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Personal and Professional Growth Through Constructive Feedback

Ilona Codes on May 07, 2019

If you are constantly questioning yourself about your personal and professional growth that means you are already off to a great start! We all hav...
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Scott Simontis

I've realized that giving feedback to others has traditionally been a weakness for me, because I was too afraid of offending other people. I see a lot of people in consulting who are afraid to rock the boat...they will come into a project and instantly start nodding along to whatever the client says and praising their organizational processes. It's really easy; everyone likes to be praised and you can get through an engagement without solving anything significant.

In the long-term, it's an awful strategy. If a company has a terrible business model or development practices that don't scale, they need to know ASAP. These things can be said with tact, but that still doesn't guarantee that they will be received well. I'd rather have someone be pissed off at me than worry about whether it is partially my fault when their business collapses two years later.

The opposite also applies: when someone else criticizes me, even if they do so rudely, it could be the piece of guidance that saves me from making a major mistake.

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Ilona Codes

Thank you for your comment! 🙏
Because of the listed reasons above it's important to provide constructive feedback with explanations and an action plan on how to solve occurring problems.

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Ashlee (she/her)

This sounds like an absolute dream 💕

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Ilona Codes

Reality 🙈

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Peter Witham

I think you have summed up the idea of feedback perfectly.

One thing we do with my teams that is slightly different in the sprint retro is to not include management. So I do not attend the meeting, I receive the feedback from my Scrum master afterward. This gives everyone a chance to speak freely without any perceived pressure. We have found it works well, I do of course always read the feedback and take it into account.

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Blaise Pabon • Edited

@ilonacodes , Have you read Radical Candor by Patty McCord ? She elaborates on this theme in great detail and describes her experience implementing it at Netflix.