Unlocking team dynamics: How we built a feedback culture from the ground up
A couple of years ago, our engineering team in Pipedrive underwent a significant transformation, shifting from a traditional hierarchical structure with a dedicated Engineering Manager to a self-managed, flat organizational model.
Ahead of the transformation, we thought about the challenges ahead and wondered how could we create a culture of feedback where we all shared responsibility for each other’s career growth. We realized that actionable feedback wasn’t just an afterthought within our team — it was the key to making us work better together. Regular feedback had the power to shape our culture and enhance employee performance.
At that time, we noticed a significant gap in our feedback processes. The feedback we received was often vague and lacked actionable insights. This not only raised doubts about its value but also generated concerns that constructive feedback might be misinterpreted, potentially affecting work performance, relationships within the team, and even career growth.
Having recently read Patrick Lencioni’s The Five Dysfunctions of a Team book about, among other things, what prevents a healthy feedback culture in a team — and although all those dysfunctions are interconnected — we quickly identified three dysfunctions due to the poor quality of the feedback. Here’s how they are described in the book:
Absence of trust –the fear of being vulnerable prevents team members from building trust with each other.
Fear of conflict — the desire to preserve artificial harmony stifles productive ideological conflict within the team.
Avoidance of accountability — the need to avoid interpersonal discomfort prevents team members from holding each other accountable for their behaviors and performance.
How could we communicate the importance of creating a safe environment for providing constructive feedback and double down on the importance of dedicating time to the process? Finding those answers was key to driving meaningful change.
Recurring loops
Our journey kicked off with figuring out when and how often we wanted to implement the process. Knowing that people tend to remember more recent events, we decided not to let things linger and rely solely on performance reviews.
The goal was to integrate it as frequently as possible throughout the year, and Pipedrive’s agile framework proved instrumental in achieving just that.
There are two cornerstones in the framework:
- Missions — teams accountable for a specific customer problem from validation to implementation, usually taking about 1 to 3 months.
- Launchpad — the team responsible for maintaining and supporting all tribe services adjusting its size based on internal priorities and external (missions) needs.
Each of these cycles has its own feedback process, and to keep it simple, we can think of it as happening roughly at the end of each quarter. The team sets aside a full day for giving feedback to their peers — a ceremony we coined as Feedback Day.
Through these recurring feedback loops, we aimed to set the stage by encouraging more open discussions and cultivating stronger relationships by understanding each person’s unique approach to providing meaningful feedback.
Feedback-driven culture
In the previous point, we covered the “when”. Now, let’s dive into the “how”. How could we put in place a practical process that encourages people to give actionable feedback?
Laying the groundwork
Our initial challenge was to determine whether feedback should be kept anonymous. At a glance, anonymous feedback might seem the most obvious path, offering a space for people who are hesitant to voice their concerns openly and provide honest feedback. However, anonymity can only provide a temporary relief and it may inadvertently compromise transparency, accountability, and the healthy team and company culture we were striving to build.
The importance of praising
When providing it, always start with positive feedback, not criticism. Do it with honesty and intent. Try to be thorough and go deep into detail.
Recognizing someone’s efforts and contributions can boost anyone’s morale and motivation. Reinforcing the positive impact someone had, encourages individuals to consistently perform at their best.
Lead through uncertainty
As Kim Scott points out in Radical Candor, we learn more from our mistakes than from our successes and consequently more from criticism than from praise. But we often don’t want to embrace the discomfort of criticizing someone, so we usually say very little or nothing at all.
The key point is that there’s no path forward without facing this challenge in order to build a trusting work environment.
To reinforce this specific point, in Your Employees Want the Negative Feedback You Hate to Give, Jack Zenger and Joseph Folkman assess how important constructive criticism is to professional development:
“People believe constructive criticism is essential to their career development. They want it from their leaders. But their leaders often don’t feel comfortable offering it up. From this, we conclude that the ability to give corrective feedback constructively is one of the critical keys to leadership, an essential skill to boost your team’s performance that could set you apart.”
