Giving our peers feedback is awkward! Most of the time the thought of it immediately makes us find a brilliant excuse not to do it and very quickly we lose the motivation… “Maybe someone else will tell them.” “Maybe if I ignore it, the thing will get better on its own.” “I really don’t want to make the relationship weird.” etc!
Often when I ask people how they feel in general about giving their peers feedback, they actually have a strong commitment to the company and genuinely agree that giving peers feedback is important. However when the rubber meets the road and they have some feedback to give, they don’t do it. There’s a real resistance to do it that does not reflect actual opposition (Kegan and Lahey). People have a sincere commitment to give peers feedback but have a hidden competing commitment that stops them actually doing it. With peers there is a respectful but slightly competitive dynamic where you’re on the same team and it’s not your ‘place’ to give each other feedback.
So how do we fix this?
Assuming (big assumption!) that your managers know ‘how’ to give feedback, you need to get rid of this competing commitment about peers or nothing will change. Easier said than done but here are some ideas – I’ve tried to keep them practical.
1) Get people to practice giving it
Round tables / small workshops are easy to do, especially over zoom. Get a group of peers together (no more than 6 people) and try the following facilitation structure.
- Ask the group: What’s tough about delivering feedback to your peers? What makes it more uncomfortable than giving it to your direct reports?
- Ask the group: Why is it important that we give feedback to our peers/each other? How might it actually help you? Help them paint a positive picture.
- Exercise: Give the group 10 mins to write out one piece of praise and one piece of feedback for each person in the group. Then get the group into pairs and rotate the pairs until everyone has delivered their praise and feedback to each person. This can feel a little uncomfortable but we are trying to rip the bandaid off in a safe environment! By asking people to deliver live, real feedback we are lowering the hurdle and increasing people’s confidence that they can do it and that they can be open to hearing it. Make sure to mention that when everyone receives their feedback they thank the other person - no defensiveness! Just take the feedback as a gift and in good faith.
- Debrief the exercise and see what takeaways people have as a result of their feedback.
2) Remind people to ask for it
Of course another part of the problem here is that people don’t actually *love* receiving feedback from their peers even though they say they do! So how do we engender a culture of feedback among peers? Best way to get over this is to get people to regularly ask for feedback from peers so they get used to hearing it.
A nice exercise here is to think through with a partner when in the week you can ask specific feedback from a peer. Note down:
- Who you’re going to ask
- What feedback you’re going to ask for (Note: “Hey, do you have any feedback for me on what I can do better?” is not going to work – it needs to be much more specific than that ie “Hey, in our group meeting yesterday when I presented our findings, what could I have done better to have gotten my point across?”)
- When you’re going to ask for it
- How you’re going to remember to do it.
Then discuss in your pairs how you’re going to keep each other accountable for doing it and how could you make asking for feedback a regular thing? You can also quite easily do this exercise on your own.
3) Change process to change behavior
Organize for people to meet in their peer groups (without their manager) to discuss how as a group they would like to set up feedback mechanisms / processes to regularly give each other helpful feedback. They control the outcome of the meeting and can keep each other accountable to the processes and actions they agree on. This will encourage them to talk, give them ownership and accountability. I’d suggest nominating one person to facilitate so the group gets to an action item or two by the end of the meeting. Some examples I’ve seen here are organizing more frequent 15 min check ins with each other where feedback is on the agenda.
Good luck and let us know you get on!
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