Happiness Door (Instant Feedback)
???? As We Are Hardwired for Emojis . . .
I take my workshops seriously and so constructive feedback is essential for me to continuously improve my services. The way I used to do this was by means of written questionnaires I’d give out at the end of an event. This kind of worked for me, but a big obstacle was that most respondents tended to be very neutral in their feedback because they didn’t really remember how they felt during activities that happened earlier on. And how how much thought were they putting into it anyway? Their workshop was finished after all.
Another thing is that we are hardwired for visual information. For example, we see friendly and unfriendly faces everywhere, real or not (see carousel above). As an instructor, I’d like to have instant visual feedback.
Then I read the chapter on the Happiness Door in Jurgen Appelo’s (2016) book, Managing for Happiness. In this chapter, Appelo combines two tools, the Feedback Wall and the Happiness Index, to form a new evaluative tool:
Feedback Wall + Happiness Index = Happiness Door
The idea behind a Feedback Wall is that participants, throughout their training, can write comments on sticky notes and stick them on a wall for everybody to see. Although it’s a great tool to give instant feedback to the instructor in theory, I’ve never been a big fan of this. In my experience, not many participants are willing to put up notes publicly and the notes written are often just very generic statements, not of much value to me as an instructor.
A Happiness Index is a feedback tool that measures the overall happiness of a group of participants. This is normally expressed in either a percentage or a numerical scale (e.g. 1 to 5). This tool I do like because it’s easy to implement and, in this age of social media and emojis, people are happy to share how they feel, as long as they don’t need to elaborate.
So, Appelo came up with an idea to combine these two tools. Below a short video in which he explains the concept and its background:
I read the chapter, watched the video and I liked the idea, but I wanted to give it my own twist. I wanted my feedback to be continuous and I wanted to make sure the participants giving feedback had some anonymity. Having given it some thought, I came up with the following interpretation of Appelo’s Happiness Door.
My Interpretation of the Happiness Door
Instead of the exit door of whatever room my workshop takes place, I prefer to create my Happiness Door near the restrooms. Throughout the day, people need to use the facilities and there are few places better suited for reflection than a toilet. All day long participants have a chance to leave some feedback and, as the toilets tend to be outside the training room, they have their anonymity. When I use the restroom myself, I can have a quick peek at the feedback given so far and, if necessary, adjust my presentation.
Another advantage of creating my happiness door near semi-public facilities is that our workshops are held at a conference centre which hosts multiple events at a time. This means that my Happiness Door now also serves as an impromptu testimonial display, arousing the interest of other events’ attendees (assuming I’m doing a great job, of course).
To encourage participants to leave some feedback, I’ve created three options. First there’s a stack of blank sticky notes on which they can write any comments they want but for those more reluctant to write a note, there are some notes pre-printed with an emoji and a comment. Finally there are some pre-printed noted which require an additional comment. For visual clarity, the notes are designed around a traffic-light colour scheme.
At the beginning of a workshop I explain the idea of the happiness door and request people to leave notes throughout the day. When we get to the end of the day, I take a snapshot of the door which I then project on the screen in the training room where I facilitate a short feedback discussion. If a workshop lasts more than a day, we start each day with a clean happiness door.
Having done this a couple of times now, I can say that I’m happy with the results. Sometimes I need one of my staff to secretly stick a first note on the Happiness Door to get things going, but most of the time this isn’t necessary. Also, I found that, perhaps because it’s just too easy to pick up a pre-printed emoji note, most attendees actually write their own notes.
All in all, I find that using the Happiness Door as a feedback tool works far better for my workshop developers than the more traditional written surveys I used before. And this is even more true for me as a facilitator because of the instant visual feedback the tool provides.
Of course, the feedback given on sticky notes is quite limited, so another tool I use to get more extensive written feedback are Appelo’s Feedback Wraps, but that’s a topic for another time.
[T]here you are.
Resources:
Appelo, J. (2016). Happiness Doors in Managing for happiness (pp. 217-234). Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons.
Appelo, J. (2017). Management 3.0 Employee Engagement Exercises. Retrieved 9 July 2017, from https://management30.com/
Appelo, J. (2015). Management 3.0 Practice: Happiness Door Increases Employee Engagement. (video) Retrieved 8 July 2017, from Youtube: https://youtu.be/jopq0C7dRZo
