Uh the Lightning talk on how to identify effective feedback. Before we get started a quick introduction about myself, I'm Sh Rajan. I work as a product manager with Amazon, specifically Amazon music, focusing on the subscription engagement and retention of the subscription customers within Amazon music outside of work.

I'm also a chapter leader uh at a nonprofit called Products By Women Products By Women is a diverse global community for women in innovation and tech. Other than this, I also volunteer with women in clean tech and sustainability community. It is a network to further the roles of women in growing the green economy and making a positive impact on the environment. My life's motto is all of us have wings and all we need to do is fly now uh to the topic of discussion today. Uh The agenda here is the agenda. So first to learn more about effective feedback, we have to first understand what the feedback is, the role of the feedback in our day to day careers. What the qualities of an effective feedback is. How do you know when you receive an effective feedback? How do you identify if the feedback is effective or not. So we will briefly cover that and the primary emphasis is going to be on how do you receive effective feedback? Yes. You know what, why your feedback is important, you know, how to identify an effective feedback. But how do you ensure you receive an effective feedback? And if time permits, we'll also open the floor for questions. So this is pretty much what you're going to be listening for the next uh nine minutes. Let's get started. So first, the role of a feedback, what is the feedback? Any discussion? Be it an informal hallway chat at work or a formal one on one with your manager?

Anything if it's regarding your performance skills or anything that plays a role in your ability to work within the team is a feedback. Feedback is something that helps reinforce positive behavior, identify the blind spots uh in your skills and helps you move forward towards the goal that you have set for yourself at work. So why is it important? Especially for women in tech? So feedback increases employee retention.

There are many studies that says highly engaged workers receive at least a weekly feedback. And if you are a woman, it may be less frequent than your male coworkers. So researches show that women are 20% less likely to receive actionable feedback that can directly contribute to their performance and growth at work. So it is really important especially for women in tech to increase your retention at work if you receive effective feedback.

And other than this, it also enhances the employee morale of the team and it facilitates productivity as well as work-life balance. Specifically focusing on work life balance. Uh Toyota, the car manufacturer was an early adopter and reducing the uh shift hours from eight hours to six hours and increase the productivity of the workers by around 20%. Ok. So now we know why it is important. But when is it actually helpful? When is the last time that you actually received the feedback that helped you grow on the kid? While effective feedback is important, it is best that it's timely a timely feedback, especially from your manager facilitates growth, skill building and gives you a sense of belonging in the company.

In fact, timely feedback is consistently ranked as a top driver of employee satisfaction. So this is pretty much the role of feedback in your growth. Now, how do you identify an effective feedback? I'll call out three unique qualities of effective feedback along with an example and then we'll move forward to how you can ensure you receive this effective feedback. So one an effective feedback is cat, most of you have heard about smart goals. So cat feedback is pretty much the same. But a minor modification of it, Scott stands for specific constructive actionable, relevant and timely effective feedback is futuristic. It does not dwell in on some past happening whereas it relates a past occurrence or an ongoing recurrence to something that you can act on in the future, effective feedback focuses on the process, not the person. Yes, you have accomplished something or you would not do well on something. Yes, but the feedback as such does not focus on you or as a person, but rather the actions or the process that led to a certain outcome. So now that we know what an effective feedback or what the qualities of an effective feedback is, let's go over it through an example. So there is a quick um uh sample appreciation from your manager saying great job with the presentation.

Earlier today, I liked how you benchmarked this particular feature across R mh competitors. And it helped to build stakeholder confidence for this upcoming review with a particular team, consider highlighting a particular matrix. So this feedback is highly effective because I've highlighted some key uh factors of the feedback.

Specifically, it has swallowed up immediately. It's timely the f the feed, the presentation happened earlier today and the feedback was received immediately on the same day. It's pressure on your mind so you can understand what this feedback is about and how you can apply it.

