Peer feedback program
Who it applies to
Generally speaking, there are two groups of people involved with Hypha:
- Established member: People who hold full membership in the co-op and are actively involved in the governance of Hypha. Generally able to act without support (but support is always nice).
- Member path: People who work with the co-op with the intention to co-govern Hypha in the future. This can include new members who still need support, probationary members, and contractors or employees who are on the path to probationary membership.
- Non-member path: People who work with us to fulfill project goals and with no intention to co-govern Hypha. This can be a contractor or an organization (dev shop). The peer feedback program applies to members and people on the member path.
Process
- Every January, all participants will engage in the peer feedback program using peer.haus.
- Before beginning, all participants will review a one-pager document (to-be-produced) on soliciting, giving, and receiving effective feedback.
- Each individual will identify three specific areas they would like feedback on. These areas should be co-op focused items that peers have a path to forming an opinion on (i.e., Internal work, mannerisms, attitude, but not client-project-specific tasks). Open-ended questions are encouraged, but it is the joint responsibility of the asker and the feedback-giver to make sure thoughtful, detailed feedback can be generated. For example:
- How can I grow in my ability to contribute to the co-op?
- Do I participate effectively in strategic problem-solving? What’s working vs. not working?
- Am I available and easy to connect with when people want time with me?
- Each participant will enter their questions on Peer Haus, assigned to their ‘team’ (which is everyone). Everyone will be able to see everyone else’s requests for feedback. This generates a flood of emails - sorry.
- We will use a random match generator such as drawnames.ca to assign two people to give feedback to each person. Each person will thus have to write feedback for two other people, which guarantees that everyone will receive at least two pieces of feedback.
- All participants will contribute feedback on Peer Haus. Participants must, at minimum, write feedback for their assigned person but there is no restriction on writing feedback for others if you feel you have something to contribute.
Resources for soliciting, giving, and receiving feedback
Desired outcomes for peer feedback process:
- Everyone gets at least two pieces of anonymized feedback.
- Everyone is assigned two people to write for.
- Everyone can self-select, if they so choose, to write feedback for additional people.
- The person writing feedback knows who it’s for, but the person receiving it does not know who wrote it.
- No one aside from the receiver is able to see the feedback.