Improving feedback: my experience with feedback wrap

Hi folks, how are you?

For most true leaders, feedback is one of the most important things that we should do to help our teams to improve their performance, their relationships with peers and colleagues, and to thrive in the organization. Even though several practices and tools were used to provide feedback during the years, I decided to test a different one: Feedback Wrap.

What is a Feedback Wrap?

Feedback Wrap (click here for more details) is a Management 3.0 practice used by many leaders around the world. The practice is a 5-step session of well-constructed feedback, made to be used not only by leaders but by anyone that is up to give — or receive — feedback.

The 5 steps are:

1. Describe the context: give the person the context on which the feedback is based.
2. List your observations: show the other person your observation related to the context. Don’t finger-point, just offer observations, details of the specific situation. Show them the facts.
3. Express your emotions: show the person how you feel about these facts and situations. Even if there was a mistake coming from him or her, this is not the moment for criticism, simply demonstrate how that situation made you feel.
4. Sort by value: explain the need for a different approach to that situation, the impacts of discrepancies, the severity of not delivering a specific task, what the important things are, so on and so forth. Again, without finger-pointing.
5. End with suggestions: finally, this is the moment where the other person tries to figure out how to decrease — or close — the gap between the facts of the current situation and the actual needs, the results you hoped. Offer some suggestions or make yourself available to help them with the matter.

This is a guided process in which the person getting the feedback will figure out what to do without being directly told so.

Why use Feedback Wrap?

Well, I used a lot of practices over the years. Feedback sandwich, Feedback Canvas, and several others. But one thing that all of these practices do — and that kinda bothers me a little — is some level of finger-pointing. Ok, the person made a mistake, we get it, but are you sure they need someone to rub it in their faces? I think not. So, to use something less offensive and more straight to the point, I went for Feedback Wrap.

Feedback wrap is free from criticism, prejudice and offers people a chance to empathize with you and see the importance of the situation.

How I used feedback wrap with a team member

I’ve been working as a team leader for a few years now and even though I consider feedback something extremely important and a “must-have” in any situation, sometimes I still feel anxious about them, especially when it’s about a bad situation. To reduce this anxiety, I used the feedback wrap.

As a team leader, one of my current responsibilities is to align and facilitate a checkpoint between me and my team so they are always up to date with the company’s most recent changes, acquisitions, results, etc. Also, during these 30-minute sessions — we meet every Monday and Wednesday — I tend to encourage them to bring to the group any obstacles, questions about how to solve any particular issues with their daily tasks, or guidance about a specific subject.

During a specific session, one of the team members was responsible for delivering a task that was delayed for a while, and I needed it ASAP. It was an important task because I had to align our team’s roadmap for the next quarter and that task was crucial for the roadmap presentation. I asked her about the task and all she answered was “I didn’t do it”. No justification, no action plan, just a simple and indifferent “I didn’t do it”. On the outside I said “ok”, but on the inside, I was mad about it. How could a person be so indifferent about something so important? She said some things about being tired, and so on.

Well, I had to calm myself down, so my team and I talked a little more, laughed about a few things and the session ended. A few days later, I called the team member and told her I’d like to give her some feedback about our last session, I said that I wanted to experiment with a different technique and would use her as a “lab rat”, instead of going for the traditional formal feedback session they are used to. She thought it would be nice and we scheduled it.

At the beginning of our conversation, I explained how the feedback would work. It was a simple gesture to try and make her feel safer and less defensive about the subject, just in case. I began by explaining to her the situation, not only about the meeting we’d had but the demand itself, so it was something like this:

“So Alberta”, not her real name, “remember our last checkpoint session? A lot of information, huh? That task I’ve mentioned to everyone is so important to us and also to our board”.

So far so good. She agreed that it was important and that she had a little trouble figuring out how to show the data. That was good, she was showing openness and had the courage to say that it was difficult. That was step 1, “Describe the context”.

Then I started to tell her some things that I had noticed about the situation (step 2, list your observations):

“Really? We’ll talk about it soon enough. But let me share some observations I listed during our session, ok?”, she nodded so I kept going,

“I’ve been having trouble identifying how close we are to finishing the tasks we’ve talked about in our last checkpoint session. We have an upcoming meeting with the board and that’s got me worried.”

She kept listening so I kept going. “ I also noticed that the task itself has proven to be more challenging than we expected. I didn’t know that you had those obstacles and there’s a chance the rest of the team is also dealing with such problems. That saddens me because I know that I could’ve helped you all sooner. I’m worried we might miss the due date to deliver our roadmap to the board”. The emotions described here were related to step 3, “express your emotions”.

At that moment, she also looked surprised and said that she knew the task was important, but not that much. That made me realize that I should improve the way I stress the importance of tasks. I then said that the task was important because it would allow our technology director to give more coherent feedback of our progress to the board; our team would get more attention and also more autonomy to work on other issues. This was step 4, “Sort by value”.

As the conversation was coming to an end I asked her how we could solve this issue or how I could help them achieve their goal. She suggested that we scheduled a meeting as soon as possible with the team and showed them how to assemble all the data, organize the information, etc. I told her it was an excellent idea and we scheduled the meeting. This last part was step 5, “end with suggestions”.

Last but not least, I asked her what she thought about the feedback technique. To my surprise, she didn’t even notice it was a technique, because it was so transparent and smooth that for her it was like a simple conversation. She thought it was one of the most straightforward conversations we have ever had.

My learning as a facilitator

As I told you before, feedback is important, but also difficult. There are a lot of techniques, but they don’t teach you how to do it. Feedback Wrap won’t give you all the paths but it’s easier and smoother than many others. Also, it’s not a practice made just for leaders, you could use it with everyone.

As a facilitator, I learned a few things as I used the practice more and more. One thing I’ve learned is if you’re using it for the first time, especially if you’re the person’s leader, it’s important to explain to them that you are trying out a different technique and show them that they are in a safe environment in which they could express their thoughts and feelings without judgment so that they feel comfortable to give you feedback on this new practice you’re trying. Feedback can be a scary moment for people that are used to experiencing bad feedback.

I also learned that feedback can be more than just a moment to correct something, it’s a moment for mutual learning.

While asking the questions and following the steps, it’s important to make the conversation more fluid. Sure, there are steps to follow but it shouldn’t be like a boring and robotic conversation, with specific words or limitations to what should be said.

I would like to give you some advice on things you should and should NOT do, so here it goes:

Should:

• Prepare yourself before the feedback session, write some things down. For some people feedback is hard, preparation will make you feel more comfortable and relaxed to give the feedback.
• Feedback is something that should be constant and you won’t be there every time there is an opportunity to do it. Teach your colleagues how to use the practice, make it a constant practice not only with your team but influence others to do so.

Should not:

• Don’t use these practices to judge anyone, especially in public, never put people on the spot.
• I wouldn’t advise anyone to use feedback wrap with a canvas or any visual tool. It is more natural to just do it like a laidback, though thought out, conversation.

Something I never tried but I think could be a reasonable experiment would be to use feedback wrap with the whole team, separating them into pairs, using breakout rooms so they could give feedback to each other.

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