The importance of feedback

Human beings are social by nature. Our inclination to change our behavior in reliance upon feedback from our fellows is a primary evolutionary adaptation mechanism. Feedback is our relationship with the world and the world’s relationship with us, it’s how we make an impact on other people. Working in co-located environments, we are accustomed to making evaluations based on verbal and non-verbal signals: body language, tone of voice, facial expression, and many more. We’re great at picking up on various signals from others. When working remotely, people are isolated from these clues.

Feedback is key to successful day-to-day interactions, as it helps us see our inevitable blind spots and grow:

• Keeps everyone on track
• Helps avoid major mistakes
• Forms better relationships
• Motivates people
• Promotes personal & professional growth
• Enables a friendly work environment
• Instills trust among the team

Feedback can come in the form of “praise” for things team members do well, and in the form of “tips” pertaining to areas for improvement. We encourage both types on a regular basis. To foster a feedback culture, Hygge Companies establish dedicated time for peer coaching every three months. Outside this formal schedule, the expectation is that we’ll just pull feedback from those around us whenever we need to.

Insights

One of the tools to address lack of feedback in remote teams in Insights. Insights is an evaluation approach that uses input from an employee’s supervisors, colleagues, subordinates — and, sometimes, even suppliers and customers. In Hygge companies, we don’t use feedback from Insights for performance appraisal. We suggest team members to use it as a self-development tool. Launching Insights survey every 6 month will keep you on a right track.

Insights Process

If you’d like to get detailed feedback of your knowledge, skills, abilities, growth areas, you can initiate Insights process.

1. Take a moment to think the goal of Insights evaluation for you. Would you like to get the opinion from others if you’re doing a good job? Are you wondering how to become a better professional? Would you like to uncover your growth areas?

2. Create Insights request issue in your personal repo and tag Hygge team. Make sure to write your intention and mention who’d you like to get the feedback from.

3. Hygge team will add relevant people to your feedback loop and launch an Insights survey. Once the feedback is ready, you will get your Insights form in your personal repo.

4. To get as much as possible from your Insights report, schedule a 1:1 call with your supervisor or Hygge team member to go through the feedback and come up with an action plan.

To read more about Embracing and Suggesting feedback in Hygge companies, hit “Feedback” tag.