Make feedback easy

[Amy]

Midway through the year is a good time to check in with your team and if you have a formal review cycle, chances are, you will need to get ready for reviews and progress reports in June. Depending on the size of your team that can be a lot of work, so here are some tips to make sure you can keep track of the feedback you want to give between now and then, and to make sure that the feedback you give is useful for your team too. 

Before the feedback session: 

The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago and the second best time is right now, and the same can be said for recording feedback. As soon as you get the chance, start noting things that your team members do that stand out to you, positive moments or little issues that you want to discuss. 

A Paper doc where you can drop screenshots of achievements, notes to yourself to check in on someone’s progress or even just a passing thought make it a lot easier when you’re looking back over three or even six months of work. It’s easy to forget the little things but make sure they are appreciated too! 

During the feedback session: 

As a lot of us are continuing to work from home, feedback can be even more important, as there isn’t that in-person feedback loop that happens on the fly in the office or on-site with your team.

If you don’t have one, create a shared Paper doc to help you and your team members track the progress of specific tasks. I’m a big fan of the traffic light system to check in on the health of a specific goal at a glance, and it can help you stay on the same page.

After the feedback session: 

Make it easy for you and your team to refer back to the feedback shared in the recorded Zoom meeting, by ensuring you have the Zoom integration installed. Then the video recordings and transcripts are automatically copied to Dropbox. That makes it really easy for you or your team to action the feedback or set new goals, without stopping to take notes while you’re chatting. We have some other tips on working from home here too.

Want to know even more about how to give good feedback? A Gallup survey found that only 26 percent of employees strongly agree that the feedback they get actually improves their work, but don’t worry - cognitive psychologist LeeAnn Renninger shares a scientifically proven method for giving effective feedback as part of The Way We Work series. 

You can watch the full webinar video here.

Let us know if this helps you with your feedback process!