There’s no “I” in feedback

How and why you should treat feedback as a team sport

When we think about feedback we tend to think of it generally —a reaction to a specific action. Seldom do we think of it as a way to cultivate culture and bring together teams. It helps to strengthen teams by encouraging honest communication, creating consensus, and building trust.

Each member of the team contributes their own unique ideas and talents, which means that each member also has different feedback requirements. Feedback is a team sport, and teams are more successful when they work together.

Understand how you like to receive feedback, and tell your teammates

Does receiving feedback in group settings make you anxious? How often do you like to receive feedback? Do you mind if people outside of your team approach you with feedback? Over email or in person?

Realizing your individual feedback needs is one of the most valuable things you can do for your team; when you understand your own needs, you build empathy for the needs of others. It will also help you develop confidence in providing feedback and to better understand the different perspectives that make up your team.

Feedback is one of those things that gets easier the more it’s practiced, and also when your team has a certain level of comfort and trust with each other. Some of the teams at Shopify use a resource that helps them to facilitate communication more effectively. This usually consists of a document listing items like their personality type, preferred channels of communication, how they like or dislike to receive feedback, and some quick conversation starters.

It takes time to get to know people, and work relationships aren’t built overnight. Having each team member contribute their information in a shared space creates an access point that can be referred back to, and added to as the team grows. Understanding your team and knowing what makes each individual confident in the process will help you make better communication decisions when approaching teammates with feedback, or reaching out for your own feedback.

My contribution to the Creative Direction teams’ resource:

Personality type: Type 9 — The peacemaker. Receptive, reassuring, agreeable, and complacent.

Communication preference: Find me on slack— this is usually the quickest way you’ll get a response. I prefer DM’s over being mentioned in a channel, though.

Feedback style: I’m very open to feedback, but can be a little sensitive if it’s directed at me instead of my work. I need feedback regularly if i’m doing something right, and guidance if I’m not.

Quirks: I need time to process information. Just because I’m not voicing my opinion yet doesn’t mean I don’t have one — I’m just gathering context and figuring out how to say it.

Convo starters: Music (hip hop, folk, or alternative rock), my cat Remy, or tell me/ask me for a fun fact!

It’s important to hold yourself accountable for the type of feedback you’d like to receive. Our ability to accept and act on feedback allows us to build better relationships, and communicate more effectively and openly with our teams. When teams develop a common language for communicating feedback, they create a rhythm with each other that will help accelerate both personal growth and stagnant projects. In this case, the common language (the resource shown above) is what facilitates our team’s ability to focus on the nuances of each individual team members’ feedback needs.

Purposeful, not personal

Purposeful feedback directs us towards self improvement, and acts as motivation. Feedback can be tricky, and giving purposeful feedback requires the right tools — if you’re not providing purposeful feedback, you’re just giving your opinion.

A popular method for delivering purposeful feedback is called the SBI (Situation-Behavior-Impact) model. The SBI model turns feedback into a learning experience by bringing perspective to the situation, encouraging reflection on specific behaviors that occurred, and understanding the results of these behaviors. The benefit of this model is that your teammates won’t be left wondering how to act on the feedback they receive by the end of the conversation. It allows them to reflect on actions they’ve taken in order to have a more positive impact.

Here’s how you can frame your feedback using this model:

1. Identify the situation. Describe it using specific details, and make sure you highlight any key points that stand out. Avoid making generalizations.
2. Make note of observed behaviors. Remember not to make any assumptions and only address the behaviors you witnessed firsthand.
3. Determine the impact. What were the results of this behavior? Was the impact positive? negative?

People generally want to know the truth about how they are performing, and how others feel about them. Though sometimes when we give feedback to our teammates, the effect is not what we had intended. Friendly reminder: acting on feedback doesn’t mean applying the actual piece of feedback. It’s necessary to find the meaning behind the feedback, and connect it back to the problem you’re trying to solve. Being able to separate observations about a teammates’ behavior from the impact of the behavior, gives you more action items to work with. Only refer to behaviors that your teammates can later act on. After giving feedback with the SBI model, always check for clarity to confirm that your teammate understands the feedback they’ve received.

Tailoring your feedback to the person you’re providing it to is just as important as making it actionable. Every individual gives and receives feedback in specific ways, and the more comfortable you are with your team the more likely you are to do it honestly without making it too personal. Feedback should be honest, not complicated, and purposeful, not personal.

