A Leader, ‘Sally’, is a participant in my Unshakeable Leaders program. As part of the Leadership program, we recently spent half a day covering the Feedback Fitness Framework. Recognising that her team could improve its Feedback culture and feeling excited about the possibility of reducing feedback fear and friction, Sally decided to run a Team Day and introduce the concept of Feedback Fitness to her team.
Sally was kind enough to share her experience of how she got her team talking about Feedback.
‘As a team, we started out by exploring feedback in general (using the resources Sue had provided us). Then we specifically discussed strategies for improving how we give feedback to each other in our team, so not client-related at all, just within the team setting’.
‘I asked the question, ‘What is important to you about feedback?’ to the whole team and I wrote up their answers on a whiteboard. We did that for about 15 minutes, it generated a lot of discussion’.
‘Then we explored feedback in the leadership space, so feedback from the team towards myself, and then vice versa’.
‘We used the ‘Fifty Questions about Feedback’. It was really useful. It didn't seem like there were any pauses in conversation. If anything, the conversation went longer than I thought it would. The fifty questions definitely generated a lot of conversation, which was good’.
‘I asked the team where they thought they were in terms of their own Feedback Fitness levels for both giving and receiving feedback – interesting!’.
What Sally learnt about her team
‘There were a few people who shared how they want to receive feedback or how they don't want to receive feedback, which was a surprise in that environment. It prompted more discussion than I anticipated'.
‘As a Leader, it was really interesting to see where people rated themselves on the two ladders’.
‘I think the framework overall is really valuable in a team space, but also in individual supervision.’
‘The framework provides a lot more insight into that space, and how you can structure it, and how you can do those warm up conversations and then the check-ins afterward, which are valuable’.
‘The Team Day was a great start, and I believe there is definitely still a space for one-on-one Warm-Up conversations, so I’ll be doing those next’.
‘I plan on keeping the conversation going in our team meeting space as well. We haven't just left it at our Team Day. We're continuing it through our team meeting spaces every fortnight’.