Open feedback in team retrospectives

I worked for a while in a company in which the feedback culture was a core element of the company’s mission statement. In the team retrospectives, however, I found that very constructive feedback was rarely given. Problems were sometimes hushed up and employees rarely developed joint work steps to avoid criticism if they were not achieved. An open feedback culture was therefore not lived, contrary to the mission statement.

This phenomenon can be observed in many organizations. Because let’s be honest: none of us like to express criticism. And if we don’t give clear criticism, we have no tangible clue for new resolutions.

Reflections in retrospectives 

The most important thing in cooperation is the regular exchange of information and constructive communication. So that there is no chaos, but instead the efficiency and commitment of the employees are encouraged, everyone should come to the team meeting prepared.

In Retrospectives it makes sense for the employees to think about what feedback they want to give and what they need feedback from their colleagues for. Our retro tool offers team members support: Certain items are queried in advance, so that awareness of certain topics is raised before the meeting. You don’t know what retrospectives are? Then take a look at ours FAQs to!

Under these conditions you have a dynamic, common work process and can the knowledge of everyone fall back on to sharpen goals and derive measures.

You want to promote openness in your team and develop it sustainably - measurably? We have developed our Team Workshop Tool Echometer for retrospectives for exactly this purpose. More information can be found here:

Promote open feedback within the team

Sounds easy? Under certain circumstances it is too! And we show you how to do it.

Giving Open Feedback - How? Why? What for?

Feedback is not only modern and on everyone’s lips, it is actually very profitable for shared and individual services. Provided you use it correctly.

For feedback to be constructive, it should follow a specific pattern (cf. Fiege, Muck & Schuler, 2014). The first step is the evaluation. This should include the following aspects:

The evaluation should be followed by a concrete plan in which suggestions for improvement are developed and (new) work steps are derived.

If you keep that in mind, the collaboration is guaranteed to work better. Each team member has clear points of reference, can automatically prepare better and there is open feedback at the subject level.

In order to always be up-to-date and take a step towards agility, such retrospectives should ideally take place every 1 - 2 weeks. Especially in an agile working environment, people often work in heterogeneous teams. This poses a challenge for many in terms of collaboration. With the help of successful retrospectives and open feedback, however, heterogeneous teams act as an opportunity rather than a challenge.

Practical tips for open feedback

Simply start with the first point of the scheme in your next retro - you could say, the “retro classic”: Discussion of the situation<span.”> The aim is to reflect on your work process and check what has contributed to success and how you want to proceed.

It helps that each team member brainstorms what exactly has been worked on since the last retro and what went well and / or badly. Helpful questions are the following (a rough overview of how to deal with the questions can be found in the figure):

• On a scale of 1-10: how far are we until the task is completed? And what is missing at 10?

You will see: In the course of answering such questions, many facts come to light that you were previously unaware of.
After brainstorming, you should discuss the findings in the plenum. For this it is important that everyone involved feels safe. You can find out more in our article on Psychological security read. You can certainly help each other and praise one or other concrete successes.

How you can tell whether a work step can be called “completed” is explained in the article Definition of done .

How can we help?

If regular and open feedback is still a challenge in your team, ours can Online tool for retrospectives be of great help. Based on psychological know-how, we have developed for teams like your optimally tailored items that improve your retros and strengthen cooperation. Just try it!

References

Klein, C., Diaz Granados, D., Salas, E., Le, H., Burke, CS, Lyons, R., & Goodwin, GF (2009). Does team building work? Small Group Research, 40 (2), 181-222. https://doi.org/10.1177/1046496408328821