GitLab Learning & Development, 18 Feb 2021

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From YouTube: Giving & Receiving Feedback CEO learning session

Description

Sid (co-founder and CEO) and Josh (Learning & Development) discuss Giving and Receiving Feedback. Feedback is part of many of our sub-values at GitLab, to include: Negative Feedback is 1:1, Give Feedback Effectively, Directness, Kindness many more.

Learn more about GitLab Values: https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/values/

Learn more about our Guidance on Feedback: https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/people-group/guidance-on-feedback/

A list of topics covered include:

1. Why it's important to give regular feedback
2. Why kindness matters
3. Giving direct feedback
4. Why you should give feedback right away
5. Feedback and transparency
6. Examples of constructive feedback
7. Why it's good to remove "ego" from feedback
8. Why iteration enables feedback
9. Creating an environment built for feedback

A

Hi everyone, my name, is josh zimmerman, I'm with the learning and development team, and I'm so honored today to be joined here with sid c brandy, our get lab ceo and co-founder to talk about giving and receiving feedback. Now, this video is part of a ceo handbook learning session, where we're going to dive deep on specific topics and today, specifically we're going to talk about giving and receiving feedback uh sid. Thank you. So much for joining us today really appreciate your time.

B

My pleasure, thanks for the opportunity, thanks for organizing awesome.

A

So you know at gitlab, you know. Feedback comes in many forms through synchronous and asynchronous communication channels. So can you tell us why it's important to give regular feedback.

B

um I think the main two reasons are for people to improve, like if you get feedback, you're able to see the difference between what you did and what what you probably should do. The other thing is appreciation like with the big you learn like that. You have an impact that what you did mattered, and so it's important to to get that from time to time to to make sure you feel like your work, is relevant.

A

Yeah, I completely agree, I think, especially in an all remote environment.

A

You know giving and receiving feedback is really important, because you know you're, not you know, seeing your team members every day in the hallways, you know being able to asynchronous and synchronously give feedback is really critical to helping us live our values, and you know I really appreciate that kindness is a sub value of our collaboration value. You know, kindness demonstrates that we care for people for challenging them directly and delivering feedback. So I'm curious, how can we reinforce this sub value to ensure our people are kind and delivering feedback.

B

Yeah, it's very important and sometimes tough and how you can be more kind during giving feedback is first of all, giving it in the smallest possible group um so that it says people don't feel like they're saving face or losing face in front of other people.

B

If, if that's appropriate like if it's something the rest of the group can benefit from, it might not be possible to make the group smaller but make sure it's as small as you can to make the feedback specific about a certain um behavior, because then it sounds much more solvable um to make it improvement oriented.

B

So, to give an example like hey, I saw you do this next time. Allow for this to happen in order that we can uh achieve x, y z and to when you're not feeling kind like when you're upset about something which is ex that's common right. We care about our job. We might be upset about something: that's not the time to give feedback, so make sure that it's a good time both for the most importantly for the sender. That's what you control, but also check with the receiver, whether they're in a in a good state.

B

Maybe maybe it was just a long and tiring meeting, and it's it's better to shelve it for next time.

A

I love that. I love that last point. um You know I think, really being in touch with how you're feeling you know, if maybe you've had a long day you've been on tons of zoom calls, you might be really fatigued and um it might be clouding your the.

B

Way, you're gonna get feedback about, might like really impacted your day or your work or some big outcome that you were striving for.

A

Yeah, I completely agree, that's a great point to emphasize, um and you know giving direct feedback is really important for both managers and team members. I think one thing that I've seen at gitlab is: you know: team members are very direct with their feedback and it can take the form of coaching sessions or one-to-one meetings or even through asynchronous discussions.

A

Can you tell us your approach to giving feedback, whether positive or negative, on video calls? For example, I've seen you give a lot of direct feedback and video discussions.

B

Yeah most of most of my feedback is in the forum it's during one-on-ones with reports which shadows sometimes uh attend, and um I try to have it there um before the conversation and then, if it's positive feedback, I'm going to mark it as so it's going to say thanks and then what I'm going to say is that they're not confused like? Why says on the agenda? Was there something wrong um and then with negative feedback? It will typically have a discuss like hey.

