Feedback Conversations
Feedback Conversations
Once, at the end of the semester, you sit down with the person you report to and have a real conversation about how the work is going, in both directions. Then each of you submits a short reflection saying it happened and what you took from it.
There is no survey and no rating form. Filling out a scored questionnaire about someone you see every week is awkward, and it produces a document instead of a conversation. The conversation is the point. Learning to give a colleague a specific, useful, uncomfortable piece of feedback in person is the single most transferable skill in this course.
What Is Graded
The reflection, not the feedback. You get credit for having the conversation and submitting your reflection. Nothing anyone says about you affects your grade, in either direction.
That is deliberate. If the feedback you received moved your grade, everyone would learn to say pleasant things, and the instrument would be worth nothing. It also keeps the course fair across employees and volunteers: a conversation costs the same thirty minutes whether you are paid for nine hours a week or volunteering for four.
Who Talks to Whom
The same pairing as the weekly updates. You already send this person an update every week, so they have twelve weeks of evidence and you have nothing to explain from scratch.
| You are | You meet with |
|---|---|
| Club VPs | Their own co-presidents |
| Club co-presidents | Their co-president, and Soraya Cullimore or Lena Lizunova |
| Program VPs | The program co-presidents |
| Program co-presidents | Scott Murff, and each other |
Co-president pairs also meet with each other. You two have more visibility into each other’s work than anyone else in the program, and no form would capture it.
When
| Conversation held | Reflection due |
|---|---|
| Nov 17 to Dec 4 | Fri, Dec 4, 11:59 PM |
Schedule the conversation yourself. If a pair has not met by Fri, Dec 4, use that session’s Practice block.
How the Conversation Goes
Thirty minutes, both directions. The leader goes first, then asks for feedback on their own leadership. A conversation where only one person hears anything is a performance review, not a feedback conversation.
Structure:
- Strengths. What is working. Be specific enough that they know which behavior to keep.
- One thing to work on. Not three. One, chosen because it would make the most difference.
- Support. What you can do to help.
- Turn it around. The person who spoke first now asks: what should I be doing differently?
The question to ask, in both directions: which way did I miss, too little or too much? Every principle has two failure modes, so “you were not courageous enough” and “you fought for ego” are different corrections. Directional is far easier to answer than a rating, and it is the only kind of answer you can act on. See Principles.
What to Talk About
Four dimensions, the same ones used across the strategy program. The Principles page is the other half of that vocabulary, and either one works as an agenda.
Ownership. Whether they drive the work.
| Where they might be | What it looks like |
|---|---|
| Early | Waits to be told. Work stops when the next step is unclear. Blockers surface at the deadline |
| Solid | Owns a defined piece and finishes it. Raises blockers early. Still needs the plan handed to them |
| Strong | Owns their area end to end and pulls others along. Reprioritizes when things change, and what comes back is better than what was asked for |
Collaboration. Whether people want them on their team.
| Where they might be | What it looks like |
|---|---|
| Early | Works alone and the team finds out late. Takes feedback as criticism, or agrees and changes nothing |
| Solid | Reliable teammate. Reviews others’ work when asked, shares context, acts on feedback next time |
| Strong | Raises the standard of the whole team. Handles disagreement without it becoming personal, and changes position publicly when someone else is right |
Communication. The artifacts: updates, emails, decks, announcements.
| Where they might be | What it looks like |
|---|---|
| Early | Updates are late or absent. The reader has to ask what happened |
| Solid | Answer first, support underneath. Someone reading the first line knows the state of the work |
| Strong | Writes for the specific reader. Produces the thing the team reuses |
Your twelve weekly updates are the evidence here. Pull them up during the conversation.
Stakeholder Presence. How they show up in front of someone senior or outside the club: recruiters, alumni, firm contacts, faculty, students from other majors.
| Where they might be | What it looks like |
|---|---|
| Early | Avoids the contact. Silent, or speaks and creates confusion someone else repairs |
| Solid | Prepared and credible on their own work. Does not yet steer the conversation |
| Strong | The firm contact asks for this person by name. Surfaces a risk before anyone else finds it |
Nobody is strong on all four. The useful conversation is about one of them.
The Reflection
Short. Four things, submitted by each person independently:
- Who you met with and when
- The one thing you are working on next
- One thing you committed to as a result
- One thing you asked them to do differently
Write about yourself, not about them. This is not a place to record what someone else is bad at. If something came up that needs more than a conversation, bring it to Scott, Soraya, or your faculty advisor directly. It does not travel through a reflection.