It’s another week and we’re doubling back to feedback. As promised, this is the last installation in the series to support you in building a feedback practice. To jog your memory, we last discussed the importance of organizational structures like feedback practices to improve communicative, collective action, and then how to build a culture of feedback.
When we welcome new team members to Sunlit Strategies, part of our three-month-long orientation is our feedback training practice that asks newbies to practice:
Identification of areas where feedback is warranted;
Intentional observation in those areas;
Attention to timing and emotional context; and finally,
Sharing observations with curiosity and reinstated belonging.
If you just started at Sunlit Strategies, we’d let you know what areas are up for professional feedback and make sure you know the standard operating procedures. This gives us an idea of the necessary skills we’re all working towards and have committed to by being part of the group. But just as importantly, team members choose nonstandard areas they want feedback on because we all deserve to be choiceful about our growth.
When we know the feedback we’re giving is desired by teammates, it becomes easier to know how and when to observe for feedback. It feels good to tell a coworker who’s working on their speed-talking how well they paced themselves during a presentation. Just as importantly, you experience how good it feels when an interrupting coworker hands the spotlight back after someone brings attention to it. When you know the interrupting team mate has named that growth edge and been practicing it, you see how timely feedback is a precious growth catalyst.
Timely is indeed doing a lot of work in that last sentence. When it’s able to be given in the moment, we don’t wait – an interuptee (if you’ll allow) giving a self-aware interrupter a live opportunity to practice makes sense. But the co-worker who sent you their edits on a team project one day before the deadline for the third time that month? That might require a little more.
When we have a lot of big feelings about feedback for a teammate, the process asks us to pause, write down what happened in plain language, and finally, drop into emotional awareness. “Okay I’m feeling mean. Why? Because his mistake made me fit 8 hours of work into 2 stressful ones. That wasn’t fair, why would he do that?” This is often the part that gets the most resistance from new team members: feeling anger, hurt, confusion. Difficult emotions are communicated nonverbally whether we like it or not; acknowledging a sensation’s presence makes it less powerful when we make decisions about feedback.
Finally, we practice sharing all that rich information – the occurrence, feelings, and questions – curiously and compassionately. When we offer feedback, we do it with awareness of how it feels to hear you hurt someone or fall short of shared standards. Assuming good faith, remembering our shared fallibility, and knowing the limits of one-sided information will naturally let reflections and solutions arise. Gifting sincere feedback with curiosity, compassion, and good faith makes it clear to yourself and the receiver that you’re still on the same team.
This is likely when our new member will usually experience the joy of reunion after a quality disagreement. As new members get better at understanding the time, context, and people, their feedback practice and our communicative, transparent culture deepens. With feedback, trust blooms and our team coheres.
I hope this final article in the feedback series (I’m done, I promise!) has made it clear why it’s such a beloved topic.