ThemeTrust & culture
CardCard 20 of 65
Questions5 to explore
StepBuild belonging

Feedback

How we give & receive feedback

Feedback that works in an office often quietly fails in a hybrid team, not because people care less but because the delivery conditions have changed.

Giving feedback well requires reading the other person, picking the right moment, and letting the conversation breathe. In a hybrid team, you lose the hallway, the coffee, and the casual check-in where that kind of feedback often happened naturally. What replaces it has to be chosen deliberately.

Receiving feedback in a remote setting can feel more exposing too. On a video call, there is nowhere to look except at each other, and the lack of ambient context makes a pointed comment feel more stark than it would face-to-face in a busy office.

The fix is not more feedback processes but clearer norms: what kind of feedback is okay to put in writing, what needs a voice conversation, and how quickly the team expects to hear something after a piece of work lands.

Make it explicitAgree on two norms: which kind of feedback goes in writing and which needs a live conversation, and how long someone can expect to wait before hearing back on a piece of work.

How strong hybrid teams handle it

The same building block, handled well. These are patterns from teams that work well across locations, offered as illustrations to react to, not rules to copy.

Positive feedback out loud

Strong hybrid teams make a point of giving positive feedback in shared channels, not just in private messages. What gets praised publicly signals what the team values, and remote members especially need that signal.

Hard feedback in a call

Teams that handle feedback well reserve critical or corrective feedback for a synchronous conversation, then follow up with a brief written note. Tone is too easy to misread in text.

Agree on cadence

Rather than waiting for problems to surface, teams build a light feedback cadence into existing rituals, a quick retro question, a one-on-one check-in, so people hear from each other regularly rather than only when something goes wrong.

Make space for asking

Hybrid teams where people feel comfortable asking 'Can I get some feedback on this?' have healthier feedback cultures than those that rely entirely on managers or seniors to initiate it.

Questions for your team

Use these on your own or in a group. There are no right answers, only better conversations.

When did you last give a teammate meaningful feedback, and how did you deliver it?
How does someone on this team know when their work has landed well?
Is there a type of feedback that feels harder to give or receive in this team's hybrid setup?
Does the team have any shared understanding of how feedback is supposed to work, or is everyone operating on their own assumptions?
What would make it easier to give feedback to someone in a different location than you?

Watch for

Written feedback looks precise but is often interpreted much more harshly than intended, especially by remote team members who cannot hear the speaker's tone.
When positive feedback only happens privately, office staff get it in person and remote staff get a brief message, which quietly creates a two-tier experience of recognition.
In a hybrid team, silence after a piece of work is often just silence, but it tends to read as disapproval, especially for remote workers who cannot see that everyone is simply busy.