Do these work requests sound familiar?

• “Please take our employee survey.”
• “What’s your experience as a member of this team?
• “Answer these 5 anonymous questions.”
• “Please complete my 360 so I can become better in my role and as a human.”

Wherever you turn these days, you’re being asked for feedback as well as your opinion on a range of issues related to all of your many roles, both inside your organization and outside. Customer, parent, voter, community member, professional, alum, media consumer,  etc., you’re getting requests to comment on a range of issues.

Giving and receiving feedback is valuable. How do you avoid the fatigue associated with it, especially when you’re asking for feedback?

The short answer: Make giving feedback “simple, social and fun” as much as possible. And voluntary too.  We humans like our autonomy; we don’t want to be forced to do things against our will.

The longer answer along with tips: “Simple, social and fun” is the guiding mantra of Dr. BJ Fogg, the creator of Tiny Habits and the father of behavior design  “Simple, social and fun” serves as shorthand for features or qualities that you can use to encourage people to act, such as answering your requests for feedback.

(Note that simple, social and fun also works well to help make behavior changes stick. That’s when you and others want to change the way you act, which is another topic.)

Having studied with BJ, I’ve incorporated simple, social and fun in soliciting feedback in these ways:   

1. Make it easy for individuals to give you feedback. People are more likely to respond when they can take a simple action that doesn’t require much effort, time, stress, or exertion. To say it another way, get rid of the friction. Keep your requests short and focused. This also means testing your survey questions and format in advance to ensure your survey is easy to complete.

Tips to make it simple

• Aim for 5 minutes or less for pulse/transactional surveys, asking only what you truly need to know now, not everything you want to know.
• If your survey is online, make sure it is mobile-friendly with a clean design and a short URL.
• Space out surveys over a 12 – 18 month cycle.

2. We humans are social animals influenced by others. When we know that our colleagues, peers, and others giving feedback, we’re more likely to do so ourselves. Being aware that others are involved boosts our motivation, accountability, and a sense of belonging.

Tips to make it social 

• Set aside time at the end of a meeting or webinar to ask for feedback from participants, either about what they just experienced or another topic for which you’re seeking feedback.
• Conduct focus groups either on their own or combined with a short survey.  Or simply ask for feedback when you’re talking one-on-one with individuals.
• Be transparent about your purpose. (This is especially valuable for 360 surveys, which tend to be on the longer side.) Tell people why you’re asking, explain how their input will be used, and what will happen next so they see the perceived value and realize their effort can make a difference.

3. Fun is all about appealing to people’s emotion. You’ll reduce the friction when individuals perceive that doing something is fun or at least it triggers a positive emotion. People are more likely to comply if the request feels more like a reward than a punishment, especially if they don’t have to exert much effort.

Tips to make it fun

• For surveys, include 1-3 open-text questions so people can share freely. Many individuals value the chance to explain themselves, which serves as an emotional release.
• Fun is also related to celebration, which is one of BJ’s Tiny Habits “hacks.” The idea is that you’ll feel good — a la  “shine” — when you provide feedback. So give people something to celebrate, such as knowing that you’ll make a contribution to a food bank, animal shelter, or another cause as thanks for their feedback.
• If you don’t have the budget to donate to a cause, as least thank them for their comments and let them know when to expect results.

Any time you gather feedback, make sure  you take time to close the loop and show the impact of the responses you receive. By sharing results and—more importantly— the actions taken in response, you’ll be demonstrating that you value your respondents and  their feedback. And they’ll feel better that their responses didn’t go into another black hole.

Case study : Special Scale + Soul™ webinar: Sign up now for 10/1 at 11 am ET

 To learn how feedback from a culture survey has influenced Scale + Soul™, join us for this webinar. On Wed. Oct. 1 from 11-11:30 am ET, my client Erin McAuley, Chief People Officer of Springline Advisory, will be talking with Chris Gomez, the Barrett Values Centre (BVC) CEO.

For Springline, culture is their business strategy, not a side project. In this Q&A session, Erin will share how Scale + Soul™ is built on using the BVC survey to identify team members’ values and then working to support everyone living these values at work. As Springline continues to acquire new firms, we’ve designed a custom cultural due diligence process, which also uses the BVC survey.

To learn more and sign up, go to cultural due diligence webinar.

If you have any questions, please ask me. This is truly fun and innovative work!