A Feedback Culture where Psychologocal Safety is the Hero
Article series: 1. “A feedback culture where psychological safety is the hero” 2. “Principles of a healthy feedback culture” 3. “Practical tips and exercises”
Why is it so hard to create a culture of useful and healthy feedback? Do you ever wonder why personal feedback programs such as 360´s, development reviews, or even weekend open-up-and-cry-together-retreats seem ripe with potential, yet create so many unintended consequences and too often fall short?
My previous employer Avo Consulting gave me the amazing gift of mandate and resources to drag over 80 people across 31 teams through three iterations of experiments. All to scratch an itch for an answer to these questions.
We A/B tested “truths” underlying common industry practices and products like peer evaluation software. From these experiments we dynamically developed and tested new approaches to building and implementing the optimal corporate feedback culture. Along with controlled failures with just as much learning as the successes, we finally achieved a version that gave significant increases in team results driven by increased honesty, empowerment and engagement.
The recurring theme from the experiments was a strong two-way relationship between psychological safety and the feedback practices we developed.
A strong, productive and sustainable feedback culture, that supports individual growth and strengthens teams, is dependent on high psychological safety. Which in turn is strengthened by honest, high quality feedback under the right conditions.
Yes, it’s a mouthful (but carefully worded).
“The right conditions”, “honest, high quality” and “dependent on psychological safety” contributes to explain why this is so hard. Luckily, the reason these conditions are not often met, has a lot to do with outdated “common sense” about the human psyche and organizations. That, we can work with.
Psychological safety is racing from fad to fact in many modern organizations. Advice is maturing everywhere and research is giving us concrete strategies. Leaders can read about how to implement it in their team. Sadly, advice is still laser focused on the people in formal positions of leadership. Of course their awareness should be increased, but people become leaders for different reasons. There are many great leaders who will never be the primary facilitator of psychological safety. Their mind is constantly elsewhere for all kinds of good reasons. We (the ones being led) need activities that our leaders can delegate and systems that remind them to do so. This was our mission as Avo launched People Labs in 2018 (well, a bunch of nerds got together and nicknamed our slack channel People Labs).
For 3.5 years, my fellow enthusiasts at Avo and I banged at this nut to crack the code for ourselves and our teams. We got amazing help from researchers at the research institutions AFF and NHH. They guided our hypothesis generation and helped us assure our research methods and conclusions. We dragged 31 project teams through “the programs”, while creating real value in the teams as a by-product of the research. Three of our closest customers joined in for experiments on cross-organizational teams. Across our three major iterations, over 80 people have been experimented on and helped us bust myths and adjust our course. Newly enlightened lab rats became experiment leaders and passionate advocates. Thank you all for your faith, patience and dedication to providing your full and honest feedback to the experiments. Knowing full well we were in uncharted territory, experimenting with your psyche and group dynamics.
The goal was to discover the effects different feedback processes could have on psychological safety in teams, and vice versa. Based only on deeply personal experiences, we had a hunch that high quality personal feedback could have a large positive impact on team members’ psychological safety. However, even with the help of our academic partners, we found no research or other literature to clearly support it. We needed to do our own research, and NHH and AFF joined us to help us create solid scientific insight. You know, instead of the opportunistic “if it works once we can sell it” consultancy approach.
We were surprised by the clarity and the strength of the relationships we found. Under the right conditions (I’ll have save the details for a later article), both positive and corrective personal feedback significantly strengthened psychological safety. And similarly reduced it under the wrong conditions. Psychological safety was in turn the primary condition required for the feedback to be consistently productive. The moment psychological safety was pushed out of the driver’s seat, we started seeing that those same feedback activities started having detrimental effects, and wasted time. The whole feedback process would often grind to a halt because participants simply didn’t dare to complete the planned activities. Not that they admitted this initially, but thorough interviewing revealed fear as the primary source of halt-grinding in almost every case.
We really tried to make the “suck it up and just give the feedback” approach work with scientific rigor. It’s more in line with traditional management styles to push for feedback without having to address or separately strengthen psychological safety. If we could make it work, we would have struck gold. A big shout out to all the experiment participants, allowing us to use you in this way. Even paying us back with detailed, personal and authentic feedback.
The conclusion? Feedback practices should never compromise the psychological safety of individuals and teams. You kill the productive parts of your feedback culture over time when you support useless (as evaluated by the people giving and receiving it — not you), distancing or unsafe feedback and activities.
Start off with these guiding principles for a whole hearted approach to feedback in your organisation.
This mantra is not at the core of most feedback initiatives, in any industry. The good news? We now know much more about how to ensure psychological safety than just a few years ago. Resources on feedback practices are already plenty, accessible and strong (see reading list). “All” you have to do is put the fields of psychological safety and feedback together, along with what your people already know from countless personal experiences. Even better, it’s often easy to identify low hanging fruits in every organization. Find your enthusiasts, give them a mandate, and start experimenting.
Ready to start running? Start off with this practical step by step guide and free resources and make it your own.
Please call or email me for feedback! Or if you just want to spar. I am always searching for fellow enthusiasts and skeptics to journey forward with.
Phone (coded): (norway) fourty-seven, oh-eight, oh-two, twenty-two
Mail: victoriavarno@gmail.com
Additional keywords:
Relational debt, relasjonsgjeld, tilbakemelding, tilbakemeldingskultur, psykologisk trygghet, leadership, ledelse, modern management, agile hr,
Special thanks to:
Karen Skarbø for your innovative approach to management and feedback, your willingness to stick your head out and share it with the rest of us. You sparked my initial curiosity and created the starting point for a new approach to team feedback culture at Avo. With larger ripple effects than I could have dreamed of already.
Bård Fyhn and Maren Haugeto from NHH and AFF for giving us your pro bono time, strong and solid competence and personal engagement! Your advice on “research” methods and change management made a big difference. And your support and interest gave me faith in that we were really on to something worth pursuing.
Preben Hafsaas for providing all the mandate and resources necessary, and the management support needed to keep me and the organization motivated and empowered.
Truls Bache for your bravery and dedication to your teams and the cause, your support, co-management and hands on support in creating the experiments. Your unwavering enthusiasm and help kept me afloat.
Karoline Jarneid for your amazing sparring and continuous emotional support every time I wanted to give up.
Edda Burheim for your emotional support and helping me balance my personal development and life with dedication to the feedback experiments.
And all the rest of you 80 crazy bastards who got involved ❤
Reading list:
- Feedback, a powerful lever in teams: A review: C. Gabelica et al. / Educational Research Review 7 (2012) 123–144
- Alicia M. Alvero , Barbara R. Bucklin & John Austin (2001) An
Objective Review of the Effectiveness and Essential Characteristics of Performance Feedback in Organizational Settings (1985–1998), Journal of Organizational Behavior Management - Cooperative Criticism: When chritiscm enhances creativity in brainstorming and negotiation. Curhan & Mehta, 2020
- The relationship between feedback environment and creativity: a self-motives perspective. Gong, Shan & Yu, 2019
- Feedback seeking following career transitions. Callister, Kramer & Turban, 1999
- Placing perceptions of politics in the context of the feedback environment, employee attitudes, and job performance. Rosen, Levy & Hall, 2006
Easily digestible but thouroughly insightful books:
- Thanks for the feedback — Heen & Stone, 2015
- Radical candor — Kim Scott, 2019
- Widen the window — Elizabeth Stanley, 2019
- The fearless organization — Amy Edmondson, 2018
- Culture code — Daniel Coyle, 2018
