I know this title is a bit of a ‘no brainer’ but it’s not as easy to know when to implement it.
Last week we had a 4-day retreat in Angelfire, NM. We planned half of it play and half work. We structured it in a way that it was a little bit of both each day and I think it went very well and based on the post-retreat surveys, so did everyone else. The one thing that gave me a little headache was the idea I came up with on doing a feedback form where you go through a survey and fill out one constructive criticism and one affirmation for each person in the team. Everyone was also required to give a company criticism and praise as well.
The exercise seemed pretty straight forward but I did get a few people come up to me and say they didn’t feel comfortable doing the survey. I assured them that it would be fine and to just remember to be constructive and not directly rude. So after each person completed the feedback form my next strategic decision was when to give it to them. I didn’t want it to be a major part of the retreat and I didn’t want to give it to them at the end of the retreat because it might end up as a bad taste in their mouths for the entire thing.
So how did I handle it?
Well, I did it in between a couple of ‘fun’ parts. Using that sandwich concept of feedback (Positive/Criticism/Positive). We put together a fun twenty question survey to learn more about the team. We went through that, had some laughs, and then just afterwards, I presented the feedback form to the team. Before handing them out, I prefaced everything with I thought everyone did a wonderful job on the criticism parts and that I was the only one that reviewed them all but only briefly to ensure no one went off on someone (which no one did). Another positive, IMO, was the form was completely anonymous. So I passed forms out, that only included that individuals praises and critics and what everyone put for the company feedback, too. I told everyone that this was just for them and I didn’t have any plans to go through this in any details unless they just wanted to and that’s how we ended our day. The rest of the night was theirs to do what they wanted (chill, play games, read, whatever).
So after we wrapped up I went downstairs to unpack some and was surprised when a couple of the team came up to me and say how they really appreciated doing the form and it’ll help them tremendously. YAY! I was thrilled to hear that.
As long as you keep that sort of exercise positive and not having it turn into a opportunity to go off on someone, it can work. I think everyone needs some kind of ‘reality check’ every so often, I KNOW I DO, because sometimes we get so caught up in our daily grind that they don’t realize how they are affecting others around us. So I couldn’t be happier with how the exercise turned out and hope to not be afraid to do it more often.
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