Feedback Strategies

Good Feedback - pixabay

Helping other people get the best out of themselves by giving them great critical feedback is just as important as receiving feedback and learning from it, others need to learn too! Simply telling someone that a project is "great" or "bad" really doesn't help them at all, what are they supposed to do with that useless feedback? Get specific and don't just blindly praise and that means you are giving good feedback. 

I have read two articles that contain further information on feedback strategies that were very helpful towards getting better at helping others. I found that they were both great reads and they pointed out a lot of information that some people could really benefit from, especially in college. 

The first article I read is The Difference Between Praise and Feedback by Anya Kamanetz. When a kid does something well our instinct is to always give them high praise and of course we never think that this will have any negative repercussions. This is actually well documented psychological research that over-praising a child can actually have many negative effects. It can undermine a child's inner motivation to learn and achieve as they get themselves into a fixed mindset, this causes them to shrug off any challenges that may come their way. This fixed mindset is explored through psychological research in this article which talks about what too much praising can end up doing to your child. 

The article talks about process praise which means praising the process instead of the person, for example "You must have worked very hard on that picture" instead of "You are amazing at painting, you are so smart!". The idea is that you want to let your child develop with a growth mindset, where they want to learn new things and aren't afraid of doing it as they have been brought up to show that hard work is more important than anything. Praise and feedback are both completely different things that should be learned by every parent. Asking questions is way better than just straight up giving praise, make the child think about what they are doing and they will put more thought into how to get better instead of simply thinking they are amazing and don't need to put the extra work in. 

The second article I read is How to Give Bad Feedback Without Being a Jerk. This article touched on how to be critical with your feedback and not just straight up harsh and over the top. Nobody will listen to your feedback is you just end up sounding really rude as it just either sounds like jealousy or you're just mocking something that person may have worked hard on. You really don't need to say anything nice, just think before you speak. The advice that is given in this article says "Put a slice of praise on the top and the bottom, and stick the meat of your criticism in between." This is also proven to be a bad thing at times as people either 

1. Block out the positive they heard and completely focus on the negative, makes it seem like you just started out positive just for the sake of it. 
2. If you avoid that somehow, the positives can then end up drowning out the negatives! 

There are steps given instead that show you exactly how to approach giving feedback. First of all you 

1. Tell them why you're giving feedback
2. Take yourself off a pedestal 
3. Ask them if they would like your feedback
4. Have a transparent dialogue

The next and most important step is putting all of this information to action! The next time you give feedback think of these steps and try and be honest yet critical with the feedback you are giving. Overall I found these articles very insightful when it comes to feedback and I will definitely try put all of the tips I learned to good use!.