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Writer's pictureashish joshi

Creating a Feedback Culture as a Scrum Master

Every company wants a simplified and effective work process. To obtain this cultivating an established feedback culture in an organization is necessary. Established feedback culture means giving, accepting, and implementing constructive feedback within, without any reminder or force. The importance of feedback culture can be easily explained from the words, “It’s very important to have a feedback loop where you are constantly thinking about what you’ve done and how you could be doing it better” of Elon Musk now a well-known entrepreneur and CEO of Tesla Motors.



Moving towards the reason of creating a feedback culture we will learn some advantages and importance of it which are as below

  • It overlays growth mindset hence, providing higher productivity and retention of employees.

  • Provides direct communication and increases work satisfaction hence providing increased commitment from employees.

  • It helps in reducing stress and conflict creating a healthy and happy environment.

  • It helps in creating trust within the team so that they can voice out their concerns and ideas.

  • Foster development in team members by highlighting their strengths and weaknesses

Without proper support and a working environment where they can freely share their feedback, the employees and the organization cannot grow with their full capability. But most of the time this feedback culture is so underrated because the persons giving and receiving the direct feedback takes it as a threat and are scared of sharing it in order not to hurt their feelings. So developing and conveying this feedback should be done very carefully and with concern in such a way that it should not make other person feel bad but also solve the problem at hand.


Understanding some snags while constructing the feedback

Avoid Being Judgmental

While providing feedback we must keep in mind to not be judgmental and describe it as it seems. Most of the time we judge the behaviour and consider that person means the same as we have already assumed but instead we must describe the incident or behaviour saying we felt so and it may not be the same, in-short avoid evaluating it.

Avoid Interpretation

We most of the time interpret and analyse the situation forming an opinion that may not the same. We must avoid interpreting the situations as we see and instead observe some exact behaviour to make our decisions. We also should avoid the attitude of the person and focus on the points they are trying to discuss. To achieve this we can use adjectives and adverbs in our feedback more for better effect.

Balance Positive and Negative Feedback

We always must balance the positive and negative feedback. There should not be only positive as well as negative ones as this may create distrust between you and receiving person making feedback ineffective.

Avoid Overloading the Feedback

When provided a load of feedback person become too cautious and confused about his behaviour making him unable to take any decision. When given several feedbacks he/she may get confused about what to be changed. So it is always better to select the most important two to three points and provide feedback.


Let’s move towards creating a feedback culture

“Culture is a total of shared habits and expectations.”



The easiest way to create any culture is by creating a habit of it. In developing a feedback culture we can easily include it as short time sessions into a regular retrospective. To easily and actively apply in this short time we should divide the team into two groups where they will provide feedback to each other. The guideline should be followed as below for successful implementation and to avoid snags.


1. Explain the constructive purpose of feedback

Doing so, receiving end gets easy pointers in understanding intention to provide this feedback.

2. Describing specifically your observations

Providing specific feedback will avoid generally judging the receiving person. It makes it easy to understand the point and also helps to avoid describe, what the receiver usually do.

3. Describe your reactions

This helps another person in understanding the consequences and impact he is causing by his actions.

4. Provide others with an opportunity to respond

After providing feedback always wait for a response if a person hesitates then openly ask for their opinion.

5. Provide specific suggestion

By providing the suggestion with practical and feasible examples on your feedback will let them know that you have thought beyond your evaluation and help them to improve the situation.

6. Summarize and also express support

Overall summarize actions points but not the negative ones while highlighting the main points you want to convey. Along with this let them know that you are always there to help and support them. Always try to end with a positive note reminding them of their ability and confidence.


About Advance Agility


We, at Advance Agility, are the new-age Agile Coaching, Consulting and IT services company. We enable end-to-end Digital Transformation. Agile execution is integral to our being. We are doing SAFe implementation with small, medium and large organization across the globe. Our vision is to be the leading Agile execution player globally. To keep adding value at every process stage. We are on a mission to empower our clients, move from concept to cash in the shortest sustainable lead time by adopting human centric approach to business agility. Embracing the change is in our DNA. Things that keep us apart are Quicker and Seamless execution with End-to-end gamut of services. Our Global presence and Stellar Track Record give us an edge over our competitor.


Connect with us at advanceagility.com to learn about SAFe and SAFe Implementation. Write to us at contact@advanceagilty.com for any agile training or consulting needs. We are always looking for competent agile trainers as well. So if you are a good trainer or want to become one, do get in touch with us to that we can learn, grow and achieve together.


Connect with us for applying the Scrum Master role within a SAFe® enterprise https://www.advanceagility.com/scrummaster

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