 since Ruby and JavaScript developer mostly. I'm a product lead at Polymathic, and as mentioned, I founded RightSpeak Code, which is an organization dedicated to increasing the visibility and leadership of women coders. So I worked as a developer and a team lead and a director. I've taught coding, I've taught workshops through RightSpeak Code, and through all of this, I've kind of come to the conclusion that as technologists, communication is really what we do. Whether it's communication to servers or application code or other developers or other people in our organization or users, everything that we do is really about communication and how we can do that well. And I think of feedback as the type of communication that tells us how we're doing and whether we're succeeding at what we think we're trying to do. And a lot of the modern development practices, including toggles, are really about getting more and better feedback. How do we go from doing something and making sure that it's working? And we know that feedback works. So code reviews are actually, by far, the best way to detect error in your code, which doesn't mean that you shouldn't test your code because you totally should. But having another person look at it, getting feedback is really effective. However, I think we think a lot about this kind of feedback. How do we think about feedback in our code and our stack? But there's other kinds of feedback. We work with people and people are hard. And I think that we need to think a little bit more about that feedback and how do we know if we're successful working with other people? And feedback isn't just things that we say to each other. It's things that we don't say. It's our body language who's talking, who's interrupted, who's asked questions, who's sort of waiting to speak. I think we've all hopefully maybe been on teams where you sort of stop giving your ideas and opinions because it always gets shut down. So it's not just about the things that are said. It's about all the interactions that we have. So I'm gonna talk about feedback. I'm gonna talk about creating structures for feedback in your organization, frameworks for giving, receiving, and requesting feedback. How to give good feedback, and then we're gonna talk a little bit about sensitive and difficult feedback. I really believe that you have to create structure around feedback. You need to schedule a meeting and set aside that time and everybody comes and they're ready to receive or give feedback. And if there's no feedback, then that's fine. You sit in silence for two minutes and then you're done. But creating that space is really important to ensuring that you're really getting the feedback that you need. And I think that's because giving negative feedback in particular is hard. Who wants to tell somebody something bad about themselves? I mean, I guess there's a few people. But in general, it takes courage and vulnerability to be like, hey, I didn't like that thing you did. And then you're afraid of how they'll react and all of that stuff. Giving positive feedback is really important and it's something that we tend not to do. So progress is actually something that is one of the top motivators of employees and people. And it's hard to feel like you're making progress if the only feedback you hear is negative feedback. And I think the goal of sort of ad hoc feedback, like ideally in our magical perfect team, we're getting regular feedback randomly ad hoc. But the problem with only having ad hoc feedback is that it really burdens the person who has a problem. Because not only do they need to build up that courage to give negative feedback to someone, but then they also have to schedule a meeting with that person and start off that conversation as opposed to already having a place where that feedback can exist. So we have a lot of structures that work well for feedback, although we don't always use them particularly well. I think the most obvious one is sort of one-on-one check-ins with your manager or with your teammate. Giving feedback one-on-one is a great way, particularly to have difficult conversations and to really hear what people say. On the other hand, it doesn't propagate to the rest of the team. So no one else is sort of hearing that feedback. And we have things like retros and stand-ups and postmortems where we have a space as a group to give feedback. And that's really helpful because there's a sense of safety and knowing that other people might back you up or people are ready and primed to hear feedback and to talk about these things. I think the kind of feedback that we forget the most is indirect feedback. I worked at a company where the CEO sent out monthly forms with employee satisfaction and then we reviewed it in a monthly meeting to see changes. Forms are great for anonymous feedback. Written feedback is tricky because writing how we feel is tricky. And sometimes it can be overly harsh. But the other kind of feedback is observation. So if I see someone giving feedback to someone else or talking to someone else, I'm gonna see how they react and I'm gonna consciously or unconsciously think that they're gonna react the same way when I give them the same kind of feedback. So we can't really control sort of observation, right? But by creating structures around feedback, it means that we can sort of average out the playing field. So say you have like a one-off bad meeting. It still means like there's more data points for how you might react to me if we have these regular structured consistent feedback. So usually feedback is around a unit of time, whether that's a sprint or a day or a week or a quarter or whatever. And we do fairly well getting feedback during something and after it. I think that we would gain more by giving feedback before we start something. So understanding what someone's work style is or their communication style, do they prefer email or Slack or text messages to conversations? I have a perpetual difficulty with being on time and I probably will for the rest of my life and I try really hard. But if I'm working with someone whose pet peeve is people being late, that's like we're set up to fail and we may not work perfectly together, but if we start out by being honest and direct about that, maybe they can give me some leeway and I can try a little