Harvard Business Review
I’d argue that it’s a peer-to-peer requirement besides being a top-down necessity. Taking that into consideration, we focused all our efforts on creating a clear and detailed system that avoids ambiguity. A framework that could organically guide people to provide actionable feedback.
In the table below, there’s a quick overview of the system we ended up with. It begins with broader-level groups and progressively dives into the specifics of category descriptions (not included in the table for simplicity’s sake).
Naturally, we went through several iterations of the categories until we felt comfortable with the outcome — an open and transparent process.
Process outline
The whole process may seem time-consuming, especially when you’re doing it for the first few times. Just like any skill, it becomes more proficient through consistent application.
To sum it up, the process includes these steps:
- Appraisal and positive reinforcement — open-ended text input, where one can freely express their thoughts and appreciation to acknowledge someone’s efforts
- Suggestions for improvement — a list comprising main groups, sub-groups, and categories, where each can be assessed and receive input
Foundation for progress
Embracing the absence of trust as the core dysfunction we needed to address, we started to look out for steps to create a trusting space for individuals where they could feel safe sharing their thoughts.
Trust would make it easier for everyone to assume good intent and to be honest with each other.
Context matters here because we didn’t start from scratch. We already had a bit of a head start as we were working together for a while. We just needed to get everyone on the same page for what’s ahead.
“Building trust in any relationship takes time because trust is built on a consistent pattern of acting in good faith.”
Kim Scott in Radical Candor
We knew it wouldn’t happen right away, and we were okay with making mistakes and improving along the way before we saw actual progress. That’s why we had to figure out how to review and guide the feedback and feedback conversations in the right direction.
As stated in the recurring loops section, the two cornerstones of Pipedrive’s agile framework are missions and launchpad, each with its leads. They’re responsible for gathering feedback for their respective team during Feedback Day, carefully reviewing it, sorting out anything that’s unclear or needs more action, and scheduling feedback sessions.
It might take a few rounds of feedback training to make sure the feedback is easy to understand and act upon. We ensure everyone stays involved until all team members’ feedback is reviewed. Once we’ve got that sorted, the team can shift their focus to other affairs. This ensures we stick to the process and follow it through to the end as intended.
As we began to see results from the process, people became more at ease sharing feedback even outside the formal channels, which in turn led to more spontaneous and informal feedback. This shift also affected how we interacted during team meetings and processes such as pull requests, design reviews, and retrospectives, thanks to the solid foundation we built.
The other mentioned dysfunctions: fear of conflict and avoiding accountability, were gradually getting better in our trusting work environment. We are always aware that this is an ongoing journey, and we need to stay vigilant. It’s a vital part of our team culture that we can’t afford to lose.
Closing thoughts
As companies evolve, adapt, and restructure, the team isn’t entirely self-managed anymore, but most of the processes remain the same in order to create a level playing field and enable everyone to grow quickly.
The feedback process definitely remains a standout feature for the team and now it’s spreading to other tribes who are giving it a shot. It’s pretty exciting to see how others will tweak the process to make it work for their team’s needs.
Having established a strong foundation of trust has had a significant impact. It’s not just about how we communicate one-on-one, it’s also about how it’s shaping our team’s culture. When everyone feels at ease sharing their ideas and supporting each other’s career growth, it creates a sense of belonging where we all have a growth mindset and are all working together to help each other succeed.
In essence, the goal should be to foster a team environment where continuous employee feedback is the norm, rather than something that only happens once or twice a year during performance reviews. The specific process to apply may vary, but the key is to establish a foundation of trust. With trust in place, all the moving parts naturally align, regardless of the process’s form.
References
Books
- The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni
- The Radical Candor Book: Business Leadership Book For Better Bosses by Kim Scott
Articles
- Feedback Equation by Lara Hogan
- How to get helpful, actionable feedback from your colleagues by Lara Hogan
- The art of giving and receiving feedback as a leader by Maria Ntalla
- How to grow your engineers through continuous feedback by João Fernandes
- Your Employees Want the Negative Feedback You Hate to Give by Jack Zenger and Joseph Folkman at Harvard Business Review
- Pipedrive Agile Framework: A Detailed View by Kadri Pirn
