The one thing you can do on a weekly basis to get the best out of your teams

Ever since reading Billion Dollar Coach about the legendary executive coach Bill Campbell, I’ve been obsessed with how to be a better manager, colleague, feedback-giver, and leader.

One of the principles of being a good coach is being able to fire up a team and get them energized to do good work. Teams, not individuals, produce great products for customers and outcomes for the company

So how do you keep a team inspired and motivated?

The broad answer is this: “giving frequent, positive feedback”. This seems logical because when you give positive feedback and showcase people's strengths, they feel seen and valued, which motivates them to do even better.

The problem with that answer though, is that even though it's true, it's not actually that helpful.

That’s because it doesn’t tell you how to give feedback. Is “great job building that feature” during morning standup sufficient? Is it better to tell your direct report during a 1:1 that you really liked the recent document they wrote up and are seeing lots of improvement? If you end every meeting with “Thanks everyone for your contributions”, that’s pretty frequent positivity, isn’t it?

Everyone gives this kind of feedback all the time.

But these are not motivating, energizing, or helpful types of feedback because they lack specificity.

If you say “great job on X” the team has no idea why you think it was great. Was it because they hustled hard to hit a tight deadline? Or because one person rose to the occasion and provided leadership? Did the team exceed expectations with the final result? So on with the other examples.

At best, vague “Great jobs” make people feel slightly happy in the moment to be called out. At worst, they have the opposite effect and make people feel you haven't paid enough attention to see the specific reasons the work went well.

And the truth is, as a manager, you may not always know exactly why a project went well.

But let me tell you a secret – that’s ok. You can make simple changes to notice specifics. You definitely don't need to be in every meeting, watching every interaction, and making detailed notes on everything teams do. Your job is to have enough of a view on what’s going on so you can confidently comment on specific aspects of the project. And here are the easy ways I get that context quickly.

Listen for problems people are having. People are frequently overwhelmed, confused, scared, bored, etc. especially at a startup. You can hear these if you listen carefully at stand ups, or if you ask “How’s the project going?” at a group meeting. When people mention what's blocking them, make note.
Over time, look for patterns in the problems. Is one person commonly blocking others? Is one person consistently being blocked? Does one person have more context on this project than others? Does anyone seem particularly dejected or unmotivated?

I listen for these problems and patterns over time and watch how they eventually unfold, specifically looking for the challenges the team is facing and how they're overcoming them. Sometimes I'll follow up with individuals outside the main meeting to ask how things are going and make notes in a word doc if I think I’ll forget.

Over time, a challenge will eventually resolve – perhaps the team eventually completes a tedious project that they found boring, or completes multiple important projects even though it slowed them down. Perhaps the final outcome exceeded expectations.

Once a problem has been resolved, I use the following framework to look for where I can give specific positive feedback. For each category, I look for whether the team exemplified:

Leadership: Did one or a subset of people work extra hard, have extra meetings, coordinate the project, or bring outside context in a way that guided others? Was there one person who often answered the question “we’re stuck, what should we do?” Or was there one person calming the group, acting as an emotional anchor?
Speed: Did the team hit their deadline? Were they cognizant of the deadline throughout the project? Did they talk about it and strategize around it?
Collaboration: Did the team solve hard challenges together? Did they stay coordinated on decision making? Did they over-communicate and share information frequently?
Execution: Does the outcome look / function flawlessly? Does it do more than was expected? Have you gotten positive feedback from others about the project? Did the team encounter a particularly difficult challenge in execution? Did they come up with a clever way to solve it?
Flexibility: Did the team do a good job of handling outside conflicts? If other projects or priorities interrupted their work, did they easily re-orient to the new objectives? Did they manage to get multiple things done on time?
Adapting to novelty: Did new people work together more closely than they would have otherwise? Did anyone gain a new skill as a result of this project? Did they try a new process? Did they have to overcome uncertainty? Were any other aspects of the project unexpected?

If the team exemplified any of these attributes on this list in overcoming a challenge, commend them on it by crafting specific positive feedback for individuals, or to the team at large, at the next meeting.

A structure I find helpful is "I've noticed [X specific challenge]. Thank you for [specific thing you did to overcome the challenge]. You helped us achieve [Z result]."

Some examples are “Janet and Mark, I know the project has was technically challenging because of the requirement for it work on multiple applications. Thank you for meeting with each other so frequently to coordinate on it, it really helped us stay on top of the deadline.” Or “Danielle, I’ve noticed you have a lot of context on this project, thanks for sharing it with the rest of the team and guiding them on the solution. Everyone's learning a lot more about the technology because of your input.” Or “I see there's a lot of uncertainty because we're learning the requirements of this project as we go, it’s great how everyone is staying committed to the timeline and making smart decisions with the info you have. We're going to stay ahead of our competitors because of your consistency!”

The more specific you can be about the challenge and the solution, the more your team will feel seen and valued. Adding the result at the end helps people feel like they contributed to a larger goal within the organization.

Providing this kind of positive feedback on a weekly basis will help your team feel recognized for their contributions and fired up to keep taking on new challenges.