Professional development is a critical part of our culture and we are always striving to be even better. To help foster an environment of development and collaboration, we would like all of us to frequently provide brief but effective feedback on the lovely people you work with. We encourage you to provide feedback on any colleague you interact with, including people you pair with, your anchor, a PM or any other interactions you have with anyone around the office. We have procedures to provide feedback via email (or the internal Pivotal Feedback app for Pivot to Pivot feedback). However, we encourage all forms of feedback, especially in person.
A Set of Values - the Why of Personal Feedback
We are uncovering better ways of fostering personal growth by providing regular Actionable, Specific and Kind feedback. We believe it is everyone's job to make everyone better. To accomplish this we have come to value:
- Frequency of interaction over processes and tools
- Timeliness of communication over annual reviews
- Trust between author and recipient over corporate hierarchy
- Ownership of personal growth over dependence on management
- Content of Feedback over a performance rating
That is, while there is value in the items on the right, we value the items on the left more.
We follow these 10 guiding principles:
- Feedback is part of the lifeblood of a healthy organization.
- Providing frequent feedback regarding how our colleagues perform their roles is how we help them grow.
- Documenting feedback is valuable for coaching and growth over time. However this should not dictate the medium in which feedback is delivered nor feel onerous.
- Authors should control who receives their feedback in order to foster a trusting, safe, feedback environment.
- Recipients should summarize and share feedback appropriately in order to increase visibility.
- When reporting is required or requested, managers should provide context by sharing edited and summarized notes instead of forwarding raw feedback.
- Formal and ad-hoc feedback from the manager to their reports helps facilitate career growth.
- Regular self-summaries shared with management drives alignment in career goals.
- Targeted solicitation of feedback helps paint a complete picture of one’s growth.
- There should be no surprises in a formal review.
(See also, Feedback Manifesto) It is everyone's job to make everyone better. Aiding the growth of the people you interact with has a positive impact on team productivity, personal growth, and your own job satisfaction. Said another way, helping others helps you.
One way we help make people better is by empowering them with data in the form of feedback. As part of being a successful contributor, we ask that you give frequent, quality feedback to provide many opportunities for growth and adaptation throughout the year.
Receiving feedback once a year in the form of an annual review is a long feedback cycle and does not lend itself to much iteration. How often you give feedback will be a function of the number of people you interact with on a regular basis. This includes your daily teammates, manager, HR, and other teams. The goal is that each team member has an interesting set of feedback to discuss with his or her manager at their one on one. This means that if your team size is small, you may only write a couple pieces of feedback each week. If your team size is large, you may find that you need to be writing feedback near-daily to achieve this goal.
In order for data to be useful for growth, the feedback must be actionable. Compare “The result of the retrospective was not good.” to “I want our retrospective to result in action items and we didn’t have any action items this past retro.” In the second example, it is clear that the feedback giver wants more action items. How you solve for that is up to you.
In order for data to be coachable, the feedback must be specific. “Good job running the meetup last night.” is hard to coach because it does not tell the recipient what about the event you valued. Compared to, “Good job starting on time, introducing the speaker, and ordering enough food. I appreciate a professional meetup especially when it is in our own office.”
Everyone will be more open to receiving feedback if it is kind. You want the recipient to hear what you have to say. By being specific, you avoid blanketing character assassination such as, “Fred always forgets things.” But you also want it to be clear that you’re trying to help the recipient grow, and that you’re not just venting your own anger. Being kind shows that you’re not out to get the other person, but that you’re trying to make our office a better place to work.
Nic Werner wrote a pointed blog post about receiving feedback which is additive to the content here.
Don’t make feedback more personal than it needs to be. It is not always about you. It is your job as the recipient to determine if and where the growth needs to happen. Consider this example:
You move too fast when pairing with a newer engineer on your team. You also over explain yourself when pairing with a more senior developer.
In this case you can adapt your speed. Help the newer team member do the growing he needs. Talk at a higher level with the more senior developer where there’s already a baseline of understanding.
Be open. You’re getting feedback because you can’t see everything. Nor can you anticipate everyone’s reactions to your actions. You’re getting a gift of fresh eyes and new ideas, accept that gift with grace.
Ask questions. You should feel that you have clarity in understanding the feedback given to you. Follow up so you understand what the author was trying to tell you. Feedback can always be the start of a conversation.
Get some help when you get your buttons pushed. We all have our sensitive topics and areas that we’re passionate about. When you find that feedback is harder to receive, don’t hesitate to get help in the form a sympathetic but critical ear. Having an impartial perspective will help you step back from the situation and treat it objectively. Use the same person as a mediator to facilitate an in-person discussion between you and the author. This helps you keep your emotions in check so that you can better understand the feedback.
Part of your duty as manager is to be a champion of feedback in your office. Frequent feedback plays an important role in one-on-ones and in growing pivots. The values of the feedback process are best represented by the Feedback Manifesto.
