Purpouse
All Reps Mentors needs to give feedback to their mentees. At the same time, giving good feedback is useful at every moment of our work, so this tutorial will be useful for all mozillians.
Learning objectives
- What it means to give feedback
- How to give constructive feedback
- How to structure a feedback session
Content - Tips
One of the main function of the Reps Mentor is give feedback to their mentees. Here you have some tips to have good feedback sessions.
Make it a positive experience
A feedback session is an opportunity to learn and discuss what happen and how it could be different. Try to focus on what your mentee could learn from the experience and how to find ways on improve for the next time. «Positive» doesn’t mean to say that everything is good, but don’t focus only on critics. At the same time, feedback is not only to find what things the other person made wrong, so try to find and mark positive bahaviors.
Be timely and make it regular
It’s better if you try to make these sessions regularly, it’s better for the feedback you can give and to have a way to follow the work of your mentee. And in this way, your mentee will not feel this is a psecial event and will be more open to discuss the things that happen. If you only want to give feedback at special situation (after a crisis, discusssion, etc.) it’s possible that your mentee came to the meetings in a defensive position.
Prepare it before and be specific
Before the session, take the time to think abut what you want to say, which differents ways you could have to say it. Don’t go to your session without preparing what you want to do. Receiving feedback is difficult, and sometimes problematic, so you want to make it easier for your mentee. Be specific on what you are trying to say, is better if you have examples and situations to show when what you are saying happened. This will make easier for your mentee to understand what you are trying to show. Avoid to give statements without an example. Describe what happened and try not to add a judgement.
For example: “You demonstrate a high degree of confidence when you answer customer questions about registration procedures”, rather than, “Your communication skills are good.”
Limit your focus
If you have regular feedback sessions, there’s no need to try to give feedback about everything on each session. Focus at a maximum of 2 things to give feedback. Avoid a long list of facts that happened.
Provide suggestions
Giving feedback doesn’t mean just to say what things were good or bad. Is about what happened and what it could be different. Try to suggest other ways to procede in the next opportunity. Ask your mentee what he or she could made different to have other consequences. Make her/him think about it and imagine how she or he could try the next time.
Follow-ups
As we said before, the feedback session needs to be a learning experience. The best way to do it is to have some follow up actions that you could check the next time you meet. We will see more about this in the GROW model lesson, but for now, the best way to finish the session is to have an agreement on what your mentee will try to test in the coming weeks (before your next meeting) and write down this on a document that will be read at the first phase of the next meeting. This will help to understand improvements in her/his behavior.
Content - Feedback session
This is an example on how to structure a feedback session:
- State the constructive purpose of your feedback. State your purpose briefly by indicating what you’d like to cover and why it’s important
- Describe specifically what you have observed. Have a certain event or action in mind and be able to say when and where it happened, who was involved, and what the results were.
- Describe your reactions. Explain the consequences of the other person’s behavior and how you feel about it. Give examples of how you and others are affected.
- Give the other person an opportunity to respond. Remain silent and meet the other persons eye, indicating that you are waiting for answer. If the person hesitates to respond, ask an open ended question
- Offer specific suggestions. Whenever possible make your suggestions helpful by including practical, feasible examples. Offering suggestions shows that you have thought past your evaluations and moved to how to improve the situation.
- Summarize and express your support. Review the major points you discussed. Summarize the Action items, not the negative points of the other person’s behavior. If you have given neutral feedback, emphasize the main points you have wanted to convey.
