Understanding your performance: Actionable feedback: Question 1
Questions to elicit feedback for your teams. Question 1: My manager gives me actionable feedback that helps me improve my performance.
Although we may struggle to hear feedback, getting feedback from our teammates can be one of the greatest gifts. But what kind of questions should you be asking?
Google has done the research. Similar vibes to Project Aristotle and high-performing teams.
They share 13 questions to collect feedback on managers who target behaviours to amplify. I’ll share short posts with additional questions and stories from my experience coaching, facilitating, and supporting teams to help you think and activate conversations with your team.
Google Manager Feedback Survey
Question 1: My manager gives me actionable feedback that helps me improve my performance.
How this turns up in the real world (some observations)…
In the real world, constantly shifting demands and requirements can make understanding how you are performing difficult. For one of my clients, the senior leadership team would come and redirect work based on customer feedback. It meant new requirements were defined at a high level and often with urgency, so “getting it over the line” was the focus.
The flurry of activities was often done rapidly, so there was a missed opportunity to clarify what success looked like and what was “good enough.”
With no retrospective, there was no ability to learn and share feedback to improve things for the next break in work requests. Work completion was celebrated, but we missed a structured way to confirm outcomes and continuous improvement activities. This meant the same process and actions happened whenever an urgent request was submitted.
Applying this to your situation
Take the time to clarify success criteria as the foundation of the work and clarify what you’ll track and manage. Schedule a retrospective to gather the lessons you learned to improve your performance for the next urgent request. Talk candidly about learning and improving together for a shared perspective on requirements and expectations. Define your current process (write it down!) to understand who is involved and how your systems and workflows show progress and delivery. Set checkpoints along the way to celebrate wins and target areas for improvement.
Follow-up thinking/ questions:
Do teammates understand what good performance looks and feels like?
What dependencies do you need to consider? (e.g., working with others)
How can you frame actions to be targeted, relevant and real (considering other work underway)?
Can you explain what will be different (behaviour, thinking, delivery) to showcase that the feedback has been acted on?
What about you?
What has been your experience in supporting actionable feedback? I’d love to hear your thoughts.