Give Me Feedback, Give Me Power.
Why managers should show their own feedback and explicitly ask their team to provide them feedback.
Wrote this note to my co-workers after we implemented a new feedback system at Seer:
Hey Team,
Ask: Please give me constructive feedback when the opportunity arises.
Do so in Small Improvements notes [Seer’s Centralized Feedback System]
Do so no matter your role (intern to VP) / size of the project we’re on, etc
Why?
Helping me be a better team member helps us achieve our goals
When you give me feedback — you give me power [to get better]
When you document it — you give me accountability [to get better]
Feedback has a bad rap — this may feel weird at first for all of us.
But in reality, feedback is you showing that you value me enough to help me get better.
After a couple one-offs on what feedback can look like and how to action it, I followed up with this:
Quick Follow-Up on (1) Feedback giving you power and (2) taking accountability
💡 Pro Tip: Turn a note from Small Improvements (SI) into an Objective
👀 See It In Action:
Jeff gave me this note to ensure all the hard work marketing puts in is continually communicated to the company:
I created this Objective in Small Improvements to track my accountability towards this goal through the end of the year:
It becomes super easy for me to go to Jeff now and say — here is my progress towards the feedback you provided me. No ambiguity.
His feedback gave me the power to get better and SI objectives give me the accountability to show him I am working towards that goal.
HMU if you have any questions on the Objective feature!
Show, Don’t Tell.
I try to ask my team what I can be doing to better support them as often as possible. I try to go in with examples —
“I didn’t get back to you very quickly last week, did that slow you down at all?”
Open the door to providing me some truths. They see things I don’t. They have the capacity to make me better, which in turn, will hopefully make our whole team better. Creating a culture of feedback is crucial for us to have team trust and cohesion.
Showing how my boss gave me feedback and how I had to be accountable to it — it shows none of us are immune, but also how that leveled me up in my role.
My first hope is that as managers, we can take a little bit of the fear out of feedback by making sure we’re living it ourselves and also that it [should] come from a place of caring…
Feedback strikes fear into the heart of many
I typically give most of my feedback to high performers. To me, feedback is a gift. That person is already well on their way, but I get amped on helping them get there faster.
Feedback gets harder and harder for me to give if I see someone rolling their eyes at it or not being willing to have a conversation around it. Truth is, I get less invested in leveling them up. Hard truth, but I think it’s human nature.
We’re often trained that feedback is only given if you’ve fucked up — and that’s still the reality at a lot of businesses. I think it requires a mix of consistent feedback to breakdown this old system:
- Positive feedback when you see your team hitting those bright spots that you want more of
- Level-up feedback when you see something is clearly in reach but that person needs a little boost
- Critical feedback for those times when there is a more critical issue that may need mitigation
#1 and #2 should heavily outweigh #3. If they don’t, it shouldn’t be a surprise to that team member since you’ve been having consistent feedback rounds with them.
In addition to showing your team you’re not immune from feedback, getting your team through that initial awkwardness and showing them the power of Feedback #1 & #2 will hopefully get them over this fear of feedback that’s been drilled into us.
