Teamwork in Software Development is essential. Most likely this is the reason there are so many development teams around. All of them deliver. Some better, some worse. I do want to get into one aspect of a good collaborating team. I was fortunate enough to spend my time with a Berlin located international team operating for an internationally acting company. Throughout the time I spent there we were eleven different nationalities. Multiply that mixed cultural background with a mixed set of personalities and you get quite a crucible of effects.
One of those effects showed up the other day. I was feeling some kind of tension. Partly this tension was induced from the outside, but it was also self inflicted. Why? Well, conflicts most of the time arise from missing communication. Or worse communication perceived in an unintended manner. In this case it was feedback that didn't happen. Not surprisingly in our retrospective the topic of came up again.
"Please provide feedback to me, a team member or any other person. Everything will remain in this room". Easy task right? Actually I allowed providing feedback to the such super villains as the Joker or the Penguin. Nobody was doing that though. But using the correct words is not easy. Not to be too offending but stating your point was a challenge for many.
So we practiced. My team members were very patient but also willing to explore and reflect on what some phrases or words mean. Sometimes they said the same sentence several times always a bit different. This works the same way in German as it does English. Which is necessary considering the international set up.
During the practice I also witnessed all kinds of reaction:
Those are very human reactions depending where you are coming from. Thankfully, the training provided a frame to address them.
The trainings were very well received. Everybody was curious and in the end thankful for their very individual session. Of some I know that they took the training as a starting point. Now combining the general intention of the company to have a feedback culture, the team is set up pretty well.
Nevertheless in the individual sessions I realized how important it is to have a common ground for such diverse a team. Feedback is not easy. Let that sink in. Maybe you are surprised, because it is not for you, but I can assure you it is for others. But there is hope. Feedback can be practiced. The easiest way to practice feedback to implement it as some kind of rituals - being it in face to face feedbacks during or after a retrospective or even extreme forms like dedicated speed feedback rounds. Try out the Kudo Box for positive feedback.
I am curious: How diverse is your team? Do you have a healthy feedback culture? Do you practice? Do you need to care? How do you do it?
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