The craft of feedback

A talk by Erin Casali, Senior Director of Product Design at Xero

Absent, ungrounded, or unstructured feedback can be a destructive force not just for our work, but also for the lasting negative morale consequences in a team. Also, if we don’t know how really good feedback looks like we’ll always assume things are 'good enough' and never push to improve.

Mastering our feedback skills can be a force for change that allows projects to succeed, quality to improve, and people to feel supported in their growth.

In this talk Erin will deep dive into the foundational principles of feedback from a cognitive perspective, and offer insights on how to apply these principles in our day to day work.

Regardless of your role, you’ll be getting some new ideas for your next design critique, code review, or discussion with your team, or your own leader.

Erin Casali

Senior Director of Product Design at Xero

Erin is a VP/Director of both product and design, with over 10 years of experience in each. She has a hybrid approach with design, product, and engineering in her background, and a skillset including psychology and change management. This creates an inter-disciplinary mix that allows her to create bridges and connect across roles and silos.

Her objective is to change for better the quality of life of the people through the products she designs and leads. Over the years she built products and helped organisations grow and transform by trusting people and giving them agency to be their best selves, with a firm belief in purpose, transparency, and diversity.

She has worked across very different organisations, from small startups to post-IPO company, from her own startups to advisorships, from product to consulting, from execution to board roles. This has been another way to get a wider understanding of all possible dynamics and learn how to apply different techniques in different environments, to create organisations that are best fit for their purpose.