PyOhio
Give Feedback Fearlessly
By
Aisha Blake
Constructive feedback can be difficult to receive gracefully and even harder to give effectively. In this session, we’ll discuss why peer-to-peer feedback is necessary for a healthy team dynamic, introduce techniques for sharing feedback with team members, and work through example scenarios.
Saturday 2 p.m.–2:45 p.m. in Barbie Tootle
For many of us, it’s hard to speak up when we notice our teammates struggling. We don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings or make things awkward. Sometimes it just feels like too much work to organize our thoughts into a coherent message that could help someone who’s falling behind move forward. Even knowing when it’s time to draw attention to a problem can be challenging.
We’ll start the session by covering our bases. When should we address uncomfortable situations at work? How can we keep personal feelings from derailing the conversation? And what happens afterward? Can we evaluate the effectiveness of our feedback? How can we move forward, growing as a team? We’ll answer these questions as we begin to build the skills necessary to provide teammates with specific, actionable feedback.
From there, the remainder of the time will be spent in hands-on role-playing scenarios. Participants will be broken up into small groups and given several scenarios to work through. Each scenario will outline a challenging situation from multiple points of view to help participants further explore the techniques and principles covered in the lecture portion of the session.
Aisha Blake
Aisha Blake arrived in Detroit in 2013 to serve as a Jesuit Volunteer and ended up on the leadership team for Girl Develop It Detroit. This inevitably led to a deep love of the tech community in Detroit and a desire to put down roots. She has since become the owner of a cat and a house. Aisha has taught web development to people of all ages in bootcamps, workshops, and online courses. She currently works as a developer for Detroit Labs. She is down for anything as long as there are puppies and/or karaoke involved.