B

Can we do this different, or is this normal or have you looked into xyz? He said you see me do it. Maybe you can tell me about something you saw that you thought was awesome and maybe also tell about a time when I didn't do it properly.

A

Yeah, I remember specifically for learning and development. You know you gave us really direct feedback um about just our handbook pages about where we're putting them, and you really articulated, like hey learning development pages, shouldn't, be buried in the l d section of the handbook they're for all team members. Every page within the handbook is learning and development material, it's training material and I think for us like thinking through that, strategically we're really able to reevaluate how we deliver content, because essentially everything in the handbook is learning development, and that was really impactful for us.

B

Yeah- and that was that was quite a journey like we're. Probably one of the only companies where learning and development is not making their own materials, but that it's a shared effort where everyone in the company can contribute, and everyone like the domain experts, are responsible in the end for the different pages and learning and development is just helping to improve the pages, to have testing, to tests, to have certifications, to have learning paths.

B

But the content itself is is really extracted from from daily practice and that's a hard thing to wrap your head around and I'm very grateful for your patience in that, and uh I'm working in that- and you know that was that was tough feedback for you to receive. What what did I do well in delivering that and how could I have made it easier for you to um to receive that.

A

Yeah, I think you did really well with just being able to articulate the reason why every page was learning development material and why that was different than probably a lot of other organizations. So I think you really did a great job establishing that strategically.

A

I think you know maybe where it could have been improved was maybe it took us a while to really internalize it. So I think, maybe showing us some examples of what that really looks like could have helped reinforce it.

B

Thanks for that feedback.

A

Yeah thanks for the feedback, um so you know if you mentioned earlier, if you have negative or positive feedback, give it right away. um Why should we give negative or positive feedback right away and what happens when we don't give it right away and we just kind of sit on it.

B

Yeah, actually, we discussed delaying giving feedback if you're upset or if the other person is not in a good state, but um on average like the sooner the better, and that is that, because both parties still have the context, so the center of the feedback still can articulate um with a lot of context like why what happened and the receiver might still remember that situation the longer the longer you wait, the less accurate the sender is going to be about what actually transparent and the less the receiver will know, and the more diversions between that plus, like the less actionable, also the opportunity to remedy is lost.

B

So if you get feedback like hey, this is this is what probably should have happened? You did this. You want to remedy that both for kind of the affected people, like maybe a customer or something like that, and to kind of make a good impression on your manager who's, the likely person to give you feedback like um the longer they wait, the less likely it is that the repair is impactful and now, let's say the customer isn't held, plus your manager.

B

Had that negative opinion of you all that time, even though, if the feedback would have come earlier, you would have been able to address that.

A

Yeah, those are great points. I think um I think it kind of fits into the next question pretty well just around. You know, transparency being a core value, and you know I remember when I first started here: reading asynchronous feedback on issues and mrs and slack channels and thinking wow. It's really direct and you know I think, giving direct feedback in a public channel when there's a disagreement really impacts the whole team and I'm curious. You know why is it important to have those discussions publicly.

B

Yeah and hopefully, what you're not seeing in those channels is like: um hey josh, like you're you're gonna pick another name, but hey uh peter your your um your english skills are not up to par, and we recommend you follow an english course like that's, not something that should be in the channel. But if it's about hey, I see this project going to the left and I think it should go to the right if possible.

B

It's very helpful if that's shared in a broader audience, because there's lots of people involved with the project and they want to all see that feedback and people might have. Someone might have the reason that it's going direction a instead of b and you want to kind of short circuit that if, if people are not encouraged to kind of share that in a bigger setting, you're going to miss relevant information, so our transparency value is about about that and making it.

B

Maybe it's good to relate that to making decisions at gala before a decision is made, anyone can contribute like data points, to inform that decision.

B

Criticism or feedback is like data about like what we. What path we should go, the more people see that the more people can add counter counterpoints or say yeah. That makes a ton of sense. Actually we were struggling with this, and this would also be solved because of that.

A

That makes a lot of sense um and that's something. I've definitely seen practice daily here at gitlab.

