How to give feedback so that no one is offended — Belka Games experience

Polina Navnyko, Director of UI at Belka Games

When was the last time you told your supervisor that he was wrong? What did they say to you?

Now imagine for at least a second that you are advising the CEO on how to improve the work of the team. Did it work?

A few years ago, I firmly believed that giving such a feedback was like writing a letter of resignation. In fact, high-quality feedback can increase the effectiveness of the entire team. However, you need to give it correctly, setting the right message and tone of the conversation, otherwise you can hurt the feelings of the interlocutor, or cause the wrong reaction.

For more than four years I have been heading the UI/UX department at Belka Games. In this article, I would like to share my experience of creating and applying a culture of open feedback in a team.

We will discuss how in this process the manager can find the right words to give an honest feedback and avoid employee frustration.

The culture of open feedback will allow you to:

• motivate the team,
• achieve high KPIs,
• increase efficiency and improve the development process.

The article can be useful for products, team leaders and managers. In general, everyone who, by occupation, often has to give feedback or express their opinion / assessment in work matters.

It is worth noting that these recommendations are also applicable outside of work, because we often have to express our opinion on this or that account.

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Let’s start by voicing simple truths. There is no person who knows absolutely everything. Even top managers sometimes make mistakes. Only the price of the error changes. If the icon has the wrong contrast or composition, it’s not a disaster. But if there is a problem with UX in the game, or the new feature has a bad balance… If no one expresses concerns and a dubious decision is allowed to be sold, the company may lose/lose profit. Silence will be expensive.

In our company, we try to make sure that colleagues do not hesitate to express their opinions openly. We appreciate initiative, passion for work and constructive feedback. Therefore, we always highlight if we see a potential problem or areas of improvement. We can say that if an employee saw a problem and kept silent, it means that he could have helped the company, but did not.

When feedback becomes part of daily activity, we can kill three birds with one stone:

• improve the development process;
• increase the team’s involvement and responsibility for the result;
• to show that an employee is not just a piece of a huge mechanism — he is important, his opinion is appreciated, and he can influence the product.

The more often employees hear what and how they could do better, the more effective we are as a company. Sounds great, right?

How to give feedback, or “politeness is our main tool”

Feedback helps to avoid misunderstandings and increases creativity. Colleagues get used to looking at the solution of the problem from different angles.

But not all people are calm about criticism. Corrective feedback can cause demotivation and frustration of the employee, he may lose self-confidence.

This can be avoided if you keep in mind the true purpose of feedback: to help everyone grow in knowledge and skills. Therefore, it is important to give feedback correctly. If it is expressed at the right moment, tactfully and with the right message, it will not hurt anyone’s feelings.

For example, I will give a curious story. The young specialist was faced with the task of drawing an icon for the expedition: a skein of vines. If we look for references, we will find similar images:

And here’s what the artist got:

It looks very specific.

Nevertheless, it was extremely important for us to find the right words that would help the artist complete the task, but not demotivate. In this task, we went through several iterations and eventually got a nice icon without unsolicited associations.

We pursue two goals — to achieve results and to inspire and help an employee. One could say the following:

“Thank you, the concept is executed well. However, it is quite difficult to recognize a vine here. I suggest looking for a more successful form of the object. It is possible to change the color and thickness of the elements.” You can also offer your own references and even a concept.

Here are a few rules to help give feedback.

1. The desire to help. Our main goal is to help! When you give feedback, you should not pursue personal goals or try to point out the incompetence of a colleague — you may also be wrong.

Think carefully about what exactly and why you would like to suggest improvements. What advantages will your offer bring, will it help a colleague or a team?

2. Politeness. Even if you are guided by the best intentions, you are not immune from the fact that your proposals may be perceived with hostility. It is ok. It’s important to convince the person that you want to help, and that’s why you have to be perfectly polite.

I also advise you to start the feedback with thank-you encouraging phrases. The employee still tried and spent time, even if something didn’t work out for him. This will help you soften the listener’s reaction and show your positive attitude.

