What’s this exactly?

After working in several companies and volunteer organisations, with very small and very large teams, there was always a common issue. Feedback.

This happened while at organisations that had evaluation processes or where spontaneously day-to-day feedback was preferred. It happened while working with waterfall methodologies, agile or with none at all... all lacked a common time for teams to really stop and talk!

Talk about how we feel, what we like, dislike and how to improve as a team and enjoy our work even more!

Yes, most of us gave feedback to one another, but… we were mainly addressing superficial stuff, or just work related processes, so…

We envision a session focused on the team:

• if we liked working with each other;

• how we can improve and be even better at working with each other;

How do we diagnose that a team needs this?

Well, we found out that the easiest way is when the team can’t answer very simple things:

• What’s the thing that the person on your left most dislikes that some/all team members do?

• What’s the thing that a person on your right most likes about the team?

(Those are just a few examples..)

But…

Do you know this? If you do great, maybe you don’t need this! 🎉

If you don’t… maybe you agree this is important, maybe you disagree and find that this is too personal. Anyhow, give this text a chance and read the next couple of paragraphs…

I can only advocate that whenever I could answer those questions, the teams, where I was working, were far more proficient and pleasanter to work.

We experienced this in a large range of teams: from software development, medical teams, teams to summer camp volunteers; agile teams and waterfall teams; both small (4 people) up to larger teams (12 people).

Still, this is just an opinion and we truly agree with…

“If we have data, let’s look at data. If all we have are opinions, let’s go with mine.”― Jim Barksdale

So check this Google’s study on what matters to a team’s success.

TLDR: What mattered most: Trust.

Why the deck?

After more than 2 years doing successful feedback sessions on multiple teams, we noticed its’ bigger expansion blocker to other teams was.. it was complex for anyone to just start without help…

So..

We understood that the next step must be to create something that makes these sessions doable in 2 minutes without any help.

L∞pGain was born!

The deck is simply a tool to make the sessions easy to do without effort.

This deck is composed by 50 playing cards, distributed among 4 categories:

Motto, Positive Reinforcement, Improvements and Personal Questions

Each category has questions of 3 different levels (of depth):

• Level 1 (*) is associated with superficial questions

• Level 2 (**) with intermediate questions

• Level 3 (***) with deeper questions.

It’s recommended that the selected level is adapted to the current status of the team (i.e. if it’s a recent team and people don’t know each other well, Level 1 is recommended).

Curious? It’s easy to get a deck... and set up a session in 2 minutes just by following the instructions 👇

Instructions: 10 simple steps

(it’s waaaay easier that building furniture!)

1. Gather the team.

2. Make sure that everybody has a pen and a sheet of paper (ignore this if remote)

3. Set the timer: point to 10 minutes per person + 10 minutes for startup and closing (ex: 5 people = 60m) — For each session to be productive, the timer should always be visible to everyone — either if it’s physical or digital… and make sure it’s respected

4. Select 1 card per category (4 in total), either completely random or selected according to a specific level.

5. Read them out loud and give 5 minutes for everyone to note down the answers to each card (Personal Questions card is about themselves; the Positive and Improvements about each other team member; Motto is just to set the session spirit).

6. After that, ask for a volunteer to be the first to receive feedback in the session. Going clockwise, every team member shares the answers to the Positive Reinforcement and Improvements cards about the volunteer (without it being a conversation).

7. When it reaches the volunteer, they can briefly comment the feedback received and then share the answer to the personal question.

8. Proceed close-wise to the next person to receive feedback. Follow the same rules described above. Stop when everybody has received feedback (if you are reaching the time limit decide together if you should proceed or stop and continue next session)

9. Stop when timer marks 5 min left or there is no one left: Ask for comments on the session itself, and how people felt about and on it.

• Should we schedule the next session? Was the time adequate?

• If the answer is yes, if the answer is yes then how often? (monthly, every quarter…)?

10. Great! It’s done!

Note: Cards picked during a session can be kept aside on the following sessions to avoid being repetitive. You have 12 of each to be able to do 1 session per month without repeating.

It’s easier to understand with an example…

Let’s assume a random pick of cards… and you could end up with:

Motto:

• This is not a shit sandwich session. Praise what you see as positive, and suggest improvements for things — you think — can be done differently.

Positive reinforcement:

• 3 situations where I noticed _ did something that really helped the team

Improvements:

• 3 situations that _ struggled/struggles to deal with.

Personal question:

• What would be the simple indulgence or gift you would really appreciate when tired or under stress

Want to start?

• Jump by our website and get a deck!

Note: We skipped crowdfunding and have printing the first batch of 100 that flew in days. We have a 2nd edition now that has 50x more decks that should keep with the demand for a while.

Just one more thing…

Did your team have a feedback session?

• Was it useful?

• Did you follow this exact process or tweaked it somehow?

If you can spare a couple of minutes, please drop us a message at any of our social networks to share some thoughts on this and how we can improve it.

We deeply appreciate it!