B

In terms- and it's it's not great, if the negative, if it's negative feedback from a higher up to uh to a report, but if it's from a report to a higher up, it's even a bit empowering to see the feedback so keeping that power dynamic in mind as much as possible, but, like I hope that people see this video and saw you gave me feedback. They said next time next time you you asked to do things different, give an example, and I hope they see that I'm like okay. Well, that's so that's acceptable.

A

Yeah, it's very very open I'd say any anybody in the organization is open to feedback um and- and I'm curious, you know- I've received tons of feedback in my career. That's helped really course correct and helped me become a better professional. So I'm curious, you know, can you share with us an example of when somebody gave you constructive feedback? You know what did they say and you know how did it help you in your career.

B

Yeah, um the best feedback of my career is actually my. My board review sue does gives me my review.

B

She talks with some of my reports with the other board members, and I get a list of like this went great this one not so great, and this is what we recommend for next year, stella, my chief of staff takes that works it out so that we have a tracker during the year and, together with my coach, I try to make um try to improve and try to like visualize that for the board like how I'm following up so according to godfrey's, whose review was the among the best he's ever seen, and also the follow-up from our site was appreciated.

B

There's also that's a bit a high-level feedback thing I think shane does ceo shadow has some feedback he saw happening during his shadow period. Shane thanks.

C

Sid uh yeah this so my first week, hi I'm shane.

C

This is my second week in the ceo shadow program and um in my first week there was a lot of preparation for our sales kickoff, which was last week, and um there were there were some production meetings and one of those production meetings was early on monday morning and um sid was still putting together his equipment and uh there was some technical problems and things that you know were outside of our control, um but there there were a couple moments where um sydney made some comments about um the direction of the video uh specifically related to the script and so later on.

C

In the week there were two interactions actually related to that meeting. uh One was with todd and- and todd uh just said, to said, hey, you know, part of the reason why that meeting was stressful is because you weren't you weren't ready. You didn't have everything set up. You know you could have done that over the weekend. I did it you know, and- and so you know next time we have something like this.

C

You know, will you please try to be ready before the meeting and then the second piece was uh from uh sherry and she talked to said about a specific moment in those interactions that said hey. You know this is what this is.

C

What happened, um and this is what I saw, and this is, I think, what that person saw, and I think it'd be much better if you handle it this way in the future instead was immediately like okay, great thank you and he took notes in his agenda doc with her to make sure you're moving forward.

C

He carries out that feedback so that it becomes part of his normal routine, and so I think both those instances were times where you know someone came to said with hey here's, how we can improve this and he was open to both those suggestions um and- and I think you know next time that there's a production uh meeting like that it will be better because of it.

B

A

Great example shane, um and thanks for thanks for sharing that with the broader audience, you know and I'm curious you know, receiving feedback can can be tough. Sometimes I I know for me: I I've I've taken it personally um and it can. It can hurt. But you know feedback is a gift. It's really often the best way to improve. I remember sometimes in my career, where some feedback really helped mold me into the professional.

A

I am today, I'm constantly getting it, but I can remember some really cluster crystal clear examples of when it helped my career. So how can you better receive feedback without taking it personally and use it as a source of growth to improve performance.

B

Yeah, I I think uh realizing that it's a gift is is is, is helpful, but also waiting. Just waiting like, I think, there's a very natural kind of knee-jerk reaction to defend yourself and I've never been able to kind of not have that reaction.

B

But I've been able to keep my trap shot like keep my mind, shot and just listen and wait before responding and and that that alleviates a lot, because it that kind of defense re responsing, something that that's that kind of peaks very quickly and then also quickly dissipates and just taking the few extra seconds and sometimes a few extra minutes. If it's rough feedback or even days um really helps to approach it again, give more credit to the to the story.

B

You just hear heard maybe write down your defense and then say: okay, well, that's nice, but that's not relevant like yes, it was a stressful production meeting, but yeah really, I didn't have my stuff together and oh, I didn't realize that the person I I was I was talking about like how it was a mess, was brought in that project at the last moment to actually do stuff, so she he was making it better. Instead of worse, like oh yeah, that's a really big miss.

