Gathering valuable feedback for your growth pt.2

Part two of eight — maintaining your growth as an Agile Coach and a consultant. An interview with Marcin Konkel.

For the past months Viktor and I have been exchanging thoughts on feedback and on how to develop personally in environments where there is no or little feedback. We started talking about this because we’ve both have had challenges with giving and receiving feedback and despite the amount of books that exist and trainings teams take we’ve found that feedback continues to be a problem for teams as well. We just don’t seem to give enough of it and what’s given often holds low quality.

To start a wider discussion on the topic we’re going to conduct a series of 8 interviews with 8 different people in different roles in 8 weeks.

This week I (Viktor) interview Marcin about his journey with feedback and thoughts on it.

Viktor: How were you struggling with feedback and what were the challenges from a growth perspective?

Marcin: Once I was a part of a distributed team of Agile Coaches. I was working as a single coach in my location and it was very hard to receive any peer feedback as my colleagues had their hands full with work. I was receiving feedback from other roles but, at the time, it was mostly low quality and I would not call it feedback (rather an evaluation of some kind). I lacked significant observations and other perspectives that would push my skill set beyond where I was.

What I did not realise then, was that I had handed over control and judgement over my professional development to others.This feeling has subsequently intensified as more time went by and I was not receiving frequent and clear feedback.

I decided that I need to take more control and, at the same time, find some better objective measures that would inform me of the quality of the work I’m doing. That was also to have a stronger opinion on my work and the direction I’m heading. Another parallel path I have taken was to be a better role model and teach others how and why quality feedback matters.

V: What role does feedback play in your personal growth?

M: Feedback gives me food for thought and lets me pause and reflect. It’s a motor for a potential change and another perspective on how my work and actions are viewed by others. I always search for this grain of self-reflection even if I disagree with what the other person is saying. Ideally, people’s observations show me something about myself that I could otherwise miss.

I have had the luck of working with Agile Coaches and other professionals (internal and external to the companies I worked for) who accelerated my growth considerably. Feedback then became very important to me when I understood how much I could grow from it. In a year I developed more than I did in two or three years at other places. That experience gave me a baseline of what’s possible. With many of them, I currently share a strong bond. Those relationships also help me grow.

V: What do you do in situations where feedback is vague or has low quality?

M: Usually, I ask additional follow up questions to get to know what the author had in mind. I try to find this specific element that triggered the thought in the first place. Sometimes, that may take a bit of time and several conversations — especially when it’s criticism, or some other kind of judgement (but not feedback). In some situations, it leads to a discovery (around feelings, approach, values etc.) by myself and/or the author and change starts to happen after a seed is sown. I start understanding what the other person had in mind and what was his or her initial need.

Another thing I do is when someone asks me for feedback I really focus on providing the highest value for that person and refer to the particular situation or behaviour. I try to do my best and walk my talk a.k.a. be congruent with what I say and what I do. It builds trust and opens up the conversation where our statements can come across more easily.

An example of teaching to foster change was an experiment I’ve done a while ago. I helped organise 360 feedback exercise for one of the departments in a company I was working for. In this experiment, I was impartial as I was not working with the people there on daily basis. Participants were to fill out a survey for their colleagues that also had some open questions. I alone had access to all the feedback people were giving. Prior to this, I agreed with the participants that if I thought their feedback was missing something important we would meet and discuss the lacking elements amending the text if needed. This was to make it more valuable for the receiving person. I held around 8–10 such conversations with various people which, I believe, have had a small contribution to making feedback more constructive (or just making feedback feedback).

V: What are some signs that indicate you are in a feedback poor environment?

M: There are several elements I noticed throughout my professional life. Feedback not being feedback is the most obvious one I guess. We often criticise, praise or judge without any constructive frame or are lacking examples and/or facts. The intention is also often blurred and it’s hard to distinguish what the person wanted to convey.

Another element is when feedback is forced onto people and does not come from a culture of mutual growth. I’ve seen many, so called, performance reviews that were not seen as a safe place to share thoughts and help others be better at what they do. They happened once a year or each half-year and did not build a culture of constant feedback (not reliant on a particular time window).

V: How do you develop professionally and how do you develop your relationships in such environments?

M: I try to grasp opportunities for feedback as they come and reserve some additional time for the person or group to have some conversation around the feedback they shared. This helps me to clarify things and get to the point of what someone wanted to say. I build those relationships also by listening carefully what the other person is saying and asking supporting questions that let me understand him or her better. I also tend to share my intention of where I am coming from with a specific argument or feedback. To my mind, this helps people see that I’m open and want to help and not judge them.

I also search for and set up some more objective measures in place that would let me know if I’m on the right path in my development-these are usually quantitative. Apart from those measures comes self-reflection every now and then that helps me to do a self-assessment. I reserve an hour a week for such a conversation with myself. Depending on the goal that I am pursuing, it would be a different set of questions or topics to ponder upon that I coin beforehand.

In addition to the above, I believe that self-confidence (not to be mistaken with shallow ego) is an important factor in developing oneself in any environment. I’ve learned over the years that you can achieve a lot more when you are confident in who you are, where you coming from (and going to) as well as by knowing and standing by your values. This helps you go through the tough times like those without good quality feedback but that does not happen overnight. To achieve it you need to constantly take care of your inner self with reflection, mindfulness and just doing the work you do well (no cutting corners).

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Marcin Konkel works as an Agile Coach and consultant. He works with companies helping them achieve high performance. He support people in change and understanding of agile. Marcin does it by working with individuals, teams, managers, senior managers and CxO level executives. He approaches them using a mix of teaching, coaching and mentoring complemented by psychology, effective communication and feedback. He also believes that strong leadership is built not only with managers but also among specialists such as, for instance, developers or testers (contextual leadership).

Marcin is Editor-in-Chief and writer at Agile&Change. He is also a photographer travelling to various places preferring those less known. Keep track of Marcin’s work on Medium.com and Twitter.