Building a Healthy Feedback Culture As a Manager
In the book “Creativity Inc,” Ed Catmull (one of the founders of Pixar), warns that candor exists somewhere in every organization. The question is whether or not that candor exists in the places where it can be productive rather than destructive. Are people honest with their thoughts and feedback in the conversations and meetings where they can be applied toward progress? Or do they only share what they really feel through gossip or criticizing over lunch with a friend or at the water cooler?
Productive feedback is a critical ingredient to building highly effective teams. Consistent feedback within a team is evidence of trust, relationship, clarity and maturity. But when feedback is rare, only comes from one source, or is delivered poorly, it can become one of the greatest limiters of a team.
When it comes to building a feedback culture, you as the manager or leader are “ridiculously in charge” as Henry Cloud says.
Here are six steps to building a better feedback culture within your team or organization.
1. Set the expectations clearly
For every new team member, make it clear from the beginning that they are expected to seek feedback regularly, receive it graciously, and provide feedback to others honestly.
You may include this as part of their job description or onboarding experience. For existing team members, reiterate the expectation often.
If this has not been a clear expectation up to this point, don’t hesitate to start right away by establishing a new expectation and explaining why.
Explain why feedback is important and expected. Feedback should not be viewed as a license to criticize or something to fear. Feedback is an obligation to making one another better out of love and trust, and it’s an indispensable part of accomplishing the mission effectively.
Insecure leaders view feedback as something that grades them.
Secure leaders view feedback as something that grows them.
2. Go first in feedback
Perhaps the most powerful determinant of whether or not a team will have a healthy feedback culture is whether or not the leader sets the example–both in giving feedback and in receiving feedback.
When the leader cannot be questioned, challenged or corrected, you can be sure that there will always be things left unsaid. Team members will agonize over and second-guess any feedback that they may give, always cognizant to steer clear of offending the leader.
The quickest way to lower the stakes and make others more comfortable giving feedback is for the leader to actively seek feedback about themselves and their own performance. And when you do receive feedback, your response is critically important.
Any amount of defensiveness or lashing out from the leader can make a team member feel unsafe or unwilling to give feedback again, and it may take months or years to repair the damage.
Make it a regular practice in 1 on 1’s and in team meetings to directly ask for feedback.
The more specific the ask, the more willing they will be to respond, and the more valuable the feedback will be.
Instead of “Do you have any feedback for me?” ask about something specific like “Do you have any feedback for how I can communicate more effectively?” or “What did you think were the best and worst parts of our team offsite?”
3. Train the skill of feedback
A clear expectation for feedback and a willingness to give it are important to establish, but on their own they don’t create a healthy feedback culture. The team will still need to learn and grow in the skill of giving feedback.
Feedback should always be given respectfully, thoughtfully and without personal emotion attached to it. It should also be based on concrete observations rather than ambiguous feelings.
E.g. “The structure of your second point in the presentation was a bit confusing because you started with the metrics before explaining the context behind them” is much more helpful than “The presentation confused me.”
Strong teams should strive to give both affirming and correcting feedback often. They don’t always have to come in the same conversation, nor does this mean the classic ‘compliment sandwich’ tactic. It simply means that good feedback cultures don’t just point out what’s wrong, they equally identify, celebrate and learn from what’s right.
When team members become accustomed to only receiving negative or critical feedback, they will quickly come to dread it and avoid it, and they will question if they are doing anything well.
Affirming someone in the thing they did well, or the thought process behind a decision, is one of the most powerful forms of feedback. Sometimes people don’t even know what they are good at, but affirming feedback can help them become more aware of their strengths and therefore more effective at maximizing them.
Even when giving critical feedback on a project or decision that did not turn out well, you can almost always find something within it to affirm.
E.g. “I know we didn’t hit our goal for volunteer sign-ups at the event, but the way you communicated the opportunity to serve was extremely clear, succinct and well done. Let’s figure out how to take that element and bring it to a more comprehensive strategy next time.”
When giving critical feedback, always strive to correct according to values and standards, not according to preference or opinion. This makes the feedback more objective rather than personal.
E.g. “Since we have a value of limiting distractions and creating an atmosphere for people to be present in worship, I believe it will be more helpful to bring the lights lower in the room so that people aren’t looking around or feeling self-conscious“ is better than “I don’t like when the lights are low during worship.”
4. Identify and remove feedback filters
Everyone begins with certain filters that they apply to how they give feedback (softening it too much to reduce the risk of offense, avoiding particular topics that may be sensitive, burying it in compliments so that the feedback is lost), and to how they receive it (assuming an ulterior motive, undervaluing the feedback if the person giving it is not a superior, comparing themselves to the feedback-giver). In order to build a strong feedback culture, we must always be working to identify and remove feedback filters.
Some feedback should be filtered–like the kind that comes through comments from strangers on social media, or criticisms from someone who came to church once and didn’t like the sermon.
But in the context of an effective team where high trust and belief are crucial, we should aim to have as little filter as possible. This doesn’t mean being brash or disrespectful in how we give feedback, it means that there are fewer and fewer things that we are unwilling to give feedback on, and that we trust one another enough to give feedback quickly and honestly without having to tiptoe around our filters.
Here are a few questions you can ask others on the team to help address feedback filters and continue growing in your own ability to give and receive feedback:
“In what ways do you feel like you have to filter your feedback to me?”
“How hard or easy is it for you to give me feedback?”
“How can I respond better to the feedback you give me?”
“How does it feel when I give you feedback?”
“Are there any ways I can improve my timing or delivery of feedback to you?”
5. Make feedback consistent and regular
When feedback is rare, it becomes bigger and scarier in the minds of the team than it needs to be. The more common we can make the act of giving and receiving feedback, the less intimidating it will feel and the easier it will flow.
As an analogy, think about driving your car down a back road. As you drive, you make thousands of tiny corrections in your steering to stay safe, centered and on track. If you don’t make all those small corrections, you will instead have to make a massive correction at the last second to avoid driving off the road or hitting another car. The massive correction is jarring and painful, and could have been avoided by the regular small corrections along the way. The same is true of feedback.
Look for regular ways to give and seek feedback in both formal and informal settings.
Formal: A team debrief, a 1 on 1, a performance review.
Informal: Coaching someone in the act of doing the work, sharing a quick piece of affirmation or advice over lunch, catching someone briefly after a meeting to give feedback on how they participated.
6. Hold the team accountable
When feedback solely comes from the leader, it only gives one perspective and limits the potential for improvement. It is also likely an indication that the team is more concerned with hurting feelings or getting their feelings hurt than with making one another better. Strong teams are full of people who provide helpful feedback to their peers.
Weave feedback conversations into your team meeting agendas regularly. This can look like debriefing a recent initiative, evaluating a project, or analyzing team results from the past year.
Hold everyone accountable for participating in those conversations, and give them feedback when they don’t.
The more timid members of the team will often need to be prompted by others to give feedback in a group setting.
You may also incorporate an element of giving feedback to team members on how well they are giving feedback in 1 on 1’s and performance evaluations.
