 Sarah mentioned my organization and I'm really really excited to talk to you all and hopefully get you to a point where you can give feedback fearlessly. So a little about me. I can't make reveal slides. There we go. I am primarily a JavaScript developer. I work for a company called Detroit Labs in Detroit. It's great. I love it. You should all visit. I'm also the one of the girl development chapter leaders in Detroit and I just I really love dogs. I cannot tell you how excited I am about the therapy dogs. I'm so excited. I can't handle it. I've got some questions that I want to kind of guide us through the next 30 minutes or so. I realize that I'm the thing between you and lunch. I will try to keep it moving. So first I want us to ask a question. What is feedback? When I say feedback, what do you think of? Criticism? Criticism. I heard criticism twice. What else? Input. Input. Input. Opinions. Advice. Suggestions. Opportunities and quotes. Oh. Opportunities. So feedback is a lot of things to a lot of people. Why? Why do we need it? Why is that important? All of those things. Growth. Growth. We have blind spots. What else? Course direction. Gentlemen in the Target t-shirt. It's how we learn. I like that. What else? Perspective. We get some perspective. And the last question and the one that kind of sparked this talk in the first place for me is this. Why is it so scary? Why is it uncomfortable for us to give other people feedback? So we... What was that? Fear of rejection. You have a fear of rejection. There are power dynamics at play. Yes. Amoration. You're in a field done. The admiration. Can you elaborate a little bit? There are so many people that I look up to that to show them my work, but to show them how dumb I am. There you go. So there's a lot of these feelings tied up in those very logical, very practical things that we just said feedback. It's... So this came out of a conversation that we had at Detroit Labs. And I can tell you she's not We... So we are at a largely flat organization. We don't have managers. We are starting to experiment with like technical leads. But largely we are all responsible for each other. And that's awesome. Most of the time. Like I really love it. It's a place where I feel like I can direct my own growth and that's amazing. However, that also means that we each need to step up and talk to each other when things are going really great and also when things are maybe not going so good. And so the idea that we hold ourselves back, that we struggle to give each other that gift of feedback was really hard for me. Because I am one of those people, I can't let things sit. If I have a problem, I need you to know about it as soon as possible. Or it's just going to eat me up inside. I can't sleep and I need sleep. So this is what I think of when I think of feedback. I picture a behavior and not a person. I think Sarah said something along these lines. It's not a person that I'm trying to change. It's not a person that I'm trying to influence necessarily. It is the behavior that I'm observing. I think that it's really important because none of us works in a bubble. We are all interconnected. I don't care if you are a one person shock and you're freelancing in your kitchen. Like you are interacting with people and you need to be able to give those people feedback. And lastly, I hope this is what you take away from this session. It doesn't have to be scary. There are ways that we can approach a situation, even a really uncomfortable one. Things that we can keep in mind so that we can come up with one actionable solutions and to walk away with the relationship intact. So as Sarah mentioned, we're going to talk a little bit about how we might go about doing that. And then I am going to ask you to do an exercise. I'm going to ask you to participate and talk to each other. No, it's wild. But once we get there, we're going to wrap up, wrap five minutes, and then I will release you all, maybe, unless they're at the renouncements. And then you will all be able to eat. So let's get started. So when I talk about feedback, remember the first two things I heard were criticism. The first thing we think about when we talk about feedback is criticism. Something is wrong. I've done something wrong. I like to think about that as constructive feedback. The hope, for me at least, is that there is a purpose. There is a reason that you are getting that feedback. And hopefully that purpose is aligned with your team's goals. I want to talk to you about this thing that I noticed you let me do when you submit a PR. And that's maybe keeping us from moving forward as quickly as we could. Let's talk about that. Let's see if we can find a solution. On the other hand, the part of this that I think we often forget is that there is also affirmative feedback. It is so important to tell your team members when you think they're doing really well. If I am a new developer on a team, and this totally was not me three months ago, not at all. I'm a brand new developer on this massive project. And there are 15 other people who've been there for a year. I am just drowning out of no idea what I'm doing. But in reality, I'm actually doing pretty well. I want you to tell me because I have no frame of reference. I don't know how I'm doing. I'm doing everything that I can and I'm asking questions and I'm trying to figure shit out. But I am not going to know unless you give me your honest feedback. It is so, so important that we make sure that we are not only talking to each other when things are going wrong, but also we're uplifting each other when we notice specific behaviors that are really helpful and productive. The point here is that we need both. All mixed in together. When it's appropriate to