Asking Feedback: Valuable Questions

To be an effective team player, Facilitator, or as a trainer - It is very crucial to know what others think about your way of working. It helps the person to inspect the past and adapt for the better future.

Have you ever shared all the feedback in your mind?

Would you be able to share the feedback if some training is useless to you?

I understand there are a lot of factors influencing the way you provide your feedback. Was thinking for quite a lot of time about possibilities of getting the honest feedback from my participants, team members and from my coachees. Thought-provoking questions would help explore different aspects of the context or situation in which we are in.

We had a new joiner in our team. After one of our team meeting, I asked him How was the meeting? New joiner hesitantly told me that meeting was good and started listing all so-called good things happened in the meeting and not uttered a single word about negatives. I am sure New joiner has some suggestions for improving our team.

It might be because of being new, lack of psychological safety, need more time to observe or many more human factors. I was keen to get his feedback that we can improve. Now the question is HOW?

In our next conversation, I asked him

Thank you for sharing your feedback about our last team meeting. 

What are the observations you don’t want to share about the meeting?

This question has surprised both of us. I am writing this blog to share the question which created fun and a different thought process in the conversation.

Purpose of asking this question might be different from a person to person. Here is my purpose why I asked this question.

·      Setting the context that it’s not only about what went well and to know about another side too

·      Showing the readiness to accept feedback even if it is worse

·      Sharing the intention for improvement

·      To make your participants think, explore

The question might not get you answers if you don’t have a rapport with the person you are asking. So, spend some time building rapport before asking this question.

Adding different personas and context to the question.

What are the observations you would sharing with your close friends?

What are the observations you would sharing with your family members?

If you are the facilitator for the next meeting, what would you change?

The above questions will place them to think from different perspectives about the same meeting, training, coaching or facilitation. Thank you for reading. If you have any feedback (want to share & don’t want to share), please add it in comments or send it to sathrambalaji@gmail.com