A few ways you can get more involved with your team are:

• Semi-regular 1:1’s. Set up monthly 1:1’s with other members of your team to catch up (yes, you can do them with people who aren’t your lead)— this doesn’t have to revolve around what you’re working on, either. Grab a coffee or chat over lunch, and avoid booking a room if possible. This is your bonding time — keep it short and sweet.
• Team activities. Dedicate a little bit of team every few weeks to group activities that get everyone involved, and encourage thinking outside the box. We call ours “Creative Brain Time” — where we dedicate time to working on a pre-planned design challenge. While it’s important to capitalize on in-person events, try and make sure that these activities are also friendly for any remote teammates you might have.
• Off-sites. Take team building activities outside of the office — go for dinner, go bowling, play laser tag, etc. Remember to pick an activity that everyone is able to participate in, and allow each member to take a turn deciding on the activity.

How your reactions influence people’s behaviors

How you react to the feedback you receive is just as important as your openness to accepting it. If you decide not to accept or act on the feedback your team is offering, they’ll be less likely to continue doing so in the future. What you do with the feedback you receive says a lot about your potential.

Believing that your teammates have your best interest in mind is the first step to tearing down those defense mechanisms. People who are more open to accepting and applying feedback have growth mindsets. When you believe that your abilities are not determined by what you currently know, but by your ability to develop them, you‘re tuning into a growth mindset. By refocusing your team culture to place value on self improvement and development, everyone will reap the benefits. A healthy culture of team feedback is key to putting everyone into this necessary headspace.

We tend to fear disappointing and displeasing people, and will avoid colleagues who provide us with constructive criticism, since our immediate response to negative or constructive feedback is to defend our actions. Take time to think about the feedback you’ve received — remember that it’s okay to come back to the conversation at a more convenient time if this will allow you to process the information and think about your responses. Don’t indulge in quick reactions. If you can anticipate that someone is coming to you with the intention of helping you grow through feedback, it won’t feel so intimidating and you won’t feel so defensive.

Understanding the bigger picture will also help you put the feedback you receive into perspective. It’s impossible to act on feedback that you don’t truly understand — what’s real? what should be filtered out? It’s a good idea to ask other teammates for their opinion to get a more holistic view. If there’s patterns in your behaviors that multiple teammates are noticing, then you can feel more confident in what’s being said. This helps you to avoid making hasty behavioral corrections that might be biased to one person’s opinion.

Acknowledging the effort your teammates are putting into changing their behaviors is also critical for encouraging continued growth and a culture of feedback. Positive reinforcement is a useful tool to facilitate this, but only if it’s done in a timely manner. When your teammates value your opinion, it can be disheartening if their efforts are not acknowledged, or when too much times passes between a changed behavior and the desired reinforcement. Being timely in reinforcing your teammates behaviors helps to strengthen learnings, correct behaviors sooner, and encourages teammates to continue making positive changes.

Challenging your negativity bias

Our brains are amazing — there’s no doubting that. When it comes to feedback, however, they tend to be a little sensitive thanks to something called negativity bias.

Negativity bias: Negative experiences tend to exert greater psychological impact on us than positive experiences of the same magnitude. source

This means that no matter how many times you receive positive feedback about your work, it’s easier for you to remember that one time it wasn’t. More time and effort is needed to reinforce the good parts.

I remember being in my first year of design school and being terrified of getting up to present my work in design critiques. Not because I had a hard time presenting in front of people, but because at the end of every presentation, the entire class joined the professor in critiquing your work. I fixated on any negative feedback I received. Immediately after a critique, I would write these negative points down in my notebook as a reminder to not make the same mistakes on my next project. This worked well for tracking things I needed to improve on, but it never let me focus on what I was doing well. I was always approaching the feedback I received from a glass half-empty point of view, and wasn’t taking advantage of my strengths, or taking time to solidify those positive experiences into my memory.

This bias towards negative feedback meant that I was lacking open communication with my professor and classmates. I wasn’t questioning the feedback I was given, and wasn’t challenging it against my own opinions. I started writing both the positive and negative parts down to help me understand how I was doing from both angles. This helped me to think more positively about my work, and to believe in the value of constructive criticism.

Hold no permanent opinions. Believe that everything can be challenged.

The easiest way to challenge your negativity bias and to start working with the feedback you receive is to hold no permanent opinions. In no way does this mean to simply accept the feedback you receive, or to take the feedback literally, but to believe everything can be challenged. Negative feedback does not mean you have failed, it’s a hidden opportunity for growth. Diving into both positive and negative feedback can help you gain insight for future decisions.

Big thanks to everyone on the Creative Direction team at Shopify for providing me with feedback on this article (you’re the real MVP’s).

Interested in working with one of the wonderful UX teams at Shopify? Why not check out some of our current openings.