How to use Grow?

getgrow.io

Grow is a slack-based feedback tool that can help you give and request feedback to your colleagues without interrupting your regular workflow. You use Grow in slack.

What is grow

Growth helps you craft better feedback (or feedback requests) by helping you get specific about which skills/qualities you want to give feedback on and by giving you some other pointers to make your feedback more specific.

It is a great way to deliver short feedback, like a compliment, or to kickstart a bigger feedback conversation. It should not be used as a replacement for those conversations.

Besides giving and requesting feedback, Grow also allows you to create a summary of a 1:1 meeting (such as one of the feedback conversations it started) so you have an easy place to collect them all for future reference. It also allows you to create a profile so that your colleagues can easily see what your personal feedback preferences are, and what skills you want to improve on. Last but not least, the paid version of Grow offers us some insights on the amount of feedback given and other analytics.

Getting started

Grow is installed as a slack app in our slack environment. You can find it in the sidebar under ‘apps’, or access it from any channel/DM with the command /grow + enter.

From there on you can select the options give feedback, request feedback or record 1:1. Select the option you want and Grow takes it from there.

When you have given feedback Grow gives you the option to share your feedback in a public channel. This is a nice way to share a compliment with others. There are dedicated channels for this, but of course you can also select a channel for your circle.

For Voys: #vnl_cheers4peers

More options

Personal feedback profile

If you navigate to the Grow app in the sidebar, you’ll be presented with more options. You can see your personal stats and create a personal feedback-profile so your colleagues can easily see your feedback preferences, what you are trying to improve upon, and what people say you are good at.

Reminders

Now set some reminders in Grow to make sure you regularly check in with the colleagues who can give you support and feedback in your skill development:

Still in Grow, go to 'My Growth and Progress' and then click on 'My Reminders'.

Click on 'Create new reminder' and then fill in the following:

Type of reminder: message

To: You can send a reminder to yourself, or directly to a colleague.

Message: you can browse Grow's templates, or write your own custom message. Example: Hi, can you give me some feedback on how I facilitated this week's tactic?

Set how often and when you want this reminder to be sent. There's no right or wrong, but we recommend getting recurring feedback to see your progress over time, rather than just once.

You can see what your message will look like in the Reminder Preview.

Click on 'Send

Done! 🎉 You will get the reminders automatically in Slack.

Planting real trees 🌳

For a certain amount of feedback given and received with another colleague, Grow plants actual trees, in Madagascar, Honduras, Kenya, Nicaragua or Mozambique. Cool, right?