A Culture of Measurement and Feedback at Google 

Transcript:
Ruchika SikriFormer Head of Well-being Learning Strategy, CultureDev - Google
Ruchika Sikri: “I don't think we use the word like are you demonstrating EI capabilities, however we do talk about how are you doing your job, how is your relationship management, do you involve others at the right time in the decision making and are we respectful to each other? Are we creating psychological safety and trustful relationships and creating impact as an organization, as compared to just forcing our own agendas forward; our performance management system is very peer driven and in the sense that we get feedback from our managers - manager can provide feedback but as an employee I can solicit feedback from my peers and my peers can also provide me unsolicited feedback if they wish to - so when I have to write my performance management review I write my self-assessment, my manager writes their manager review for me and then I have a select few peers who can write their peer feedback for me and my manager can also select a few other peers that I have not selected to give me feedback as well. So, it's very all-around feedback and I think people tell us what are our strengths and what are the areas of development, which I think is the greatest gift anyone can get in performance management reviews so we know what's working and what's not working and then we have a plan to improve upon those skills in the future.
There is a huge culture of feedback at Google and people are always soliciting it, for example I just joined a new team and with my new manager three weeks into it I basically made the whole meeting about giving the early feedback on what's working what's not working; am I working with the right people, am I communicating effectively, what are the holes and the gaps so that I can address it and I don't go down the hill too much before it becomes harder to recover. So, I’m relying very heavily on them to guide me. Having that trusting relationship with my manager also goes a long way in being able to hear what they're saying you know as feedback, and one of the greatest skills I think of EI is listening skills. So, as an employee I benefit when my manager gives me feedback. I think they benefit also when I tell them a few things that I need and I’m not able to perform well until I’m being connected to the right people or have the right resources available.”