How to make your team grow with feedback — even remotely

Product designer Julia Fogelberg discusses the criteria and frameworks she’s used at Zone to make the best use of feedback sessions…

Constructive feedback is a tool that, if done effectively, can help you reach new heights as an individual or as a team.

Naturally, giving and receiving feedback remotely is a bit more complicated than running a session in a meeting room. But with the right tools and a structured format (and given that we have no choice at the moment due to COVID-19), it can be just as valuable as face-to-face. Here are some tips and frameworks you can use to make the best of these sessions.

I recently went to a leadership course that gave me a new insight into how easy it can be to give and receive feedback as a team. The criteria for the process to work was:

Ensure the team is comfortable and open to receive and give feedback. It won’t work for a completely new team as the honesty required for it to be effective is not there yet, and a team in conflict needs to solve their issues first.
Ensure the team understands the purpose of feedback. This may seem obvious, but when feedback sessions are introduced to your team for the first time, it’s essential that everyone can see the value of doing it for the overall wellbeing of the team.
Ask for the consent of each team member to run a feedback session. Anyone can opt out if they want to.
Ensure the team knows how to both receive and give feedback.

Giving:

Be concrete and specific — if your feedback relates to a specific part of the project, be clear about it
Give feedback in a timely manner
Own your feedback — don’t relay messages from other people
Focus on the things that the recipient can change
Use the “I-message model” — When you said/did… I felt…What my need is… So I would like you to….

Receiving:

Active listening
Try to understand instead of deny, defend or explain.
Evaluate it slowly after you’ve received feedback.
When you first receive feedback, just say ‘thank you’. Take time to process it and reflect on it. That way, you won’t react in an emotional state and will have time to consider whether you wish to enter into a dialogue about the feedback or ask any further questions.

Facilitating a remote team feedback session step by step

Ask for the team’s consent to run a feedback session.
Prepare a digital whiteboard(such as Mural or Miro) which clearly states the purpose of feedback, how to give and receive it and a space where the team can write it.

Prepare a space where the team can write their feedback.

3. Invite team members to the session and the board.

4. Introduce the exercise, why it’s happening and how to give and receive feedback.

5. Present the format in which each person will give feedback (I’ve given suggestions below).

6. Set a timer for 15–30 minutes depending on how many people are in your team. Expect it to take approx. 2–5 minutes to write feedback for one person (depending on which format you’re using). Ask the team to start writing feedback in the given format (still keeping the notes under their own name — moving them around during the exercise is likely to cause distraction.)

7. Ask the team to move their feedback note under the recipient’s name.

8. Go through the feedback for each person from left to right. Everyone reads their feedback out loud.

Use different formats throughout the project

Example format — New team: [Recipient], my current strongest impression of you is [give feedback]. From [your name]

Example format — Newish team: [Recipient], I appreciate [give feedback]. From [your name]

Example format — Happy team: [Recipient], I would like to see more [give feedback]. Because I need [state your needs]. From [your name]

In the accelerator (Zone’s Innovation/UX lab) I’m working on right now I’ve used these formats. I’ve been asked to facilitate a feedback session for another project team and will mix up the format depending on their needs.

Make feedback sessions part of another ceremony

If you’re in an agile team, you already run Retrospectives. Why not incorporate feedback sessions as a part of it? That’s what we did in my team: 35 minutes retro, 25 minutes feedback.

Remember to customise it to your team’s needs. Is the purpose of the feedback session to create stronger bonds or relationships in the team? Is it about a specific event or skill? Design it accordingly.