So... How's your team?
Heya!
How do you know how your team is doing?
Like, not the formal end of year feedback that takes months to process. But week to week or month to month feedback on how things are going. And not necessarily the feedback of "projects are on (or off) schedule."
Back in the 1870's factory workers would often indicate how a day had been by leaving their cigarette stubs to the left or the right of the factory entrance. Right == Good, Left == bad. This is what lead to a factory owner referring to their best managers as their "Right Hand Man". Tech work is more complex, but workers still do have opinions! Which ones matter and how to gather them?
In my mind, feedback can be about different types of concerns, along a sort of hierarchy of needs:
- Personal Self: How am I doing?
- Personal Work: What am I doing?
- Team Vibe / Manager Style: How is my team and/or my manager?
- Team Focus / Manager Competency: What is my team and/or manager doing?
- Company Focus: What are we working towards?
- Company Vibe: What's it like working here?
The type of feedback you should seek depends on what you can actually influence. For instance, if you work in a widget manufacturing company and someone expresses dislike for widget making, it's valuable information but not something an EM can or should change. Same story if someone is facing challenges outside of work. However, at the team and personal work level, if they prefer gathering widget materials over polishing widgets, that is a matter you can influence.
Thinking this through can shape the questions you ask and the context in which you ask them. "How's it going?" or temperature check systems might be helpful. To remove that chance create a cadence of more targeted feedback. Set up a:
- Regular retro question focused on team progress and culture
- Recurring 1:1 question based on a team specific concern
- Process with your manager to have them regularly and lightly gather feedback for you.
Giving feedback is often uncomfortable because it happens rarely. By making it a more regular thing, in time, people will become more comfortable with sharing their thoughts.
As an EM, I often long for the clarity of "build this thing" from engineering days. Clear feedback, in a managerial context, is akin to an excellent design document.
Title of this newsletter is a throwback to an old favorite album "So... How's your girl?". Also that factory worker cigarette story is totally made up