Then offer a solution to the problem. Feedback should help improve the final result of the task/feature metric. If the problem is related, for example, to art or UX, try to specify your suggestions — explain what exactly a colleague should implement.

It is better not to be unfounded and present a small analysis of visual references/research of existing solutions (if this is, for example, UX).

3. Give arguments. Arguments are a key part of quality feedback. They will help the interlocutor to understand you and analyze his decision. And they also make your feedback sound.

4. Finally: NEVER give feedback when you are annoyed or angry.

Make sure you are calm and collected before you formulate a feedback. Count from one to ten, or from ten to one — in general, cope with your emotions so as not to broadcast them in communication.

How to get feedback, or “patience, patience and patience again”

Let’s move on to the second part — how to receive feedback. This is no less important, because your reaction can completely ruin the desire of a colleague to influence the result. And silence can have a high price.

Here are my recommendations.

1. Be grateful.

Often people go on the defensive when they are criticized. It’s difficult, but try to be open. It is important not to identify yourself with the result of your work. When you are given feedback, it is aimed at a specific layout, color or logical solution, part of the code, but not at you personally. It is in our power to improve the result with the help of feedback, to learn and surpass the skills of “yesterday’s self”. Remember: your colleague is trying to help.

2. Accept or challenge. Let’s divide this part into two.

Product or process improvement

We at the company get a lot of feedback. The entire team, from juniors to leads and managers, expresses their opinion on processes and projects, features in development or already released. We have to listen to everything and think about it. However, any offer can be accepted or challenged by a team or an employee.

I’ll give you an example. Our task was to come up with the design of the promotion in a new event. But the proposed option did not focus the player’s attention on significant monetization moments. The main mistakes:

• • rubies were not the obvious center of the composition;
  • the glow and background elements argue with the rubies in the foreground;
  • the user’s eyes run away from the abundance of equally bright elements. The main elements are not clearly separated from the secondary ones, and because of this, it is more difficult to read the information.

I suggested adding accents and adjusting the significance of the elements of the composition. We muted the background, and with this technique we distributed visual priorities in the layout.

Rubies and additional game icons (elements of feature monetization) have come to the fore. The background composition should guide, favorably serve the elements being sold, focusing the user’s attention on the center. I also attached a variant of the concept (argument) so that the team and I could immediately compare and decide on the appropriateness of edits.

Discussing with the team, we implemented the proposed recommendations. The offer is a significant monetization point. In this case, the cost of the error could be significant: decrease in total revenue and the effectiveness of a specific feature.

3. Growth zones

Even if the recommendations relate to potential improvements in the employee’s soft and hard skills, they can also be discussed. For example, we offer development points to an employee. However, he might like to develop in something else. Or he does not share our views and believes that his skills are developed at the proper level.

In this case, feedback is accepted or disputed according to the same principle: first we discuss, then we substantiate our opinion, supporting it with arguments, after that we analyze the situation from different sides, and eventually we make a decision. These are generally established processes/approaches to solving any issue in the company.

We believe that high-quality feedback helps to develop.

I’ll give you an example. We hired a person with no relevant experience in the IT field for the position of technical designer (jun). Due to the fact that he delved deeply into the processes and was open to feedback, the employee grew into a UI designer, and then into a team leader of a mini-team. And that’s in less than two years.

This example brings us to the next topic.

How to start a feedback loop

When feedback is reliably integrated into the workflow, you need to be ready not only to give, but also to accept a frank feedback in your direction.

Motivate employees to give feedback to managers

Usually we start with this adaptation of new employees. This approach gives us confidence that every newcomer will get acquainted with the company’s culture, understand the rules and the importance of feedback.

This item can be divided into stages. We encourage newcomers to give feedback in several areas.

• By game or project.

The task here is to describe your impressions of the game and suggest what and how you can improve. All our employees are experienced gamers. When starting work, they can look at the project with a fresh, unsoiled look, offer ideas or give feedback on game design, art, UX. It is important to us that at the start of work in the company, the employee feels involved in the common cause.

• On processes and communication.

We hold monthly one-on-one meetings with employees to identify unpleasant, destructive moments in work or communication with the team.

