The importance of feedback
Can you give it? Can you hear it? Cultivating a growth mindset with an abundance of feedback.
There are few things that make people more uncomfortable in the workplace than critiquing someone’s idea or being critiqued ourselves. Just to define it, “feedback” is communication around an event that has recently happened. Sometimes it’s just an acknowledgment of a job well done, other times providing feedback is an opportunity for our peers or managers to point out areas of improvement. For those of us who suffer from imposter syndrome, receiving constructive feedback on our work can be even more challenging as we try not to take it personally or use it as proof of our lack of skills. However, like Ben Horowitz advises in The Hard Thing About Hard Things, transparency is the key to a successful, trusting company culture.
Creating security
During my multi-year stint as a product designer at an enterprise tech company I received exactly zero performance reviews. When I relay this to people they often find it hard to believe because I spent over 4 years at this company and was even promoted while I was there. But, the truth is, I never saw that promotion coming. Nor did I ever feel secure in the work I was doing or my position at the company for the 4 years I spent there.
Feedback is incredibly important for setting up a culture of trust and security for both managers and their reports. Anyone who has read Radical Candor (by Kim Scott) knows that challenging directly and speaking honestly with the people in a working environment can be a kindness and allows for a culture that doesn’t have employees questioning their value to the company or their managers. Specifically, in a design culture of regular, constructive feedback on projects and performance, designers don’t need to question whether their work is any good or whether their skills are valuable for the team; they’ll know based on the content of the feedback they receive.
Another incredibly important outcome of a culture that regularly provides feedback is the way a culture like that challenges peoples’ egos. There is very little room for hubris when working on a team that’s trying to deliver impactful products in record breaking time. Like any other muscle, the “feedback receptor” can get stronger with time and exposure as people learn to take constructive criticism less personally and use it as a growth opportunity. This was something I learned in a college design class. My teacher was incredibly candid with her feedback on my projects, sometimes to a degree that could even feel harsh. Yet, I used the projects that I produced in the class as a part of my portfolio for years following graduation. They were THAT GOOD! By giving me regular, pointed feedback my teacher provided me the opportunity to listen, remove the ego and grow from the experience. I can’t say it was an easy lesson to learn but at the time I was able to use the opportunity to receive feedback objectively, removing the personal wounds from the critique, and produce really solid work. It’s impossible to grow when we are is too attached to the work to hear where it can be improved. In the design space, hearing regular feedback can give people the opportunity to remove their ego from their work and grow through the critique; often making them better coworkers and designers in the long run.
Dishing what you can take
As hard as receiving feedback can be, giving it can be just as uncomfortable. I, for one, struggle way more with giving feedback than I do with hearing critiques of my own work. But avoiding the awkwardness and discomfort of confronting coworkers, especially direct reports, does everyone a disservice. Among other responsibilities, a manager’s job is to promote the career growth of their employees. That job comes with the, sometimes uncomfortable, job of showing employees where they need to improve in their craft and performance. This is specifically relevant to product design managers and mentors. In a creative field like design, it can be hard to separate people from their creative outputs. Critiquing a designer’s work can feel like critiquing the designer’s worth as a producer and we can often be nervous that feedback will be taken as such. But no feedback means no chances for growth or improvement. Because we sometimes have a hard time seeing our own work objectively — and sometimes we miss larger, more important context — we need our managers and mentors to provide the missing pieces and tell us where we aren’t hitting the mark so that we can learn for the next time we work on a similar problem. And as managers, we owe our reports the opportunity to try and do better and to share the knowledge and context we’ve gained through our careers; in the form of constructive feedback to our reports. Never having the hard conversations means that our reports may never know when they are or aren’t meeting our expectations and where they can level up in skill and craft as well as work ethic. And, in the worst-case scenario, when we eventually have to act on performance, those actions will be even harsher because they will be unexpected.
Positive feedback
Feedback doesn’t always have to be “constructive” or improvement motivated. In fact, people need to hear positive feedback as much as they need “constructive” feedback to grow. One thing I’ve learned from my current manager — and that I now employ with my own reports — is the value of an unsolicited compliment (disclaimer: when it is work oriented and professional). Being seen for the things we do well and being appreciated for our contributions cultivates a feeling of belonging and positive reinforcement that can really inspire people to do their best work (The Psychological Effects of Workplace Appreciation and Gratitude). In a design workplace, regular, positive feedback can help instill confidence in designers of all levels, from junior to senior. In fact, a culture that is quick to give positive, unsolicited feedback can create a safer space to deliver “constructive” or less positive feedback when necessary, because that is an environment that has already established its focus on building people up instead of knocking them down.
I’ve recently established a practice on my own team I’ve coined a “feedback shareout”. Basically, I added some space at the end of my 1:1s with my reports where we each share one piece of positive and one piece of constructive feedback with each other. My goals for this exercise are firstly, to give my team the space to share honest feedback with me. I adhere to a service leadership philosophy and look to my team to let me know when I am not providing the support they need to get their jobs done well. However, I also acknowledge that it isn’t easy to approach one’s boss with unsolicited feedback. This recurring talking point provides my team members the space to come to the meeting prepared to share with me the ways I can help them work better. And I’ve received some wonderful insights already that have helped me shift my perspective to better support my team. Another goal of mine for this practice is to help my team gain experience with giving feedback, both positive and otherwise, where they may not be as comfortable with it. I have the opportunity as their manager to give my reports the space to exercise this muscle as well as model for them how to receive constructive feedback well (For more context on manager feedback, check out this really great interview with Tamra Chandler — author of Feedback (And Other Dirty Words)). I’m not going to say it wasn’t a little weird at first, and some members of my team needed some more encouragement than others, but we’ve gotten into a groove and the sharing has gotten easier and easier, and the work has gotten better and better.
I recently promoted two of my direct reports. I firmly believe that a lot of the growth I’ve seen in them has come from working in an environment where feedback is direct, helpful and abundant. We have weekly design reviews where I encourage my reports to be vulnerable and share work in progress, or even “bad ideas”, with the team in order to hear insights and perspectives they may not have thought of themselves. The results have been awesome. My senior designers are more approachable for my junior designers and my junior designers have learned an incredible amount by bringing seniors into their work early. It’s for that reason that I am going to muddle my previous distinctions between “positive” and “constructive” feedback. All feedback is constructive as long as it’s kind and the intent is good. I’m reminded of the Mary Poppins song, “…A spoon full of sugar helps the medicine go down…” (if you don’t know it…I’m too old for you). Where a healthy balance of positive and constructive feedback can truly create the best working environments, the most creative and sustainable outputs and the most growth oriented employees.