B

I got all kinds of mistaken assumptions that I didn't check and even if I wanted to say it was a bit of a mess like. Why do that in front of other people, all kinds of feedback fails, but it instead of kind of verbalizing, your defense to the person giving you feedback like take a step back.

B

Maybe do it in your head or write it down, but then you tend to see like how silly your defense is, and it doesn't matter like, like probably that other person is right and even though you have your reasons um who cares like being a professional, also means that it's not about you. It's about what you, how you impact others.

A

I love I love that call out just kind of like taking a step back, wait, self-reflect and then respond. You know when it's appropriate, but I think really taking some time to pause. You know think about what was said and then and then ask for more.

B

A

B

And that's also why it's sometimes helpful if a person appreciates it's like hey, I have feedback for you, like you, can kind of like tilt your head and go from from like telling mode to listening mode or something like that.

A

Yeah and usually people are giving feedback for a reason. It's it's to make you your you better at your own job, so you know assume.

B

A

Intent, I think, is a good thing too.

B

And, and also assume like in north america, that there's there's probably a bunch of other examples that they haven't told you. So it's not just about this thing. This is just a good example. They were able to find, but it fits in a broader pattern.

A

What do you mean by the north, america? Oh.

B

They're, dutch people are a bit more liberal, giving feedback.

A

uh Yeah, I can see that definitely so I I think that you know around you know. No ego is really a sub value of collaboration and I think, as a leader at the way you respond, then negative feedback makes a significant impact on your team and without ego team members are more likely to approach leaders with feedback.

A

So how can a leader create an environment where team members can approach them with negative or constructive feedback? This is really important to be able to be approachable as a leader.

B

Yeah, I totally agree, I think some things you can do is like not interrupt the person giving feedback like let them give their entire story with all the contacts wait until they're done. Ask clarifying questions that you'll probably have things you're wondering about ask about it like show an interest in what they just told. You take notes um obvious, but also important to mention no retaliation like don't, even if that person has done something wrong that contributed to the situation.

B

The moment you get feedback is not the point to bring that up, and maybe you should never bring that up, so don't retaliate at that point or anytime later and then follow up show in the next meeting say hey! Thank you for that feedback. You gave me the other day. This is what I did to follow up and improve my behavior.

B

I make a ton of snap decisions and I average one time a week. I send a a sorry dm to someone over slack, like I mishandled that sorry about it.

A

Yeah, no, that's a that's great call out so, just to summarize, you know for leaders to create an environment where feedback is, you know a part of their culture without ego. It's you know asking clarifying questions, no interruption, no retaliation and follow-up. So I think those are some really great examples, and I think you know to the earlier point just showing kindness too, to be able to allow your team to come to you with feedback which is really critical.

B

Yeah and I told an example- follow up via flight dm, but also, for example, during the e-group off site. We had one session and they didn't properly brief the team about what was expected and they did prep kind of not what I expected and then I got pigeonholed in like some issue that wasn't the most important one. It was just a really bad experience for them.

B

So in that case, because it was an entire group of people, I created a selection just to apologize, so private slack channel invited everyone posted my apology, but gave us all kind of a room to kind of experience. That and that's that's that's tougher to kind of be vulnerable in public, but I think that's a a tone that has to come from the top down.

A

Yeah- and I- and I think I I just want to you- know- really applaud you for for showing like and sharing these examples, because I think what we're trying to do is really reinforce this throughout the organization, and you know having examples from our ceo of where you know he's publicly apologized through public channels and slack is it's just a really great way to trickle that down to other team members and other leaders throughout the organization? So so thank you for sharing that you're welcome.

A

So you know, iteration includes you, know significant feedback, and you know if we take smaller steps and shift smaller, simpler features, we get done. We get feedback sooner so tell us why iteration enables feedback.

B

Yeah, I want to contrast. Iteration with revisions. um Revision is the opposite of an iteration. Revision means you're, making changes, but you haven't really shipped or deployed the change you're working on.

B

So if you iterate and you really ship, the change you're going to impact people and people who are impacted are much better able to give you feedback than someone who's like reading like we might do this in case. We do this. How would you feel about it? That's hard to say, but if it happens to you, you're gonna give much more accurate uh feedback. So by getting a small change out the door, we enable people to give us much more actionable or much better feedback.