As a manager, we expect you to:
- Convey the importance of feedback to your reports
- Coach your reports on how and when to give and receive effective feedback
- Discuss received feedback at every 1:1
- Deliver formal reviews several times per year
- Give feedback on the feedback you encounter
- Ask for feedback about your reports
- Take part in the giving of frequent feedback
Those who give feedback are the same who value personal growth in themselves and in others. We’ve developed the Feedback Manifesto to give you a succinct statement of values. Having data is the first part of directed growth, and that data is available from the individual’s peers, the individual herself, and from you.
Feedback is part of how we retain contributors. It facilitates career growth so contributors have a sense of motion while they are here. It also elevates the baseline - making everyone better means we work with great people. Everyone should be putting in the time and effort to make their co-workers great.
Feedback should be Actionable, Specific, and Kind, (A.S.K.) - it is your job to coach reports to give effective feedback. Steer them away from un-actionable "Thanks", and convey the value of actionable feedback. Steer them away from feeling like they're complaining/tattling, and convey the value of having data present at 1:1’s and how that gets used to increase growth.
Feedback need not be daily, but frequent enough that a report has several pieces of feedback from their peers at her monthly 1:1. Success looks like 1:1's having enough data/content for growth discussions because feedback is flowing. A team member on a one pair project need not give feedback as frequently to his teammate as a one on a four pair project with many teammates.
Encourage reports to give feedback within a discipline (eg. developer to developer). Discuss the values of other disciplinesto encourage feedback to peers outside their discipline (eg. developer to designer). Ask and make space for feedback “up the org chart”. Help your report understand that she is part of helping you grow as a manager and that the same holds true for directors. Lastly, encourage your report to give feedback across team boundaries (eg. one team member to a member of another team). In each case the feedback giver will need to take into account the values of that discipline which may differ from her own.
Add context to feedback so that your report internalizes it. Not every piece of feedback is going to be “right” or accurate. However, it will be important that your report knows and understands he’s perceived in a certain way.
Discuss emerging trends with your report. Positive trends can show that an individual is ready for a new opportunity like anchorship or leading a special effort. Trends that show misalignment with company values should be the start of a conversation. You, your report, and the company should get realigned with the relevant values.
Foster career ownership in your report. Empower them to gather feedback about the skills they are working on. Enable the creation of new opportunities.
By default, give formal feedback quarterly. It should directly address the values associated with the role(s) of the report. Upon hiring, we set clear expectation about which traits we evaluate them against. Upholding that expectation is the primary focus of a formal review as it is a form of feedback from the company.
It’s one problem if you have no feedback when it comes time to coach your report. It’s a different problem if you have a lot of feedback that’s noisy and hard to coach. As a manager, you have a lot of influence over the quality of feedback. The company expects you to help feedback providers understand if their feedback was valuable and/or how to improve.
By giving that meta-feedback, you help the author make better use of his time, your time, and your report’s time. When individuals know what is and isn’t valuable they can write valuable feedback the first time. This will increase the quality of feedback received by you and your fellow manager. When your report receives quality feedback he doesn’t have to wonder what action he should take in the future.
Managers still need to go ask for feedback to fill in gaps for coaching or for formal reviews (a specific kind of coaching). For example, you and your report might also be working on a specific goal. In this case you may want to request feedback on how that report is progressing with that goal.
You are part of the day-to-day feedback solution, not just the monthly coaching. Giving feedback is one way you can lead by example on your team. Quick responses to feedback requests from other managers will help them do their jobs.
How to use the feedback app when faced with coachable moments.
You have a couple of options here. If you don’t record it somehow the feedback stands a good chance of being forgotten by your next 1:1. Moreover it will not available for reference in your periodic reviews. If you ask the author of the feedback to also follow up by adding it to the app, you are communicating that you value their opinion. But the best option is to log the feedback yourself. This way, you know it got recorded and will be handy when talking to your manager. You can mark the author as the recipient, giving the author a chance to chime in and add anything you might have left off.
Mechanics:
- The subject is the original recipient of in-person feedback
- Recipients should include the original author of the in-person feedback to confirm the conversation and add-on as necessary
As a manager, I want to get more detail about how my report is doing with regards to teamwork, how can I do that?
Organic feedback will rarely give you the whole picture, so you’ve got to hunt down information and having specific prompts is effective at getting targeted feedback. Set the subject to be your report, but set the recipients to be her peers that you want to reply to your feedback request. Keep in mind you may need to make multiple requests if you want to isolate the visibility of the replies.
Mechanics:
- Create a feedback request
- The subject is your report
- Recipients are the report’s peers or other parties who would have relevant feedback for the report.
- Replies will be isolated so that one peer does not see another peers response
You can always have your manager solicit feedback on your behalf. This is an excellent way to get targeted feedback about a particular topic.
Mechanics:
- Your manager creates a feedback request
- The subject is you
- Recipients are your peers or other parties who would have relevant feedback.
- Replies will be isolated so that one peer does not see another peers response