I keep thinking, and telling people, that the most important thing I’ve learned at work in the past few months is the importance of feedback. A fundamental aspect of communication theory, feedback can help improve systems, people, processes…everything. In communication theory, feedback helps ensure that a message was transmitted. In the same way, we don’t know if the work we’ve done unless we hear from the people it affects.
When it comes to people, it seems that even when we’re good at receiving feedback, a lot of people aren’t good at giving feedback. Specifically, we too often associate feedback with harsh criticism and shy away from it (or put it on our blogs in instead of doing it face to face ;-). Also, most people I’ve seen don’t have any structure to their feedback, so it lacks effectiveness.
I like the classic, simple, “plus/delta” method taught be such folks as Outward Bound, which is where I learned it. In a group situation, the leader (the person seeking feedback) talks about what she thinks she did well. Then each person in the group takes a turn talking about what the leader did well. Then the leader talks about what she could improve next time, and then each person talks about what she could do better next time. It’s important that the turn taking is strictly enforced; these are not discussions or arguments. It takes some discipline to introduce this to people and to feel comfortable with it, but it’s worth the effort.