Who's and why's of Feedback?
There is a saying - 'No Man is an Island', which means no one, absolutely no one can survive without others (On second thought, i take that back, i know a few people who do!!!).
We interact with people, we work, play, argue, fight etc.
So overall, in the personal and professional conundrum of life, people 'interact' with each other.
In our personal and professional dealings, there are times when we act or react in a certain way that is unacceptable to others - Alas, 'We cannot please everyone all the time'.
Always remember, every person follows some thought process and the golden rule is 'Everyone of us does what he/she thinks is right, in that situation'. Be he/she the CEO of a Corporation or Super villian in a comic book.
So when we observe this sort of behavior in our Project Team, what do we do, how do we react as Project Managers? and most importantly, if we are ones on the receiving end, how do we take the feedback that others give us.
Let us take a real life situation that happened with me many years back. I was a rookie in a IT Large Firm and was working on a big multi million dollar Project. It was my first project right out of college. A large size manufacturing Company had hired our IT Vendor services to Automate one of their new plants. I was part of the development and installation team onsite with other 40 resources (Client and Vendors included) working dedicatedly on various aspects.
Then just a week before go live, my Project Manager had to go on a Personal leave for a Family emegency. I was the only available backup on that short notice. I was representing our Develpoment and Testing Groups now. Things were going fine with the dry runs, system tests etc till the day of go live.
On the night of go live, we started our deployment, things were going by the book for the first few hours then suddenly all hell broke lose, hardware starting failing, drives, switches, programs were not working, networking issues developed. This being a commercial Manufacturing plant which was being controlled by our PLC (Programmable Logic controller) programs, all the Silos, drives and Switches started malfunctioning. It was also a continuous process plant and a break in the process would have meant raw materials losses worth millions and indirect impacts in terms of Go Live date delays, commited dates and other dependencies.
Everyone in the plant started to panic, right from the half asleep Janitor to the Top C-level executives. Since we were the service providers and i was the only highest sitting mark representing our corporation's totem pole, guess who received the flak for all this....me!!!...Yes, and that too in no soft words or even in private...you get the rough idea.....
Finally, the situation was salvaged and we started resolving the issues one by one and things started running fine again.
After nearly 20 years that incident still gives me cold sweats, not so much the things that failed or the soup we were in, but the verbal lashings i got...
What went wrong here? Absolutely everything....How could it have been handled...definitely in a more professional manner...
Even in our Day to day IT Projects, we come across similar situations about our Team members, colleagues etc who needs to be repriminded or think annual appraisal sessions of your team members.
Feedback Process handling
So coming to - How to handle this situation>
Approach 1>
Plain and simple - Speak your mind.
Approach 2>
Provide feedback with a little preparation and technique. I call it the 'AGES' approach.
It needs a little Homework. Follow the below 4 steps -
1> A - Assess
Assess the Situation. Understand the problem
2> G - Good
Quantify other positive contributions of the person in focus. Think what value he provides to the Team, project and the corporation in general.
3> E - Empathize
Empathize with the person and elaborate the negative impacts of his/her actions, understanding that he/she was not doing it on purpose.
4> S - Solution
Think about ways to help the person.
Now let's analyze a Situation with the help of above 2 approaches
e.g. Situation is - We are in midst of an Agile project for which there are daily 9 AM Sprint meetings and all Team members are present except Mark. Mark is consistently late for the sprint stand-ups past few days.
Approach 1>
I approach Mark and reprimind him (Openly or in private).
'Mark, your behavior is unacceptable. You are always late for the stand ups. Make sure this does not happen again'
What happens during/after this? Mark immediately shuts off. He thinks of me as a rude, negative and inconsiderate person. This impacts his work, interactions with the Team and finally his work deliverable or the project as a whole.
Now this is not a very Leader like behavior. A Leader has to motivate and lead by guiding his team on the journey. Help them in their issues, understanding and Guiding them when and wherever possible.
So now let's try approach 2>
A - Assess
I analyze the situation and prepare my response. I focus on Mark's contributions and the current 'glitch' that is being observed for past few days. I also work out a few practical ways this can be resolved. Then i talk to Mark one on one.
G - Good
'Listen Mark, I know the project is in full flow and i see you are working very hard - day and night and especially your work on the ISO webservice solution was extremely well received by the client and it had zero defects too'
E - Empathize
'To continue the same trend of success, we as a Team have to focus on the project. That is why the daily sprint attendance is important, so everyone can understand the current Project progress, work dependencies, issues, project announcements, if any'
'Now i understand everyone has a personal life and sometimes there are some things that have to take a priority'
S - Solution
'So if there is anything there i can do to help you here, like changing your Office timings for a while or there is something you want to share, let's talk about it'
Which conversion do you think will have more impact.
So to summarize, to provide feeback, Keep your mind open, unbiased and clear, understand the situation or focus on the problem at hand not the person, understand the circumstances and behavior of the other person and help him/her resolve it positively. When you leave your feedback meeting, make sure neither one of you leaves with a bitter taste in his mouth, leave with a positie mark. After all, projects are a Team work.
