Feedback
Oxford English dictionary defines feedback as “advice, criticism, or information about how good or useful something or someone’s work is”. Feedback is a two-way transaction where one person provides the feedback and another person receives it. In most cases, both parties have an interest in the subject and they both want the best outcome.
In today’s world, we are surrounded by a lot of noise. In these circumstances, it can be a challenge to get your message across. The sender can provide feedback indirectly but the receiver may not understand it. it results in frustration and mismatched expectations. Feedback should be clear and structured for the receiver to properly understand.
Radical Condor:
Radical Condor provides a framework that encompasses many of the best practices. The two core characteristics of the radical condor are
- Care Personally
- Challenge Directly
more details about Radical Condor can be found on the Radical Condor website
Providing feedback as Coach:
As Agile Coaches and Scrum Masters, we are expected to provide feedback to our teams and Coachees. Radical Condor provides a good compass for such feedback. We not only have to provide open and honest feedback but make it easy for the receiver to understand and reflect upon it. The two aspects of Radical Condor go together for the feedback to be effective, you cannot focus on one aspect more and ignore the other.
Setting up the environment for feedback is critical. If we just remark on someone’s work without having previously established a rapport, in most cases it will not be received pleasantly. Take the time to establish rapport with the team. Humans can be defensive by nature, if we comment on someone’s work, their default reaction in most cases is to defend the work that they have done. To go through the protective barriers, we have to
- Build a personal connection
- Establish shared success
The other aspect of feedback is “Challenge directly”. We can all fall into the trap of pointing fingers. While providing feedback it is critical that the feedback is directed towards the artifact or event rather than the person. The message used in such conversations should be concise and to the point. Feedback is a critical conversation, and how it is worded can make a lot of difference e.g. “The User stories could be sized better” vs “You oversized the User stories”.
Feedback is a time-sensitive event. Holding back the feedback for a later, more appropriate time can raise two challenges
- Missed opportunity for improvement
- Colluding our opinions about the person
The longer we hold back the feedback, the person may continue to produce artifacts in the same way which may diminish the value. In the meantime, we would have unconsciously established opinions about their work that would then reflect in our evaluation of their other work as well.
As most organizations follow Scrum, a common pitfall is that feedback is reserved for retrospectives which may not be as effective. The retrospective is for improving the team and using it to provide feedback can be very demoralizing for the recipient. It also means that the recipient may have lost context. We can provide quick constructive feedback in 2–3 minutes without setting it up as a formal environment.
Conclusion:
Radical Condor is a very effective mechanism for providing feedback. it provides the compass for framing our feedback conversations. By incorporating some other best practices it can help us in providing feedback to individuals and teams.
Some of the key elements that we should consider in addition to Radical Condor are
- Timing of the message — Deliver quickly
- Walking the talk — Set an example
- Open Conversation— if the receiver does not agree with the feedback, be open to understanding and understanding their point of view.
