Feedback Circle

Regular and effective feedback is one of the most important components of people's and teams' development. That is why the exchange of feedback should be a part of each team's culture. It refers to both positive feedback and corrective feedback.

What is also important is to form a habit of exchanging feedback between people directly. This is much more complicated than the traditional approach through a manager since communication between people directly requires trust and readiness to show own vulnerability.

If you decide to develop a culture of openness in your team, it will be useful to try Feedback Circle with your team.

Let's take a look at how to organize such a meeting.

If you meet offline, then you will need a board or a flipchart on which you need to split the space into the number of participants, and where their names are written.

Each participant will need tools for keeping records. Larger sheets than a standard sticker will be better.

In an online format, the space can be organized in a service like Miro.

All participants should write down the answers to two questions with respect to their colleagues other than themselves:

1. What is good about your colleague, and what, in your opinion, should they keep doing?
2. What should your colleague change/develop?

Each entry should be made on a separate sheet and include enough information to clarify what is being referred to.

Ask people to focus on the behavior and give feedback on the behavior of others that should be sustained or changed.

Depending on the size of the group, allocate 10 to 20 minutes to this part.

When the time is up, ask the participants to post their entries under the name of the corresponding person.

Ask each participant to approach their area and read the entries.

If they don’t understand what’s written, suggest they ask the author to provide more explanations with lots of examples of behavior. Remember, the examples must be real behavior you can associate with the description.

Ask people to share their impressions from the feedback they've read.

Most likely, they've gained new insights into their own behavior, how it positively/negatively impacted their personal growth, and perhaps, influenced other team members.

Ask everyone to remove all the stickers with their name tag underneath, if you met offline.

If you are organizing such a meeting for the first time, it is essential to understand that such an approach may be quite uncomfortable for some team members, especially if there is a lack of trust or it needs to be fixed in the team. It may be helpful for you to talk about the idea with your colleagues before organizing the meeting.

As a leader, you can take steps first, thus setting an example of a vulnerability that, in turn, will speed up the formation of an organizational culture in which people will be more open to each other.