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The art of giving feedback
Giving feedback is part of being human. We all have opinions. We all have relationships with other people. Put the two together and we spend a lot of time giving other people our opinions. It makes us feel good, it clearly benefits them, and overall it will make our relationship better, right? Yet how many times have we given feedback and had it blow up right in our face? Like everything in life, practice helps hone the skill. Let’s experiment with the art of feedback on two dimensions — 1. self-feedback which is basically the secret trait of all successful of successful product designers, and 2. feedback for others.
“If you want to change the world, start with yourself.” -Mahatma Gandhi
The Art of Self-Feedback
If you’re working on practicing a new skill, the most controlled place to start is with yourself. If you work in a corporate setting, you likely have meetings with many people. In the technology world, these people could include your manager, direct reports and peers in engineering, product or design. Think back to the last meeting you had and practice the art of self-feedback by using this question framework:
- What am I proud of?
- What did I do well?
- What could I have done better?
- What are my learnings & actions from the 3 prior questions?
Leadership can happen from a place of strength or a place of fear. Many high performers skip over all the things that we excel at to immediately zero into our areas of struggle so that we can fix them. Starting with questions #1 & #2 helps remind us to slow down and acknowledge what worked well. We want to reinforce and build upon these strengths. Question #3 lets us acknowledge areas of growth, the area we want to fix. And question #4 gives perspective and choice. Given all that we’ve just covered, what’s one insight, action or learning to try next time.
An example:
When I was a design leader at Facebook, my relationships with the head of engineering and product were crucial to ensure that we continue shipping high quality products that impact people’s lives. I walked out of a high stakes triage meeting with my two partners. Our product was not on-track to hit its goals…
