The Feedback Handoff
- mayadolgin
- Jun 23
- 4 min read
(June 23, 2025 Newsletter)
A reorganization of departments or team members can lead to great outcomes for a company: better efficiencies, focus, motivation, and productivity.
But one pitfall to avoid is losing continuity of each team member’s personal growth in the transition.
Why it matters
Each professional in the entire organization has a personal growth edge to be developing, and one key management responsibility is tracking progress.
In an ideal world, managers are giving team members thoughtful ongoing feedback that is anchored in generative planning during periodic performance reviews. If you focus on building a learning culture, there should be no stigma about personal growth.
Without an organized handoff to the new supervisor, the cost to the person and the organization can be enormous.
It is so easy to lose sight of this responsibility during transitions because:
Growth conversations aren’t happening in the first place.
They’re only happening verbally, with nothing in writing to refer back to.
They’re happening sporadically without any consistent method for tracking.
It gets lost in the handoff between supervisors during the reorg since there are so many other things to cover, often in a short timeframe.
There is no supervision handoff during the reorg and the responsibility falls entirely to the supervisee to update their new manager about their work and areas of focus. In that case, the supervisee can hope to start fresh by skirting past the subject.
Regardless of why or how the information is lost in the shuffle, it is crucial to make sure the conversation is happening so that each employee can continue growing and so that each manager knows how to be guiding their team members.
Starting the conversation
If you’re the one being reassigned: In one of your early conversations with your new supervisor, add the topic to your agenda. You can broach the subject by saying that you want to share some thoughts about your own professional trajectory in the past [period of time] and what you’re working on these days, in the context of your professional aspirations.
You can put this in the context of wanting to discuss how your new supervisor can support your growth, which is important for a few reasons:
You’re showing you are proactive and take responsibility for your growth.
It will make it easier to control the narrative should issues arise that relate to challenges you know you have.
When you get to the next performance review season, you will have a baseline you established together from which to evaluate your growth.
If you’re getting a new direct report (or several): First, touch base with the former supervisor to ascertain the strengths and growth edges that they had previously discussed with your new direct report.
Clarify the context in which they gave that feedback. If they share thoughts with you that they never said directly to the team member, the courageous thing to do will be to address the feedback in a diplomatic way, perhaps as a coaching conversation.
For yourself, keep in mind that everything shared with you by your colleague should be taken with a grain of salt. Whether you are close with this person or not, the feedback they shared (or kept to themselves) is grounded in their perspective of the other person, their dynamic, and their history.
Since the goal is to build trust quickly with your new team members, ask open ended questions about how they want to grow in this next leg of their journey. If they ask what you’ve been told, don’t lie and say “nothing!” Instead, frame the feedback you were given through the lens of honesty, respect, and humility; it’s not truth, but rather someone else’s perspective who isn’t in this conversation now. The important thing is to look ahead and think together about how to be a resource so that this new team member can excel in their role.
If you’re orchestrating the reorg: If you’re responsible for planning or executing the reorg, the best shot you have at creating continuity is to set expectations and give resources:
Give managers access to previous performance reviews of the people joining their teams.
Request that they brief each other on anything relevant that isn’t in writing (strengths first!).
Teach them how to have coaching conversations about career planning so that they can approach these chats from a growth mindset and strengths-based perspective.
I would remind everyone, as well, that research shows that feedback tells us more about the giver than the receiver, so collecting this data is a way of filling in a picture, not getting to the truth.
The Coaching Corner
In a team meeting, rotate who designs the opening
Have people sign up for a date for upcoming recurring meetings and give them simple instructions –
Bring a story, quote, song, image that inspires you.
Choose an icebreaker question that everyone can answer.
Pick the opening music that’s playing as people enter.
It’s a great way to democratize the power dynamic at the top of each meeting, learn something new about each other, and vary the level of seriousness before diving into the agenda. Choose one of the above and once everyone has gone, move onto the other options.
Recommendations
"Breaking down the infinite workday" – analysis of Microsoft’s 2025 Work Trend Index Annual Report. Reading emails before 6am, hopping on calls after 8pm, working on weekends. Certain stats from the report will feel familiar, like the spike in PPT usage before meetings, indicating you’re not the only one cramming!
"Science of Persuasion" – it’s good to come back to a classic youtube video every now and then. This one on 6 shortcuts to be more persuasive (ethically!) is one of them.
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