 I noticed that the team was at a thousand per hour, many commitments, very long meetings, work committed to deliver and I noticed stress in several of them and I told them about the practices that they have with Management 3.0, so we started apply them in some scheduled events. In order to get an early feedback, with the aim of improving from event to event, in the first event held in M3.0, I asked them for their feedback regarding what they had thought of the practice, to obtain this quick feedback use Happiness Door.
The practice was executed on a Miro blackboard, the door was divided into 3 sections, each section had an assigned emoji, so that the notes were placed according to the feeling of each participant.
The following steps were executed:
1.Explanation of the purpose of Happiness Door, at the end of the M3.0 event
2.A time of 3 minutes was given for each participant to reflect and post the notes they consider anonymously.
3. Those who will not complete it were indicated that they could complete it later, since it would remain open until before the next session.
4.Check comments later and before the next M3.0 event
5.Closure
6. The following figure shows how the final result was:
The team mentioned that they liked the practice, it was simple, effective, and asked to do more exercises of this type. By having feedback in real time, it allows you to visualize what actions to take for the following sessions.
In the next session we reviewed the notes on the board, meaningful conversations were generated that helped foster collaboration, openness and early feedback, a practice that we continue in the following sessions.
As a Facilitator I learned the importance of having early feedback and even more so of giving yourself the space to receive it. I learned that trust is also generated by knowing how to find, through non-face-to-face means, how to listen to the team.
In this first Happiness Door session we had, all the notes were in the “I like” emoji section, comments were found such as: “We have recognized ourselves in others”, “It was a pleasant moment to free ourselves from day to day” , “Build confidence in the team, get to know each other a little more” “Very interesting techniques”.
The team was very enthusiastic about the results of that first meeting, as you can read in the comments, suggestions were also received such as giving M3.0 meetings a little more time and more frequently.
The team learned to listen to themselves, when the comments were read in the next session, which consequently generated a positive energy to propose changes such as “respect meeting hours” and gives the team confidence that their opinions are taken into account and contribute to the continuous improvement of themselves as a team.
My next experiment would be to add a section where I put notes about what you would like to experience for the next session, apart from having the three sections with the 3 emojis. Additionally, I would keep a kind of log with the results of each event, so that it invites you to reflect on the improvement actions that we are carrying out based on the feedback received.
It is important to note that the comments for feedback should be anonymous, in order to generate greater openness and trust in the team. Participation to leave comments should not be required either, but should be left as an open invitation.
I hope that my shared experience has been of interest to you, I invite you to apply Happiness Door with your teams, you will have very revealing results.
