Feedback Strategies

The first article I read was "Be a Mirror." It discussed being able to give feedback without judgement, which means focusing on the person's effort. One quality of feedback the author listed was to "focus on what the reader is doing" rather than what the reader is missing. I love this idea because it allows a person to work with what they have and it gives them the confidence that what they have is good enough. Another quality mentioned was that you should not use first person pronouns (e.g. "I think..."). While I do agree with this to some degree, sometimes it can be helpful for feedback to be in first person because it makes the writer feel like they have a choice in the matter. It tells the writer that it is only one opinion but they don't necessarily have to agree with it and they don't have to change their writing if they feel it is okay.

The second article, "Try Feedforward Instead of Feedback," talks about how a lot of feedback focuses on the past rather than the future. This limits feedback and limits opportunities. Instead, the author has coined the term "feedforward" and describes how it works. One part of it is that feedforward cannot be taken as personally because the critiques would be given ahead of time, and the person getting the "feedforward" would decide whether or not to take the advice. This way it lacks any suggestion of an attack. I really love this idea and I can see how it could be useful for a variety of situations, such as public speaking, working, and writing.

I typically do not feel confident about giving people useful feedback. I never want to hurt anyone's feelings (because I myself am very sensitive), and I am worried I am wrong a lot of the time. Sometimes people just have a different vision than me and I can't see it. I would hate to critique something that someone was proud of just because I didn't see where they were going with it. Because of this, I usually only give positive feedback, commenting on what I enjoyed from someone's work. I know this isn't extremely useful for most people, but with the feedback strategies I learned from the articles I am hoping to be able to grow in this area of my life. One feedback strategy I would like this try this semester is the "being a mirror" idea. I would love to be able to help someone see their work in a non-judgemental way while still being able to provide them critiques.

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Image information: Effort Cat from Growth Mindset Memes blog. Let's put emphasis on a person's effort and applaud them for it!

Feedback Thoughts

As a person who is already overly self-critical, feedback can be scary. I have always been told that feedback is just a chance to improve, but it is still difficult to accept that it is not the same thing as negative criticism that implies I have failed. Reading "A Simple 5-Second Habit to Rewire Your Harshly Self-Critical Brain" gave me a wonderful tool to use for dealing with feedback, which is "REBS" (reality-based self-congratulation). It mentions treating yourself for every small step you take, and picking yourself back up after dealing with a setback. I hope to apply this to feedback by not allowing comments to get me down but instead realizing that it is only there to help me. By congratulating myself for the small steps, I feel like I will grow in confidence and be able to better deal with criticism. The other article, "Seven Ways to Crush Self-Doubt in Creative Work," mentioned problems that I struggle with and know I need to solve. The one that stuck out to me the most was that you should not compare yourself to others. This just creates more self-doubt that does not do anything good for anyone. It can make you jealous and arrogant, and it can end up hurting both you and other people.

It can be easy to avoid or ignore feedback. What I have found, though, is that when I do this, I end up missing out on opportunities to be even prouder of my work. Feedback gives us the opportunity to see our work in a new light. Oftentimes we become close-minded with our work because we have spent too much time around it. We become limited to only what our brains allow us to see. Feedback helps us to cut down our time on our work: rather than having to put our work away for a day when we can look at it with fresh eyes, we can instead have someone look at it with their already-fresh perspective.

Over my years as a student, the most productive feedback experiences I can remember are the gentle and inspired ones. Many times, this would be feedback given by a teacher or peer I greatly admire.  Their comments on my writing or project would be encouraging and positive, but they would also add in suggestions that were kindly worded and sounded excited about my topic. They would avoid any kind of judgemental tone or wording, and they would always seem genuinely interested in the subject matter. The most negative feedback experiences I have had were ones that were obviously meant to be hurtful and embarrassing towards me, with harsh words and nothing positive to say at all (it's no wonder I'm so self-critical and a perfectionist after traumatic situations like that!). Feedback that has helped me grow as a learner at work, sports, and hobbies have been very hands-on. Rather than telling me what to do, the person I worked with would show me and work with me until I got the idea.

I absolutely love that this course is set up to separate a number from feedback. As a student, it is so easy to not even care about what feedback says when you can just look at what grade you got. We do not learn and grow from experiences like that, and I am so glad that this course recognizes that. Now I can focus on improving my writing for myself rather than a better number/letter/percentage.


(Image information: The Specter of Failure by Grant Snider)