You should do a “Positive Feedback session” with your team!
Here’s why and how…
Much has been written about Google’s Project Aristotle, their 2012 study that cites psychological safety as the common denominator in successful teams. In my experience, the sharing of feedback within teams is fundamental to the nurturing of psychological safety and, therefore, success.
When I take time to prepare constructive feedback for someone, what I am really saying is that I am invested in them, their growth, and the health of our team. When I am considerate in my delivery of that feedback and honest about things that are or aren’t working for me, my vulnerability tells my team members that I am willing to take risks for them and that they can, in turn, be vulnerable with me. This vulnerability is the foundation of intimacy and also leads to people feeling safe to take creative risks and try things out, which is the first step towards innovation.
Feedback is tough. First, it can be hard to think of anything to say at all. Having a feedback-centric outlook takes practice. Something I have noticed is that we often find it much easier to look at our processes and products with the mindset of “continuous improvement” than we do our team members. It can be really hard to tell someone when something they have done or are doing isn’t working for you. It can be especially hard if that person is a team member you like or admire. Giving useful, constructive feedback often takes a lot of time and preparation in order to ensure that it is delivered in a way that will allow the receiver to hear it, and potentially even grow from it. Separating out our emotions and people’s personalities from their behaviours is an art that takes practise and there are some really useful formulas and frameworks that we can call upon to try and ensure that negative feedback becomes constructive feedback. I can share more of these in another post.
But this article isn’t about how to deliver negative feedback constructively. I want to talk about negative feedback’s (sometimes overlooked but equally valuable) sibling, positive feedback.
I firmly believe that what you focus on expands and in light of that belief I try and remember that telling people when and where they are doing a great job (and what makes it great in my eyes) is so important to encouraging them to play to their strengths and to do more of the ‘stuff’ that makes them awesome to work with. So often, when someone requests feedback from us, what we think we hear them asking is “Where do I need to improve?” and, whilst I think it is important to consider areas for improvement, it is also important to point out to people what they do really well. As a people manager (and soon to be coach) I think this is especially important, as part of my job is to help people discover the magic that already exists inside them and to help them understand themselves better so they can create situations that serve them best. For too long we have tried to put people into the same boxes at work and have placed higher value on certain character traits without taking into account the importance of variety. If everyone was striving to be good at the same things, we’d end up in a very homogeneous (and not very interesting) society. More and more, people are seeing the value of diversity in the workplace for what it can bring to our products and services. I believe this diversity, the celebration of different strengths and acknowledging the many different ways we improve each other’s lives, is key to job satisfaction, employee retention, and innovation. At Laterpay we have chosen to make “Enjoy diversity and inclusion” one of our core values in order to encourage our team to find the joy in our differences and appreciate what makes us unique as individuals.
With all that in mind, I like to run a Positive Feedback session with my team every so often (at least quarterly). Setting aside specific time for the session allows us to really consider and acknowledge one another’s strengths, helps us learn more about ourselves and has us all feeling all the warm and fuzzy feels by the end. I love leaving the session having both given and received a bunch of positive feedback and, in doing so, gained new perspective on myself and my team mates.
Positive feedback session:
What you’ll need:
- An hour of team time
- Something to write notes on (and with)
- A clock to keep time
Session plan:
- Intro (10 mins)
- Feedback Generation (15 mins)
- Feedback Delivery (30 mins)
The Session
- Intro (10 mins)
I like to kick off the session by explaining (or reminding) the team why feedback is important and especially why positive feedback is useful. (Hint: you can use the article above for inspiration!)
Doing this is important because it contextualises the session for the team and tends to get everyone into a mindset of sincerity and thoughtfulness. We know we are not simply doing this to feel good about ourselves (although this is nearly always a byproduct) but we are also here to listen, learn, and grow.
I also like to remind people how to formulate their feedback so that they can ensure it is not just positive, but also constructive. Here is what I usually suggest:
- Identify the behaviour that you found positive +
- Mention a specific instance of when/where the person carried out the behaviour +
- Be specific about why that behaviour was positive (useful/awesome/helpful etc.) to you.
Finally, I like to give some more concrete examples of feedback types to get people thinking and also to get them thinking outside of the box. For example:
I really loved the energy and enthusiasm you brought to our last team meeting. When you started the meeting with a funny story about your pet rabbit it made me feel really relaxed and lighthearted and got me off to a great start for the day. I ended up opening my next sales call with your story and really made the client laugh. Thanks for reminding me how productive it can be to play at work sometimes.
Or
I really appreciate the level of detail you put into that PR about the location switching last week. I found reading your notes really helped me understand why you approached the problem in that specific way. It gave me the context I needed and also saved me time as it prevented me from making suggestions that would not have worked for this particular issue. I am going to make it my mission to try and emulate this level of detail in my own PRs in future.
After giving some examples, it’s time to move on to the next part of the session…
2. Feedback Generation (15mins)
Ask everyone in your team to come up with one piece of mindful, positive feedback for each of their team members. Remind everyone to try and use the formula so that the feedback can be as useful as possible for the receiver. (I usually post it in the video chat or our Slack channel so people can refer to it throughout, you can have it up on a white board too).
I also like to remind people that they really can say anything that comes to mind and that often the very first thing they think of is the most genuine.
In the past I have done this version of the workshop with up to six team members. In a team of six, each person will end up writing five different pieces of feedback, one for each member of their team.
Side note: If your team is much larger (or if you would like to run a condensed version of the session), you can create a ‘feedback circle’. For this version, you assign each person only one team member to give positive feedback to and, therefore, only one piece of feedback to generate. This will result in each person having one piece of feedback to share at the end.
Check in around the 12 minute mark to see how everyone is doing and if they need more time then give them the last few minutes to wrap up.
Then it’s on to the delivery part…
3. Feedback Delivery (30 mins)
I save the most amount of time for the Feedback Delivery as this is the best bit!
For the full effect, have the team deliver their positive feedback on a per person basis. Each round will consist of one person receiving feedback from every member of their team. That way each person experiences a bombardment of positive feedback from their whole team, all in one go.
(I usually just do it in alphabetical order)
I also make sure to ask anyone receiving not to respond to the feedback with anything other than a simple “Thank you.”
Once you have picked the first person to receive the feedback you can ask everyone else in the team to deliver their piece of feedback directly to that receiver, one-by-one. By the end of the round people usually have a huge smile on their face, or a big blush! Repeat this process, one receiver at a time, with the whole team. You may find multiple people have the same piece of feedback to give someone, that is fine as it only goes to emphasise the things they do well even more.
If there is time at the end of the session I like to check in and see how everyone is feeling, but their faces usually tell the story pretty well.
I hope you will try out a Positive Feedback session with your team one day. A little bit of love goes a long way to creating productive and fun working environments!