harder knowing that that's important to them. The other kind of feedback that we often miss, I think is cumulative feedback. So in theory, this is like performance reviews and things, but usually it's only manager and employee and frankly they're not done very well. But just like we wanna collect all these feedback data points, we also wanna zoom out and look at what are the patterns of behavior? Is this one piece of feedback that you got that maybe really struck you, is that an anomaly or is that sort of an average? So how do you give feedback? So I like frameworks because especially when we're feeling upset or sort of emotional, we get into sort of like fight or flight mode and we surpass our higher reasoning skills and so having a framework is nice to just sort of write it out or think about okay, what are the steps I need to take? So giving feedback, I think the main goal of giving feedback is to have a better relationship with that person. You don't have to like them, but you probably have to work with them or interact with them in some way and it would be great if that was better. And the other goal is to not make them defensive. Because once like that defensiveness shield is up, there's really no conversation that's gonna have. Like they're gonna defend themselves and attack and we're like in fight mode, right? And one of the main ways I think to do this, which is difficult is to talk about people's actions and not who they are. Like you're a terrible developer is about how, that's about who they are. But saying I don't really understand this code that you wrote or I think this could be improved in this way, that's about their behavior and it's something that they can control and so it's something they can change, which is empowering. I think a good way to think about giving feedback is situation, behavior, impact. So you wanna set the situation and you wanna do it in a really equalizing way. Like everybody can agree on these facts. So when we were having those production issues last week, you force push to production. That's just a fact, we can all agree on that. And then we'll describe the person's behavior. So I included that in that. They force push to production. And then you wanna say how this impacted you. And sort of you as a person and we'll talk a little more about those sorts of conversations, but I felt apprehensive that the code that you pushed was gonna break. I felt irritated that I kept working on something after it was already finished. And then if you can provide a recommendation. If you can't, asking a question is always a good way to sort of open the door for that. But a recommendation might be I know that it's really stressful when things go wrong, but I think it's important that you check in with the team before you go outside our normal deploy process. And this can also be a useful thing for positive feedback. Because telling someone they're awesome is nice, but it doesn't feel genuine. It doesn't feel purposeful. It doesn't necessarily feel like it's about anything that they personally did and who they are. So it's important for positive feedback to be sort of genuine and authentic and not just like throwing out words. Also, if you think about a scale, negative feedback weighs more than positive feedback. So we need to balance out positive feedback with negative feedback. So when they sort of take the bigger view and they look at the bigger graph, they can see an average. I mean, you don't have to, you can think negatively of a person, but if the only feedback you give them as negative, that sort of gives them the impression that they're like here. And maybe they're just here. So balancing those things out. And then I think you can combine negative and positive feedback, but they need to be related. Don't say you have really great hair and you annoyed me. That's not helpful. So I think you communicate really well in these circumstances, but in this other circumstance, I felt kind of annoyed when you interrupted me, right? So how do you receive feedback? I think the fear of how people react is one of the biggest reasons that people hold back. And the first thing about receiving feedback is listening. And I don't say that to be patronizing. I think listening is really hard because our brains, our program, to look for novel stimuli, we have a lot of stuff going on. You're thinking about like, what's the next thing that you need to do? Maybe you're going home. What are you gonna make for dinner? You really have to be intentional in listening and focusing on what that person is saying. And we also sort of had this inner monologue that happens, at least I do, where we're sort of narrating what this person is saying as they're saying it, which means we're sort of missing what they're saying. And a really good way to listen and help force yourself to do that is to ask questions with the goal of understanding how that person is feeling and getting that understanding before you make any decisions. The other thing is to say thank you. Giving feedback is hard. And this person took time to say like, hey, I want us to have a better relationship. And I know it doesn't always feel like that, but I think that saying thank you to someone for giving feedback can often change the tone of the entire conversation. So I have a friend who's a family and couples therapist and she was telling me about this framework she uses for her clients. And she was talking about the difference between individual therapy and couples therapy and how an individual therapy really focus on one person's inner experience. But for couples therapy, it's really about the connection and the behavior between two people. And one of the ways she gets couples to listen better to themselves is to use the framework of mirror empathy validation. So you wanna mirror or repeat what someone says to make sure that you understand what they're saying. Let's start on the same page that we all know what we're talking about. Empathy, show them that you understand why and what they feel. You don't have to agree with them, but you can understand how they're feeling. And then validation, ask a follow-up question that shows you're listening. So you could say, if I had checked in with a team and everybody was okay with it, would it have been okay to force push to production in this