Speedback: De-stigmatise feedback via speed-dating principles 💋

5 min readJul 9, 2019

Do you want some feedback?

Let’s address the elephant in the room. Giving and receiving feedback can be a terrifying experience. It can be awkward. It can feel unnatural. It makes you vulnerable and exposed.

Because of this fear, we often avoid taking the plunge and shy away from kickstarting the feedback process. We seldom ask for critique from our peers, even though we know it’s good for us. Even though we know it helps us to grow. Even though we can all call upon times where effective feedback has made us better people.

The feedback we receive during our developmental years shapes who we become. Early mentors give effective feedback with love and care because they want us to succeed in life. “Remember to say thank-you to the cashier, because it’ll make their day better”. “It would be great if you could bin your rubbish, so that the cleaner doesn’t have to deal with your mess”. “Always be kind to the people you meet, because you never know when you might meet them next”. Feedback makes us stronger. All these years later, we’re still developing, just in a professional-setting. So when did the feedback process slow-down and why?

Paternal dynamics don’t really exist in our world of flat hierarchies, meaning the status-quo can slip into a culture of avoiding feedback. If it’s, “not my job to tell a colleague how to improve” then it can feel perfectly reasonable to avoid engaging in a feedback situation. The reward appears minimal, the risk appears infinite.

But by ignoring feedback we don’t grow as individuals, or as teams. We stagnate. We cease to learn about our blindspots and shortcomings, or celebrate our strengths and successes together. We use build, measure, learn cycles in our products, and we should apply the same to our people.

Luckily there is an easy way to remove the stigma of giving/receiving feedback whilst simultaneously reaping all the benefits feedback has to offer, making us all better people

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Speedback! 🙌

Checklist for Speedback

Here’s a list of things you will need:

One team that embraces curiosity and a willingness to try new things
1 hour where your team is all free (+30 minutes prep time)
Spaces where pairs can give feedback in relative privacy
A timer
Optional: Post-it notes, pens, notepads

Got all of these things? Good. Let’s crack on.

Speedback to the Rescue!

OK, at this point you’re probably wondering, “what’s with the weird name?”

Great question. Simple answer:

Speedback = Speed-dating + Feedback

Speed-dating is great for learning information quickly. Feedback is great for identifying personal strengths and weaknesses. Marry the two and you have a damn good tool for transferring a ton of personal development information at lightning speed. Karen May at Google is the brains behind this concept.

Before we get into the details of the process, here’s a quick framework for giving great feedback:

The TASK model

I can almost guarantee that the best feedback you’ve received was timely, actionable, specific and kind.

Here’s how to ensure your feedback is of the same quality:

Timely. Don’t wait too long to give the feedback. Nobody likes hearing something when it’s too late to change.
Actionable. Make your feedback have a next step. “Keep doing that.” “Stop doing this”. “Explore this tool more”. Give someone something to do.
Specific. Explain the why behind your sentiment. “I thought your presentation was good because your pacing was incredible and easy to follow”. Let them know the details.
Kind. Don’t be a dick. Most people respond negatively to aggressive putdowns. Create a culture of improvement and not one of shaming.

Makes sense, right? Great. Let’s learn a process that’ll change your life.

How to run Speedback

Prepare (optional)

In an ideal world, you should get all of your team members to prepare for the session, so that their feedback is well thought out and neatly constructed.

Encourage your colleagues to write down three pieces of feedback for each of their peers. Two positive, one constructive. Try educating your team about the “TASK” model and encourage them to document their feedback on post-it notes, so that the recipient can take it away. The notes might look something like this:

Important note: This preparation step might create a barrier to entry for reluctant employees. If people are skeptical of the concept, feel free to skip this step for the first session.

Conduct

Get your team into pairs.
Odd number of participants? No worries. The odd person can manage the clock.
Set a timer for 2 minutes.
Start the timer and get one person in the pair to start giving feedback to the other. The other person should listen to the feedback and take notes if they want.
After 2 minutes, signal that the pair should switch roles.
After a further 2 minutes, signal that each pair should re-couple.
After all individuals have talked to each other, the session ends.

If each pairing takes 4-5 minutes, you can comfortably do 10 pairings in an hour, fit for most teams.

By the end of the session, individuals will have received numerous pieces of feedback and be in a position where they can spot patterns of things they are doing well and things they can improve. Feedback becomes normalised because everybody is doing it.

At every company I’ve worked at, I’ve seen this process work. It is always met with hesitancy when first pitched, but always ends in success.

Try it out today!