B

Much more and it's actionable because we just took a small step. So our next step we can just I just still adjust course. Most organizations will happen. They take a big step, so they have a plan and they're gonna. Guess what more people will say about the staff and then they're gonna adjust a bit, but they don't really know what happened. Instead, what you should do take a small step, see where you went off and then you can adjust all further steps to to get to where you want to go faster.

A

And, and just you know we're so, where does like the feedback? Where does that fit into that specifically like if you're, if you're is it like, as the iteration is getting complete, I'm just just curious on feedback.

B

Specifically after you shipped something after you made something or you publish the report to the world or something like that, then you're gonna get the the real feedback. Sometimes that's very hard, I'm thinking of an end of availability announcement. We had we, we have only one chance to announce that to the world, but what we were able to do is, for example, test the comprehensibility of the announcement. Like did we use clear language?

B

What we did is we went in gitlab inc, asked team members who weren't involved with the preparations, like hey, imagine, you're a customer on this plan with this many accounts. This is your future plan. This is our blog post. This is our faq. How much are you going to pay next year? They're like uh well, it's not really clear, because this faq is confusing ah great fix the faq and then, but they can't really have the emotional response like. How do you feel about this? So for that we we reach out to five customers.

B

We say: hey. Can we can we tell you something in confidence and then we they said yes and then we said: okay, we we got bad news this. This is the announcement. How do you feel and the customers were extremely helpful and they said, look they're telling me. I have to go from bronze to premium in this case or starter to premium, but you're not really telling me why premium is more valuable. I like it oh and we did that intentionally. We intensely like it shouldn't it's a bad. We have bad news.

B

We shouldn't make it a big promotion for premium, but four out of five customers told us. Look. I really wanna.

B

I really wanna know what's in it for me like what I'm gonna, how I'm gonna benefit, so we really adjusted our messaging there thanks to those customers, so that was a case of it's hard to iterate, but we found a way and we were much better off when we actually did it. The only way to get there is to ship the real messaging to a real customer to get real feedback. You don't get there by my playhouse by pretending.

A

Yeah getting that real feedback from the customer um and- and you know how would you you know just to summarize you know, how would you recommend a team to create an environment where feedback is encouraged.

B

Yeah, I think we touched on many aspects today already and I'm not going to repeat those.

B

I think it's also important to point out explicitly if you change your mind because of feedback or if you're doing something different like point that out, because it's it's hard for your team to recognize, but we're all learning and adjusting, and by being explicit about that, you you make yourself more vulnerable and with that you allow others to be more vulnerable and if you're vulnerable, you can accept feedback without getting defensive.

B

Acknowledge your imperfections. I have a ceo page that points out my flaws, like I'm aware of them, but that doesn't mean I'm always able to address them. But if you remind me of that me of them, I I hopefully will respond positively and always make it about a specific instance so make it about hey. This was the situation. This is what you did. This is how I think it impacted that person or this project um don't use labels. Don't don't do um like? Oh that person always does xyz that's hard.

B

I remember a conversation uh an hour ago, where I said: oh yeah time management isn't good there, that's kind of a label.

B

um So that's that's a tough line to walk, um but try that to the extent you can because it's if you get label it's not very motivating to change your behavior. Well, if you call out actionable behavior, it's actionable, most people are do want to get better and at getlab. I think that's uh almost everyone.

A

Definitely that was those that's a those are great points. I I think too uh yeah.

B

You mentioned your gitlab, I'm gonna assume it's everyone, because that's the credit of our credit value, so just assume that everyone wants to get better.

A

Yeah, I I I definitely see that culture of everybody wanting to get better at gitlab, and I I think you mentioned your ceo readme- um that's been really valuable to me. Just referencing as we have these discussions. I'd encourage. You know anyone out there to create a readme, so you can really, you know, help encourage you know, feedback and giving and receiving and just collaboration, so team members can get to know you better when they're communicating with you awesome. Well. Thank you so much sid for your time. I really appreciate it.

A

um We talked all things giving and receiving feedback and we'll see you next time.