Alexis Monville and I reflect on a time I gave feedback that was not well received and what we both learned from it. Hopefully you’ll learn something too.
Background
Today’s conversation is rebroadcast of a conversation I had with Alexis Monville on his podcast about giving feedback.
When we recorded this conversation back in January 2020, I didn’t realize I had also helped create the first chapter of a new book Alexis and Michael Doyle were writing called, I Am a Software Engineer and I am in Charge. This was also ironic since I was originally going to write it with them, but then decided not to.
Conversation Highlights
- Changing Your Team From the Inside by Alexis Monville
- The hidden motives in asking for feedback–what are you looking for?
- Affirmation
- Honest feedback about what would make something better
- Something else
- The Agile Manifesto speaks to interactions between people
- Interactions are more important than processes and tools
- Focus on the content and less on the delivery
- Our thoughts about an experience create the experience, not the experience it self
- Taking responsibility for what we put out into the world and being responsible for our own reactions
- Sometimes it’s better to be direct instead of provocative–otherwise the message risks getting lost
- Unmet expectations and by extension unmet needs get us into trouble
- Software engineers a have reputation for being overly direct and getting away with it
- Does the receiver of feedback really just have to “deal with it?”
- Can you have a real relationship with another person if it’s a one-directional “deal with it, that’s the way I am” kind of situation?
- Can you have a good relationship where there isn’t give and take?
- The idea of relationship as a dance between two people
- Our previous conversation about distributed teams and the importance of creating agreements
- Agreements are foundational to good relationships
- Exiting the agony loop of getting an email “just right” so as not to elicit the wrong response from the other person
- “Both And” responsibility
- There’s a mutual responsibility In a relationship for both parties to make it work vs. it being all up to one person to do it 100% right
- A level deeper in all of this is where we are coming from
- John’s new insights and convictions from reading The Anatomy of Peace by the Arbinger Institute
- Coming from a heart at war or a heart at peace
- When we come from a heart at peace we are not focused on “winning at all costs” (war)
- When we are at war, someone has to be “wrong” (judgement)
- Thinking about how the software releases I managed could have been different if I had come more often from a place of peace
Credits
