When it comes to feedback, avoid triangle situations

Nassim Kammah
Jul 21, 2017 · 3 min read

As manager to a team of engineers, communication among team members is always a major area of focus. The following scenario describes a situation that you might experience as an engineering manager. I will try to describe the approach I took and would love to hear your perspective on this.

Scenario

Sam, a junior engineer is getting up to speed on Android development. For this project, Sam is paired up with Alex, the Android expert on the team. Alex occasionally answers technical questions but more importantly conducts code reviews. Sam is getting frustrated with Alex’s approach to feedback on the code reviews — instead of explaining the implementation flaws in the pull requests, Alex provides a branch with a suggested alternate implementation to show “the right way” of doing things. Sam, a fairly shy engineer, is anxious about providing feedback to Alex — how does one question the approach of the most senior person on the team? Instead Sam asks you, the Engineering Manager, to talk to Alex.

The above situation is a perfect case of triangulation — when one person asks a third person to communicate to the second person rather than communicating directly (due to shyness or fear of confrontation). How would you approach this?

An Approach

Instead of talking to Alex directly myself, I encourage Sam to talk to Alex directly and provide constructive feedback directly. Sam is terrified at the prospect of providing feedback and not being liked anymore by Alex. But I explain that providing feedback does not have to be difficult or scary, as long as you follow a few rules.

1) Feedback should be receivable

a) Ask for permission : “Would you have a minute for some feedback on my pull request”. The “yes” prepares the person to receive the feedback and fosters a learning mindset.

b) Focus on the behavior, not the person.

  • Person centric : “You were rude”
  • Behavior centric : “Providing me a different solution without explaining what was wrong with my approach was rude and made me feel dumb”

You may use the SBI framework : Situation, Behavior, Impact. “This is what I am observing, this is the impact”.

2) Feedback should be actionable : the behavior can be reproduced or avoided

To illustrate how to provide actionable feedback, I bring up the analogy I learnt from a LifeLabs workshop. Feedback can be divided into 4 quadrants :

Club : negative feedback without specificity

“Your comments on my pull request were really not helpful and made me feel bad.”

Spade : negative feedback with specificity

“You provided a completely different implementation on my pull request, without explaining what was wrong with my approach. Can you help me understand what was wrong with my initial idea?”

Heart : positive feedback without specificity

“Your comments on that pull request were really awesome!”

Diamond : positive feedback with specificity

“I really appreciated your comments on my pull request, without providing the whole solution, you were able to point out what may go wrong with my code and potential strategies to remedy the issue.”

What I learnt

When issues arise between two team members, it’s best to avoid triangulation. When you intervene, as a manager :

1) You lack the full context on the situation since you were not initially involved

2) You hijack the trust building exercise between the 2 people

A better long term approach is to coach the individual on providing feedback to the other person directly. Giving feedback does not have to be scary, as long as it’s receivable (Situation, Behavior, Impact) and specific (Diamonds and Spades).

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Nassim Kammah

Written by

Engineering Manager at MailChimp, working remotely from Denver, CO.

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