Include feedback in the plan of each meeting

Put feedback as the first or last item of the plan, ask colleagues to do the same. Everyone should get used to sharing their thoughts, first of all — managers. These can be both one-on-one meetings and feature presentations, where you encourage colleagues to express their thoughts and ideas on this matter.

Be grateful and express “signs of approval”

Speaking with your thoughts at a meeting (even asking a question at a general mit) requires courage. When an employee puts forward a proposal, the manager should thank him and further support him with “acceptance signs”, even if the idea is not so successful. They can be very simple:

• polite tone;
• approving facial expression;
• a nod;
• nice smile.

It is very important to broadcast the location — especially if the employee is speaking in front of the whole team for the first time. It is also important to meet questions openly and respond in a friendly manner.

As I said before, no one can know everything.

Let’s look at an example from the company’s practice. I think you will agree that some of the most sensitive to feedback are artists. They can be unsociable, often have a subtle mental organization and are not always ready to express their opinion to a large audience without a request. It is difficult to push them to give feedback.

We had a task ahead of us:

• speed up the work of a linear artist;
• reduce the number of recurring errors;
• reduce the number of edits and increase the efficiency of the team.

To achieve this, we posted the results of the artists’ team weekly in a general chat. After that, the art lead initiated weekly meetings where each artist could comment on the results and suggest improvements.

During these meetings, the lead showed approval and expressed gratitude in response to any suggestions. Thus, he showed that he is open to feedback and encourages it.

After each meeting, the manager summed up the results and created tasks on what and how to improve. After a few weeks, colleagues began to exchange opinions more readily and openly.

Moreover, it taught the team members to take criticism more professionally and take comments into account in subsequent tasks. As a result, employees began to ask themselves the question: “Can I do better?”. I think it’s very valuable.

Results:

• the team began to work more efficiently;
• employees began to learn faster;
• the quality of work has increased;
• the team formed a positive attitude to feedback.

Now we can apply the same approach to other departments.

Guiding feedback. Pushes the team to make decisions

The key role of the guiding feedback is to help your colleagues generate ideas, find references and analyze solutions, and develop critical thinking. The following phrases can help you:

• “don’t you think that…”;
• “can anyone suggest improvements or see the risks of the current implementation?”;
• “are you sure we have collected enough data/references?”.

In conclusion, I would like to note that it is natural for a person to avoid giving negative feedback, but this is part of the manager’s job. It is slightly different from the corrective one.

Examples of negative feedback:

• “you are not coping with the tasks set”;
• “you’re missing morning meetings”;
• “the quality of your work does not meet the general standards of the company.”

It is often important for us to make a good impression, or to appear friendly and reliable. However, the manager must be honest. And if you have a negative feedback, it is better to voice it earlier and help the employee to correct these points and find a solution.

If the manager does not give feedback on time, there is a risk that the employee will eventually be fired for non-compliance with the company’s standards. At the same time, he will not understand why he was fired, because he was not given negative feedback during the evaluation period and, as a result, he did not have the opportunity to make adjustments to his work.

How to give negative feedback

The most important rule: it is necessary to prepare for these meetings very responsibly and in advance. Collect examples and even formulate your arguments on paper, carefully considering the wording and what result you want to get from the employee in the end.

Rule 1. Find examples that would confirm that a person is not coping. Describe what mistakes were made. Explain which solution you think is right for a particular task.

Rule 2. Keep progress statistics. You need to be sure that this is not an isolated case. See if the number of errors or negative reviews of the employee’s work has increased. If the error happened for the first time, then we can’t say for sure that he constantly fails to do his job. Discuss the case with the employee. Find out if some personal situation may have affected his work. Find ways to help him improve and work more efficiently.

Rule 3. Be objective. Keep in mind: it will be worse if, in one-on-one meetings, you tell an employee that he is doing well and coping well, and then, for no apparent reason, assign him a control period.

You are a manager and are responsible for your employees. An objective and honest feedback about the positive and negative aspects of an employee is the minimum that you are obliged to give.