Peer-to-Peer Feedback
Supports Pillars:
Related to:
Self-Managing, Supportive Culture, Self Improvement
Definition:
Feedback is information about recent interactions, offered with the intent of strengthening working relationships and improving results. When people engage in collaborative work and interact through-out the day, frictions and disappointments are inevitable. Team members need a way to address these events without resorting to the manager to sort things out (which can resemble "tattle tale" and destroy trust) or complaining to an uninvolved third-party (similar to gossip).
Resources:
Esther Derby, "Why Group Dynamics and Interpersonal Skills Matter"
CN Seashore, EW Seashore, & GM Weinberg What Did You Say? The Art of Giving and Receiving Feedback
Steps to Mastery:
Offer congruent feedback about day-to-day interactions in a way that increases the chance the receiver will hear what's said as helpful rather than as a judgment.
Offer and receive feedback as a normal event--feedback is no longer emotionally charged or scary.
Offer feedback in challenging situations that involve sensitive topics or evaluation of work.
Coach others on giving feedback.
Organizational Support:
Many people have little or no experience giving direct feedback in a
work situation and find it difficult to set emotions aside to either
receive feedback or give feedback to others. Organizations can help
people learn this skill by creating safe settings for learning and
practicing the skill in several ways:
1. Peer-to-peer communication is preferred. Team members prefer to
give feedback directly and positively. A team member who is given
feedback about someone else encourages the giver to deliver the
feedback directly, and offers to assist in the conversation. Passing
feedback through a third party undermines team communication and
should be avoided.
2. People with mastery of this skill can be available to role-play
with a reluctant feedback giver.
3. When working relationships between team members are
strained, peer-to-peer feedback may be facilitated by a
third team member with sufficient mastery of the skill.
Care should be taken to ensure that such facilitation is
a learning tool and not a practice.
4. Social activities, either outside work hours, such as outings or meals,
or regularly-scheduled brief exercises at work, such as personal checkins
right before the day's stand-up, facilitate closeness and strengthen
the sense of safety needed for direct communication.