Although I agree fully that by far the best way of offering feedback is by talking to that person directly. I do think we have to face the fact that at this point in time a significant amount of people find it very hard to speak to people directly about things. Even when their intention is to provide constructive criticism, they will often rather avoid the confrontation for fear of creating grudges, damaging their reputation, their career, etc. It also simply takes some amount of training and social skills to deliver criticism in such a way that the target of that feedback will perceive it as the intent to improve them, rather than an attempt to simply criticize them or even bring them down.
On the other hand I think it's important for everyone I think to work on both their ability and willingness to -receive- feedback, as well as to provide it. An environment where people feel comfortable talking to other people with their feedback will only really come about when people on the receiving end of feedback keep an open-mind to that feedback and treat it as an honest attempt from the other person to help them improve themselves. In that sense it's a shame we don't have a 360-degree feedback process in affect with Mozilla at the moment, I firmly believe that can positively contribute to creating an atmosphere where providing your co-workers with feedback on the things they are doing and how they're doing them is simply part of day-to-day operations. In the end as long as there's people uncomfortable/afraid/unable to share their feedback directly, it would still be a good thing if they provide that feedback to their 'leaders' (managers/module owners/etc.) as they will hopefully be able to take that feedback and use it in a meaningful way to improve others, this is part of their job after all. I think this form of indirect feedback is much preferred over building up long term irritations or simply spewing negative comments over the watercooler :-). Just my two cents, Bas ----- Original Message ----- From: "Robert O'Callahan" <rob...@ocallahan.org> To: "Brian Smith" <br...@briansmith.org> Cc: "Mozilla Product Builds" <dev-bui...@lists.mozilla.org>, "dev-platform" <dev-platform@lists.mozilla.org>, "Gregory Szorc" <g...@mozilla.com> Sent: Saturday, August 3, 2013 1:28:39 PM Subject: Re: On indirect feedback On Sat, Aug 3, 2013 at 12:43 PM, Brian Smith <br...@briansmith.org> wrote: > I think some people may interpret what you say in that last paragraph the > opposite of how you intend. I am pretty sure you mean something like "If > somebody starts to complain to you about somebody else, then stop them and > ask them to first talk to the person they were trying to complain about." > Yes, that's exactly what I mean. Thanks. Rob -- Jtehsauts tshaei dS,o n" Wohfy Mdaon yhoaus eanuttehrotraiitny eovni le atrhtohu gthot sf oirng iyvoeu rs ihnesa.r"t sS?o Whhei csha iids teoa stiheer :p atroa lsyazye,d 'mYaonu,r "sGients uapr,e tfaokreg iyvoeunr, 'm aotr atnod sgaoy ,h o'mGee.t" uTph eann dt hwea lmka'n? gBoutt uIp waanndt wyeonut thoo mken.o w * * _______________________________________________ dev-platform mailing list dev-platform@lists.mozilla.org https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/dev-platform _______________________________________________ dev-platform mailing list dev-platform@lists.mozilla.org https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/dev-platform