give affirmative feedback, you're giving affirmative feedback. When you really need to step in and give some constructive feedback, we're giving constructive feedback and none of this sandwich nonsense. Whenever I talk, someone is always like, oh, well, you know, there's this thing where you can start with something really positive and then you just slip in the hard thing and no, we want both of these types of feedback to kind of have their own space. They're both equally important. We don't want to downplay either one. They both have an impact on your team and the work that you're doing together. So all of this is again to say when I'm talking about feedback and talking about peer to peer feedback, that goes kind of for all of these points that I'm making. If there is an instance where something happens, you know, there is an issue with bias or harassment that you need to escalate. That's an entirely separate situation. We are not talking about those instances. What I'm hoping to cover are the things that one, directly effective work, and two, could potentially escalate into these more serious situations, but we want to try and never let the bullet. So this is the meat and potatoes. Some techniques for actually delivering feedback effectively. This first thing we kind of touched on, right? We want to be specific. How many times has someone told you that you are great? That you or that you did a good job? Or that that PR was awesome? Anyone ever gotten anything like that? Or are you all just? Okay, okay, good. I'm glad you're there. How did that feel? Great. Why? Because it's like why? Yes, yes it is. What's good about what I just did? I don't know. I can't reproduce that good feeling for you in three months because I just don't know. And if you're me, then I start to wonder like, what did I really do a good job? And if you said something like, I really appreciate that you are so specific in your contributions to stand up every day because I know exactly what you're doing. I know where I can step in and help, and I know when you're not going to be available. Now I know exactly what I did that was helpful to you, and I know why it was helpful to you. And so I can iterate on that, and I can say, okay, well, I can be, I can be more specific if the opportunity arises. Awesome. And I know that's going to be helpful to that person. We also want to deliver feedback coactively. Now this is where I mentioned that escalation issue. So how many times have you come across an issue of work that was maybe just kind of annoying the first time or two? And then it just that thing kept happening, and it got a little more annoying. And all of a sudden, you find you've got you just can't even look at this person anymore. Has that ever happened to you? Yes. Most of the time, not all, but most of the time, those sorts of things happen. If we catch it the first, second, maybe even the fifth time, everything can be fine. We can move on. We can maintain a normal relationship without any sort of real struggle. But when we let it get that deep, when we let it last for that long, it becomes so much harder to have a reasonable, rational conversation because you're so wrapped up in how angry and upset you are about this really awful thing that this terrible person is doing. You don't want to let it get that far. We want to try and address things as they come up. Let's take a breath. Every time I do this, someone else really in the day has had a side that's just to breathe or take a breath. So I'm going to ask you again. Let's all just back up a little. We don't want to rush in when we are extremely well left when we're only thinking with, is it section one? There's a number one, some kind of brain. Emily. There you go. I'm in that host speaker coma right now. So I'm thinking with either of the brain. So we don't want to jump in too soon. If I just saw a Slack message that was really, really hurtful and I'm not reacting well. I'm really angry. That's not the time for me to give someone feedback. What I will do instead is I'll say, Hey, Nathan, that didn't feel great. That interaction we just had. And I am feeling really angry about it. I don't want to talk about it right now because I don't want to say something that I'm going to regret. I don't want to overstate the issue either. So can we set aside some time to talk about it? Maybe in a couple of days. And this is something that maybe is not quite so obvious. You want to check your bias when you're going into these conversations. You want to remember that your interpretation of the exact same events that this other person has experienced might not be the same. You might see that conversation as this really hostile interaction. They might have thought that they were just being funny. And recognizing that and being open to the other stories that this person is telling. I don't know if any of you have read crucial conversations. Being open and recognizing that those other stories exist is a good first step to being able to come to a reasonable resolution. And sort of related to that is inviting discussion. You don't want to make too many assumptions about the facts of the situation. Because again, your own emotions, your own stories are going to be feeding into your interpretation of those facts. And you want to ask questions to try and mitigate some of that. So that that person is drawn into the conversation then. And you can come to a solution together and move forward. So sit with that for a second. We're going to talk through an example scenario. Once we've done this, I'm going to ask you to look at the cards that you were given. And I will explain in great detail what I would like you to do with those cards. So let's chat about Michael. Michael is actually