Feedback is amazing – I want some more of that please
One year ago I became the delivery director of NixonMcInnes.
Feedback is embedded in our culture. We discuss as a team, one on one and sometimes with clients how we did on meetings, conference calls or any other work we do.
It can be uncomfortable if you are a newcomer but soon you’ll be enjoying the benefits of being honest and sharing your feelings on how things are going.
To celebrate my year as a director I encouraged feedback (once again) by setting up an online survey (with closed and open questions) and asking everyone to let me know their thoughts.
And they did:
I got good to excellent on most of the “closed” questions (poor to excellent) like:
- “Commitment to our highly open, transparent and democratic company culture”
- “Ability to get things done”
- “Highly organised”
The toughest question on the survey was “my weaknesses and common pitfalls”. That is where the most powerful answers are: how your team mates think you can improve.
Some of the answers were:
- “I think sometimes you over commit things or have trouble prioritising”
- “Sometimes your mindset can be a bit rigid and analytical”
- “Your standard of English is good, but I wonder if it not being your first language contributes to … lost of value in reports and requests circulated to the team by email”
Great. I got feedback – now what?
The best way to ensure feedback is useful is to embrace it. Share it. Nurture it.
I immediately changed the way I do things:
- Avoid over committing and improve prioritisation: work on “say no” and ask for help prioritising
- Simplify: be less rigid/analytical and more practical when I start over analising
- Add value to reports: Make sure reports are clearer, valuable and have actions assign to them when possible
We all have our own job descriptions and salaries published on our internal wiki. The feedback will feed directly into it helping me to make it more accurate and useful.
And it was the inspiration for this blog post.
Feedback is amazing
I will keep the survey results very close – and refer back to it often. I will follow up with more feedback requests to assess how an I doing. I won’t let this die.
After all – it is all about how I can become a better director, a better team player and a better person.
It’s empowering and very useful to get honest feedback from the people closer to you. I encourage everyone to do it.
If you’d like to know more drop me an email.
Telmo wrote this on 21.09.09 – 2 comments
It's filed in the NixonMcInnes box
On September 21st, 2009 at 2:37 pm, Matt Matheson responded:
Brilliant and very open blog post Telmo – thanks for sharing with all.
I’ve been working and NixonMcInnes for two years now and at first found it very ‘different’ being so open and honest with work mates, but can firmly say that once you get used to it, it’s the best way to do things.
It contributes mountains to personal development and to be honest, I wouldn’t want to do it any other way now.
Rock on to feedback :)
On October 1st, 2009 at 5:36 pm, Jenni responded:
thanks for sharing T-bone…
One thing that concerns me about this kind of blog post though is how it’s perceived from the outside. Does it appear self-congratulatory, or navel-gaze-y perhaps?
I suppose what I’m looking for, dear reader, is some feedback… is this interesting to you? If you’ve interacted with us in some way – as a client, job applicant, supplier or freelancer, heard us speak, read about us somewhere or have happened here randomly from Google – what do you think?