situation? That shows that I'm listening that I heard you and I wanna further understand. So a good way to think of mirroring are there's a couple sentences here, but just asking like, so I heard you say or when you said this, would it be fair to say that you meant this and you felt this? Am I correct in understanding that when I forced push to production, you were scared that the code would break in production and you were frustrated because you did work that you didn't need to do? I really believe that at the end of the day people wanna feel heard and that's actually more important than you agreeing with them or you doing what they ask. They wanna feel like you heard what they had to say and you heard their perspective. So empathy is a second part of this and empathy sort of has been coming up a lot and I'm not sure it's always clear what it means. I think that empathy starts with a curiosity about people. Like how does this work? How do they work? What are they thinking? What makes them tick? And the goal of empathy is really to understand a person's reasoning and emotions without necessarily judging it. We start with I wanna understand how internally they came to the decision to react in this way and that might be that they just started panicking and we're like, oh shit, I just need to deploy to production right now and that's fine but we can understand that experience. We don't have to agree with it and then another way to do this is to think of we can't all have the same experience but we all generally feel the same emotions. You can say, okay, well I haven't been in this situation but I felt scared before or I felt apprehensive or irritated and I can connect with that experience in me and know what it felt like and understand that that's how that person felt and it sucked or it was great if they felt joy or something. And I really think the key to empathy is that you don't have to agree with somebody to have empathy. You don't have to think that what they did is right. You just have to realize that their reasoning and emotions are valid and understand why and how they came to that. And empathy is a skill and it's a skill that culturally we're not very good at and we're all sort of learning and getting better and it's a skill that can be practiced. So some useful tips are practice listening and summarizing. Even if people don't know it, like you internally can know or summarize in your head, I'm gonna try to focus on listening better. Recognize and name your emotions. We say a lot of words after I feel that aren't actually emotions. So learning to sort of, even if, I mean we've all lashed out at somebody, you're tired, you're frustrated with something else and like yell at your partner. It's fine but after the fact you can say, oh I realized I was feeling kind of insecure from work and then when they said something I took it personally and I attacked them. And then thinking about that inner monologue and sort of trying to shut that off as we're listening to people. So how do you request feedback? This can be a really good way for anyone in an organization to start the feedback process. And the goal is to get honest and actionable feedback from people. Often when you first start, you'll get kind of like, I wish you hadn't moved my pencil. But that's sort of like a test. In some ways they're unconsciously testing you. How are you gonna react to this? And so requesting feedback and regular requests are more likely to elicit honest and comprehensive feedback. Some people use this for retros but I think this can be really useful even on a one-on-one situation which is start, stop, continue. What's one thing I should start doing? What's one thing I should stop doing? What's one thing I should continue doing? And really asking them to like, you have to give me one thing. Even if it's like, close the monitor wipe container, right? Push them to do that because it forces people to think about exactly what you want them to know. What am I doing well? What am I doing bad? Badly, what should I start doing that I'm not doing? And also if you use that mirror empathy validation it can also lead to more significant or comprehensive feedback. If you're listening, if you ask questions there may be something else behind the actual feedback that they're giving. So frameworks for feedback. If you can't remember any of this just remember listen and ask questions. Giving good feedback is hard. We've all gotten feedback that is not good and not helpful. So good feedback is actionable, specific and kind. So saying you always just do whatever you want and don't talk to the team in the case of the force pushed to prod is definitely not actionable. It's not specific at all and it's not kind. Saying you're such an inconsiderate irresponsible person for doing this also not actionable, specific or kind. So we want it to be contextual. We want it to be about a situation that happened that they can look to and see that they could have done something differently and then take that for their next interaction. Giving people big general feedback isn't actually very helpful. You also, being kind doesn't mean being nice. It doesn't mean that you have to hold back what you need to say. But it should be something that's encouraging. It's something that they can do something about because if they feel like they can't that person is just gonna feel helpless and not do anything. And it should also be within the recipient's scope of skills. So if someone's not a manager and you ask them to do something that requires the authority of a manager, that's not really within the recipient's scope of skills. If you ask a manual QA person to deploy, that's maybe not in their scope of skills. And the other thing is to speak from your own experience. I think it's easy to see things and say if I was a client in that meeting I would have been really offended. But you weren't that client and you're making assumptions and that's an easy way to make somebody defensive. But you could say I felt uncomfortable when you interrupted the client and it made me worry that the client we were gonna lose that business. So you're speaking from your own experience. You can still talk about how it might have affected other people. But we wanna start from sort of two people as humans. The other thing that I think is often