Feedback is an expansive discipline so in this post I want to portray a key insight I had about feedback with a small story of my experience.
Setup
At Pivotal Labs, I worked extremely close to all of my colleagues. I mean 8 hours a day pair programming. It can be enlightening and burdensome depending on the pairings. The experience comes down to how well personality types can be matched up. It is hard to prioritize this type of matching because the timing of contracts and staff availability rarely afford this convenience. At the same time, there was a push for managers to gather feedback from their reports' peers.
Feedback was everywhere, we were doing daily stand-ups, team retros, and client check-ins. Yet, when it came down to personal one-on-ones, feedback became a funny game that nobody really felt strong participating in.
ASK
We were told to use an acronym to help us with the process. It was ASK: Actionable Specific Kind. ASK is an attempt to protect against needlessly damaging critique. Part of the pitch of the acronym is in the name. Do not to give feedback without being ASKed for it. As an ENFP, I naturally identify with my feelings and I quickly realized that the process of participating in feedback was less about how to give good feedback, but how to receive it.
Critiquing somebody on how they can improve is an extremely delicate process, and more often than not a well-intentioned message is received poorly because peoples actions are too closely coupled with their sense of self. We live in a ego forward society.
Know Yourself
The ASK framework is extremely good and should be followed. But it is also limited. More important than ASK is fortifying yourself against reckless feedback from others. To me, this is the universal truth about the process.
Take this personality test and familiarize yourself with the many types of personalities. If you pay attention enough you will start to see how different personalities can clash simply by the way each type views the world. This helps to reduce the emotional component of the process and allows the receiver to view feedback objectively.
In the broader sense, by knowing a little more about what motivates the person giving you feedback. You will be less likely to jump to conclusions that are tied up in your ego. This will help you find the truth in the feedback and improve yourself.
Conclusion
Feedback is everywhere, not just in the office but with our social groups. People throw around their opinions with little regard to how it affects other people. But there are many opportunities to learn and grow if we can avoid getting caught up in our egos.
In the software consulting space for growth companies, feedback is at the core of all the activities I use with my teams. It is used on everything from finding product market fit to writing code tests. It is a simplified version of the scientific process and should be applied everywhere.
The following should be preliminary for anyone participating in social feedback:
- ASK for feedback when you are ready. And as the giver, you never know what someone is going through in their lives, always be kind and sensitive.
- Know yourself, take this personality test. You will find that if you think about your last difficult or abrasive interactions, reflecting on the personalities at play will shed much light on what took place. It can also help massively when organizing effective teams based on skills and personalities.
Congratulations @dbellotti! You received a personal award!
You can view your badges on your Steem Board and compare to others on the Steem Ranking
Vote for @Steemitboard as a witness to get one more award and increased upvotes!