Asking Feedback
Instead of waiting for feedback, just ask for it. When you ask for feedback, you’re allowing people to be critical of you and you’re going to get honest, more constructive feedback. Also, when you ask for feedback proactively, you are also helping yourself and the other person to “get in the right mindset for feedback”.
Generally speaking, there are 2 types of feedback we suggest our people to consider:
- Day to Day (Short-Term, Specific)
- Annual (Long Term, General)
Day-to-Day Feedback (Short Term, Specific).
Be proactive: If you feel like you haven't had any feedback in a while, then it's on you to seek it.
Get into the habit: At the end of the next sprint/retrospective/end of the project, ask your PM and project team members:
- What’s the one thing I should do differently next time?
- What’s the one thing I did especially well?
Start small: Start asking for feedback regarding low stake topics before moving to more challenging ones.
Annual Feedback (Long Term, General)
An integral part of the annual self-reflection we do to prepare for salary conversations at Vizz is to gather feedback from our peers as a way to get an external perspective on our contributions and improvement areas.
Below you will find a step-by-step process so you can start preparing to gather feedback from your peers so you can then use it as insight/food for thought to complement your self-reflection:
-
Define a list of people from whom you would like to get feedback from
-
Prepare your feedback form
-
Invite people to give you feedback
-
Make the most of the feedback received (reflect, share, personal development planning)
1. Define a list of people from whom you would like feedback
There are 2 elements you should consider when deciding who to ask for feedback:
- Does this person work with me on a day-to-day basis?
- Does this person know my work well so he/she can provide relevant and useful feedback?
Depending on your roles and responsibilities, this could people from your same functional team, from your project, and also someone external to Vizzuality (ie. Partner, Client)
How many people? If you do it often (ie. Every 3 months) I would say that 3-4 people should be fine. Now, if you gather feedback every year, I would suggest you reach out to more people (between 5 to 8 people).
2. Prepare your feedback form.
Using Google Forms, please put together a simple survey to share with people when gathering feedback.
This is an example of how your form should look like. Please feel free to refine it and adapt it to make it your own :)
3. Invite people to give you feedback
Now that you have your online form created and ready to go, you need to invite people so they can start providing you with feedback.
Below you will find a “template” you can use to create the message you will send to people. Please feel free to refine and adapt the message to make it your own :)
Hi XXX, I hope you are well :)
I wanted to get in touch to ask you for some help. Specifically, I wanted to ask you for some feedback.
I trust and respect your opinion and I would value your input as I think it will help me grow and become a more effective team member at Vizzuality and a better person. If you are comfortable with the idea of helping me grow with your feedback, it would be great if you could share your feedback using the link below. (ADD SURVEY LINK)
Timelines: If it's possible, I would love to have your ideas by (ADD A DATE / AT
LEAST 3 WEEKS)I think this is all from my side now. Please let me know if you have any questions or comments.
Thanks a lot in advance for taking the time to help me grow!
4. Making the most of the feedback received "Reflect, Share, Plan"
One of the biggest pitfalls when we ask for feedback, is that we get all excited asking for it, then we receive our results, have a read on them, and make a promise to ourselves that we will be working on “this and that”, and then… mmmm… we just save the information and do nothing.
If you have your feedback and would like to do something meaningful with it, you could:
-
Block 90 min in your calendar in the next couple of weeks.
-
Review your results and do some self-reflection and personal development planning.
Reflect
In this first step we will aim to do 2 things:
-
Fully explore the data, feedback, and advice
-
Reflect on what you are hearing (and rejecting)
When someone gives you feedback the first thing you need to do is to be mindful and realize they are trying to communicate with you. They are investing in the relationship you have, so please value the effort they’ve put into giving you this feedback.
Some tips to receive feedback:
-
Listen, really listen to the feedback without thinking about how to react. Just listen.
-
Try not to go into defense mode. Take a breath and think that they are trying to communicate something to you. They are trying to help you grow.
-
Do not jump to conclusions, or solutions or define priorities as soon as you read the feedback.
-
If something is not clear, try to write down questions to later reflect or gather more insights so as to improve your understanding of the feedback received.
-
It's encouraged to thank the feedback giver as a way to value their effort.
To help you with this reflection, you can use some/all of the following “Guiding Questions”:
- What is the feedback telling you?
- How is this making me feel? What reactions do you have around the data? Any judgments about the data?
- What impact are you having on others? How does that compare to the impact you want to have?
Share
We know we all have biases and specific, and sometimes, very engrained, ways of looking at things. By sharing our ideas with others, we hope to get a more realistic and balanced understanding of your initial ideas as you will be getting external perspectives on them.
Receiving feedback is challenging (particularly since we often skip over the positive feedback and only pay attention to the negative). It can elicit feelings of surprise, confusion, awkwardness, embarrassment, and even anger or shame.
Given this, it’s understandable that many people do not want to talk about their feedback directly with their providers (or anyone else). But in doing so, you will be modeling transparency, humility, and openness. You will also be getting answers to any lingering questions, and hopefully receive concrete examples of the behaviors you need to change. Most importantly, you will strengthen your relationships with your colleagues and increase the likelihood of them being invested in your improvement and growth.
Personal Development Planning.
With all the new data and insights you have managed to collect, the final step would be to define your main growth priorities and include how and when you will assess and measure your progress.
This is where the real work begins. By doing something (and not just thinking about it) you will be creating meaningful change that will improve your effectiveness in the long term.
To get support when building your personal development plan, please reach out to People & Culture or ask the person responsible for Growth in your team.