Although giving feedback as a lead isn’t that much different from anyone else, there are a couple extra things to keep in mind.

Be Extra Appreciative of Received Feedback

As an M-role, it may be difficult to get as much honest feedback as you want. When you do get feedback, it’s important to always be receptive and appreciative of it, and to encourage that person (and others) to continue giving you more feedback in the future.

In addition, until your team members are trained to give you feedback freely, you will likely need to ask for feedback more often. Ask about specific things, to help team members give you feedback. The more feedback you get, the less you need to do this, and vice versa.

Finally, give constructive feedback to yourself when you catch yourself messing up. This shows you’re open to getting feedback from others. At the very least, you’re showing you’re conscious of your own areas that need improvement, and that we’re all trying to get better together.

Give Extra Feedback in the Beginning

By “beginning,” I mean things like:

• Beginning of employment, when someone first joins Tofugu.
• Beginning of a new role, whether they’ve just started working at Tofugu, transferred/added a role, or moved up/down a level in a role.
• Beginning of a new OKR.
• Beginning of a new project.

As a lead, your goal is to spend more time with people in the beginning of things, so that they can be more independent in their role later on. Remember, it’s important that team members have a lot of autonomy within the definition of their role(s), so you shouldn’t be micromanaging people. More feedback in the beginning is a good way to set people off on the right course, while also giving them the autonomy to do their job.

To be able to give more feedback in the beginning of things, you’ll need to make sure colleagues are doing their work in a way that allows for this. That means:

• They’re doing their work in the open,
• They’re doing updates at key moments,
• They’re having you check things more often, early on,
• and so on.

Basically, if they’re doing their work and “turning it in” all at once at the deadline, it won’t be possible for you (or others) to give feedback. It also doesn’t allow others to know what’s going on. Really, we’re looking for people to act on our ‣.

Try Hard(er) to Catch People Doing Something Right

It’s easy to fall into the trap of catching people doing something wrong, or making a mistake. But, it’s important as a lead to work extra hard to catch people doing something right. Actively be on the lookout for the things colleagues did well, and call them out on it.