missed is accountability. So if you do retros, maybe you review previous action items. I think this is really important to show people that even if you didn't do what they asked, that you heard them and that you're working towards a solution. And again, I don't think that you need to do whatever the recommendation is that someone gives necessarily. But you should acknowledge their feedback and explain why. So you're on a team and you're fighting like do we use Puppet or Chef or what? And people are super divided. At some point somebody's gotta make a decision. And that person doesn't need to like sort of convince the other side that they have to do it. They need to acknowledge their points and acknowledge why they feel that way and then say, but I'm gonna go this way because. And then the second part of that I think is reviewing the results. Especially when things are kind of uncertain, set a meeting for a month or three months or six months to review that decision. It makes people feel like it's not permanent. And again, they feel empowered that they have a voice and they can make change. So without a response, people are gonna stop speaking. We sometimes think of not responding or not talking as neutral, but in fact it's usually negative. So let's talk about hard conversations. So there are power dynamics in every team and they exist because as humans we want to figure out where we belong in a certain group. Power comes in the form of influence or access to resources, whether that's time or money or access to the right people. And it can be formal or informal. A team lead, someone who's technically a manager obviously has some formal power. But if you work with the CEO's best friend's kid, they have a level of power as well. Or if someone's been at the company for 10 years and you're relatively new. And words from a person who has power in a certain group have exponential impact. So when you're in that situation, it's important to sort of consider the relationship that you have in the larger group to that person. We like to talk about flat organizations and I think that it's a great ideal. But power dynamics don't go away just because we don't acknowledge them. Like saying that everybody is exactly the same doesn't actually make that true. So I think it's something to take into consideration as you consider how to give feedback, how to interact with people. So microaggressions are mentioned. I don't know how many of you know what that means. But it's a sociologist from Columbia came up with this term and it's unintentional, often unconscious daily acts that reinforce stereotypes and oppression. So oppression is sort of the larger cultural, institutional, political, economic, disproportionate allocation of resources. Time, money, influence, all of those things. So we live in a sexist, racist society. Hopefully everybody agrees with that and we don't get to escape that, right? Like we can try to change and make progress and improve and make things better. But we're in that context and we sort of have that internalized within us that we're not even aware of. And I think the sort of daily, the way that I used to describe it before I knew this term being a woman on all male teams was that there would be patterns of behavior that happened to me and not really the guys around me. So someone would take credit for my idea and it seemed to be more often happening to me than someone else. And so while the person who's doing that, they're like, oh, well, we both talked about it and I thought it was totally innocent. But it's still part of this larger system. So some simple microaggressions, tone policing. This happens a lot on Twitter. You're so aggressive. You can catch more flies with honey than vinegar. Again, empathy is about like, maybe they said it very strongly or harshly, but we can also have empathy for like, oh, they must be really angry. Other thing is thinking about othering. Like how do you sort of unintentionally make someone feel like they're not part of the group? So if you do team bonding activities, if you do fantasy football, I'm gonna feel a little left out because I don't, all that I know about football I learned from the blind side, movie. So thinking about how it can be like the music you play, there are all these subtle cues that tell people where they fit in a group. And if you're telling people that, unintentionally telling people that they don't belong, that's not helpful. So because these are unintentional and often unconscious, the first step is to become aware of it. And that often means that someone else has to make you aware of it. And I think that this is the hardest part because giving negative feedback is hard, but telling someone that they offended you is even harder. I like these two simple terms. That makes me uncomfortable. Please stop doing that. Please stop talking about that. Just sort of set a boundary. I think when you're calling someone out, it's not necessarily the time to have a larger conversation about why you were offended or why you're upset. Usually it happens in sort of emotionally charged situation. So just saying, hey, that makes me uncomfortable. You're not saying, hey, you're a horrible sexist person. I'm saying, hey, I felt a little uncomfortable by that thing that you did. So how do you respond to being called out? It's hard. I recently had a Twitter experience with it. I think that thank you, again, goes a long way. It sounds silly, but saying, thank you for letting me know. You don't have to agree with them, but we all know that it's hard to call people out. It's hard to give people feedback. That person mustered up their courage to tell you that something made them feel uncomfortable. And partly, hopefully, because they believed that you would wanna know and that you would wanna change and do something differently, that you didn't mean it. I mentioned that I don't necessarily think that calling someone out in an emotionally charged situation is the right time to have a larger conversation. But asking someone if you can follow up and then actually following up, especially if you offended someone, can be a really great way, like let things sort of the emotions kind of dissipate and then come back to them and say, hey, can we talk a little more about that? Everybody kind of thinks and digests about