a friend of mine who went through a bootcamp and was a junior developer. That's where the story comes from. So Michael is relatively new to the team. Still getting used to the processes. And he is struggling to keep up with his more senior peers. He's often taking significantly longer to complete tasks than he is estimated. Sometimes that involves code style issues. That code then requires discussion on how to fix it. And additional development time to satisfy your success criteria. So how do we approach the conversation with Michael? What's going on there? Who has an answer? Or part of it sounds pretty normal. How do we think? Oh, we have another. Yeah, exactly. You all are much faster at this than anyone I've ever talked to. I was trying to advertise, but you may not have the same experience with other bootcamp, but we've all got the experience of being a junior. And you build relationship out of that. But you could also explain that would like him to work on giving more exact estimates, or if you could work on estimating, then the team can plan more appropriately. And it's not that it's not that it's not okay to take that time. They just want to know what time it's gonna take. And we'll take one more. I would also invite him to talk more about his experience and how he feels about the situation so that I'm not making assumptions that he's feeling that way about it. And we can actually address what his world situation is. Awesome. So you all, of course, were at a conference about mental health and feelings. So you guys nailed it. Go team. So maybe some selection by us. So there's a lot of stuff going on here. One, we've all had that experience. We don't nobody in this room was born, writing, I don't know, libraries. Nobody, nobody just magically came upon this knowledge that they have now. They're all juniors, all started somewhere. And so there is some level of empathy that we can hopefully achieve. There are a couple, there are a couple of things here. So Michael very well might be feeling like he is underperforming might be stressed about that that may be playing into some of the mistakes that he's making in his code. We don't know. And so the simplest thing to do is ask Michael how he's feeling. Ask how he thinks his first couple of months on the job are going. Just start that dialogue. And I think to the one thing we didn't get to which you all probably would have in another five seconds is we want to look at our process too. Why? Why has this been going on? I didn't tell you how long it's been going on. Could have been a week, could have been three months. But something something's happening, we can, we can see that something is going on. And there's there really needs to be a conversation. But where could we have supported Michael better? Could we have assigned him a buddy when he joined the team? Could we have made sure that he paired with all of the other developers to kind of get a sense for the app and the team and how everybody works? Could we have had a lunch and learn about estimation and how it's really hard? There are a lot of things that we could do on our end as well to kind of rectify the situation and also to make sure that in the future, this sort of struggle of this sort of pain point is hopefully not as common as a small group exercise. So you all have a chance to hopefully at least mostly work through your scenarios. I thought a couple of groups looked like they were done, a couple of others still working, a couple working with you, that's okay. I know some of you noticed the the eventual release of the bullet points. But these are things to keep in mind when you're having some of these conversations. Now, in this situation, it's, it's manufactured. I told you who you were. And I gave you very few details. So you don't know some of these things. But you can imagine how some of these things might affect the tone, or even the goals of the conversation. How is it different if you're talking to your manager or the CEO versus your who's going to say bunk mate versus, you know, the person next to you. How does the conversation change if your communication styles are just really different? Does that lead to more misunderstandings? Does that lead to more conflict? In my experience, probably. What happens if you become angry? What happens if the other person becomes angry? How do you deescalate that? That is all far more than I could pack into 30 minutes. But come back and see me for round two at some point in the near future. So I want to make sure that we are at least thinking about these things that they're on our radar. And one last thing, I would like to hear just two of the action items that people came away with. Does anyone have one? One of the things I liked about what he did was he said, this is something I have noticed. And then asked me for how my experience matched that. Just saying, this is going on. Let's deal with it. That's awesome. One more. One of the things I like that Gwen did during our scenarios that she asked me, what can I do to help you? And she made it so that that was safe and comfortable for me as a employee in the situation to do that. Because oftentimes the employee might not feel empowered to be able to speak up and do that. So knowing that it's okay to ask of that for someone. I really appreciate it. Well, thank you all so, so much for sticking with me. I think you can't see that anyway. I really appreciate you coming into these conversations and committing to actually participating in a presentation right before you get to go eat. I truly, I feel that here. If you wouldn't mind just you can leave your cards on your chair, you can come up and leave them on the table, whatever you prefer, I'll find them. But thank you so much.