Then it says I like how you benchmark the particular feature. Yes, you did a great presentation. But how is it relevant for your career? How is it relevant for you to grow? So this specifically talks about what you did well in a presentation and also how is it relevant because it shows you stakeholder confidence has improved. So that's how it's relevant. That particular feedback on your benchmarking is relevant because it built on stakeholder confidence.

Now, yes, all this is past appreciation. You are also you are also receiving specific feedback on what worked well. But now for the next one, for the futuristic one, what should you do? So it gives a constructive feedback on highlight this particular metrics because it's relevant to that particular team. So maybe uh it's the finance team that you're going to connect with. And revenue generation from a particular feature is really important. So it's important to call out that you have to focus on this particular feature in your upcoming review so that you get a buy in order a doc approval or anything along those lines. So this is pretty much the qualities of an effective feedback. And now most of us might have a great opportunity to receive feedback or a better relationship with our manager to receive or ask for specific feedbacks. But in general, it is important to know how to receive or how to ensure you get effective feedbacks. So now let's move on to the final topic of our discussion which is receiving effective feedback. So when you receive effective feedback, it is important to know it's a two way communication as someone who's receiving feedback, it's on you to facilitate an environment that makes it easy for the feedback provider to share their thoughts.

You have to convey your intent that you rely on the feedback provider to give you effective feedback, establish healthy boundaries. So it's easy to get defensive, especially when you receive negative feedback. But it's on you to offer a response to the criticism. Explain the situation and your interpretation of the feedback, invite an honest conversation, be positive or negative feedback, share your insights, your findings and have a conversation on how you're going to approach it going forward next, setting expectations. So for any predetermined employee feedback loops, like a conversation with your manager set clear expectations. What are your goals? Do you want to get promoted from this level to a particular level at a certain timeline? Communicate that are you looking for feedback on specific skills or focus areas?

Do you need help identifying them or what do you need feedback with exactly, make it easy for the other person to provide you effective feedback and all of us are different. And so the medium that we want our feedback to be communicated will also be different. So for me having a one on one call uh with the feedback provider, a video call, just having the conversation, talking through the feedback, both positive and negative is really helpful, but not everyone works like me, you can have written communications that you can slowly think to reflect.

You can have in person sessions. If you our office has now returned to office video calls or do you want your manager to send you a personal email or these are the things that I've been noticing this week, you are doing a really good job with this specific aspects and not a lot in this, this is your opportunity.

So identify specific mediums in which you want your recurring feedback to happen. Now, recurrence frequency is really important as I called out in one of the earlier slides, it has to be timely, but in addition to being timely, it has to be recurring, set up a bi weekly or a biweekly one on one with the feedback providers. Don't just restrict yourself to the quarterly or half a reviews that your company asks you to set up, have a recurring frequency feedback sessions set up with your feedback providers that paves way to our next topic, getting a 360 degree feedback. Most companies have a set of role guidelines. For example, I work with Amazon. So it has a role guidelines on uh product manager, senior product manager, group, product manager. These are the expectations of this role, hard skills, soft skills, generally as a person, everything.

So if your company does not have role guidelines as such, the first action item for you is to connect with the peers, your stakeholders and to put together this doc that helps the feedback provider evaluate you or provide you feedback along those specific aspects of it. And 360 degree feedback is important, especially with the focus on self and cross section and finally have an action plan and track your progress. Yes, you are receiving effective feedback. But what, what's next to ensure you make the best use of your time effort and the feedback providers share an action plan. How are you going to apply the feedback if it's positive? How you, how are you extending that to more scenarios? How is it aiding your success? Acknowledge the feedback. If it's negative share, what steps you are taking to improve? Do you need any additional guidance from the feedback provider or do you want your feedback provider, like the manager to facilitate additional opportunities so that you can address the feedback?

So always end your recurring feedback sessions with an action plan and continuously track progress that brings us to the end of the time. Um I know we don't have enough questions uh to continue on the call, but feel free to pass that on the chat and reach out to me on linkedin. We can connect offline as well. Thank you.