it. It's less emotionally charged. And it also shows that person that you heard them and that you're interested in hearing what they have to say. So they took the courage to tell you, you have the courage to say, hey, let's have this uncomfortable conversation. And then hopefully we all can learn from that. So there's a communication framework called nonviolent communication, which is similar to situation behavior impact. And I found it really useful in sort of like high emotion situations, figuring out how to say something to someone. So it starts with saying the facts, what happened without commentary. You would say, when we were pairing the other day, you took the keyboard and moved it closer to you. Not, you grabbed the keyboard from me and started slamming the keys. Both kind of the same thing, but one is gonna put someone on the defensive. We want a fact that we can all agree on. And then how did it make you feel? So there's a nonviolent communication website and I'll post it in Slack and they have this feelings inventory. And this is actually a really difficult thing to do because as I said, we say, I feel followed by words that are not feelings. So I feel judged is an accusation. I feel inadequate, isn't a feeling because a toaster can be inadequate, but a toaster can't be insecure or apprehensive or hurt. Unless it's like a weird toaster zombie movie. But hopefully it's not. And then talk about what you needed in the situation. So fundamentally, I think most human conflicts comes down to somebody needed something and that need wasn't met. And we all have basic needs, food, shelter, water, and then we have higher needs. I needed to feel respected by my colleague. I needed communication with my colleague and I needed to feel safe to be able to say that I don't understand something in the case of the keyboard. And then ask them what you would like to do in the future. This is really important for difficult conversations because there's a level of sort of education. You're saying, hey, you did this thing. You could have done this instead. It would have been better. So in the future, would you ask me before moving the keyboard or even better? Would you let me type while you explain what you're trying to do? So we still make progress, but I still feel like I'm involved. So diversity and people and communication are hard. And I think when we think about these difficult conversations, if we think about them as a learning opportunity, then that can help us not get defensive and help us move forward. We're in the system. We all make mistakes. We all do things that we didn't mean to do that we didn't know they would have that impact. We're all learning and making progress. And I think that's sort of the most important thing and it flips your mindset to I'm not a bad person. I'm learning and trying to get better. So thank you. Go forth and give feedback. When you're starting to give feedback to someone and it's obvious that they don't have this kind of training and that they're taking it badly, do you have any good techniques to diffuse the situation? Yeah, that's a tricky one. I mean, obviously the most ideal situation is that everyone in the group kind of knows these things. I think that sticking with, this is how it made me, I feel, I understand that you don't agree, but I felt uncomfortable in that situation. And then I think don't argue about it. Say it a couple times, reinforce your point. If you're not really having a conversation, leave it. And then maybe there'll be another time to bring it up. Hi, great talk. You talked a little bit about power dynamics as managers, we kind of have role power that is there. Do you have any tips for getting people to feel comfortable giving you feedback from a direct report to a manager or anyone else for that matter? Yeah, I mean, I think it starts with a lot of this stuff. I think asking for feedback on a regular basis is really helpful. I really believe as a manager in things like one-on-ones with people on a monthly basis and then usually things like, which I start doing, what should I stop doing and what should I continue doing? And then I think remembering that and reviewing that action and asking them how it went or telling them that you changed or that you tried to change something or you decided not to do something differently. I think that that is actually the biggest key. It's gonna start with feedback that isn't the most useful, but you're basically building trust and safety with that person by taking it and then coming back and saying, hey, you said that I should be a little more conscientious in a meeting, how was this meeting? Or the next time you have a one-on-one, last time we talked about this, did you feel like that was getting better? Or, oh, shit, I totally forgot, I'm definitely gonna work on that next time and then actually do it. Thanks. Yeah, you guys is really, really difficult. I have set it to a room full of women. Like, it's hard and I'm working on it and I'm trying to get better. And I think the other thing, things like that, sometimes it's not, I felt deeply hurt and uncomfortable, but it's like, it means that you internally have this moment where you're like, do they include me? Was I not being included? People not wanna go to dinner with me? And even if they know that you don't, it sucks that they have to take that time and energy and sort of hit their confidence, even if it's just a little scratch. So my question is, you said to choose the words so that people don't become defensive. So what piece of advice would you give for people whose first language is not English? And at the same time, they want to sound spontaneous and not scripted in a crucial conversation. I'm not sure it's a great idea to be spontaneous in a crucial conversation. So I think it's okay to feel scripted and I think it's okay to ask a friend to kind of understand what you're going through. How does this sound? Especially if English isn't your first language. Because they can help you with some of the nuances. But I think that it's okay to have structure and it's okay to have frameworks and it's okay to sound scripted if you're bringing up something that's difficult. Most of us will understand that and they'll appreciate that you took the time to really think through how to bring this up. Thank you. Thanks.