7 Things We’ve Learned about Effective Feedback
“Our students give each other such great feedback!” Janet reported after a recent Review of Learnings session. “They’re so good at it! Specific, helpful, compassionate, but also really honest and courageous. I’m so proud of them.”
Peer feedback has been a central part of CCS’s educational approach for decades, and in that time we’ve learned a few things. Our feedback theory is grounded in practice and experience.
What is Feedback?
When you tell someone how their behaviour or performance affected you – positively or negatively – what you are communicating is feedback. The technical term comes originally from the field of automation. (For example, a thermostat gives feedback to a furnace on how well the furnace is heating a room by sending a signal that says, “I’m not warm enough; more heat please,” or “I’m good, you can stop now.”) Feedback is how you find out how things went or how they’re going.
Feedback Theory
When it’s done well, feedback can reinforce positive or constructive behaviour. It can help to identify and correct mistakes or gaps. If you’re working toward some goal, personally or as part of a group or team, feedback can help keep you moving in the right direction. Good feedback can strengthen relationships through honesty and clear communication.
That’s when it’s done well.
When it’s done poorly, feedback can be hurtful. It can leave people feeling confused, defensive, or resentful.
Feedback theory describes approaches to giving (and receiving) feedback that have been shown to be helpful and effective – for students and teachers, for managers and employees, for businesses and customers, and for interpersonal communication. Here are some of the things we’ve learned about how feedback works over the years…
1. Feedback Doesn’t Need to Be Scary
Ally was terrified the first time he had to offer feedback to his peers. “I don’t know these people well enough to tell them anything! They’re going to hate me!”
Flash forward a year, and Ally loves giving and receiving feedback, and reassuring new students that it’ll be fine and that the opportunity to share feedback is a special time.
Most people fear feedback because they’ve had negative experiences with it in the past. They’ve received feedback that felt judgmental and harsh, or it was vague and didn’t give them a sense of what they could do to change. Or they once offered someone a piece of feedback and the other person reacted with anger and defensiveness. Those experiences of feedback poorly done can leave scars.
Establishing an environment of trust and mutuality where everyone is learning and growing can go a long way to alleviating fears. At CCS we treat students and teachers alike as co-learners in a pretty non-competitive environment. But even if you work in a structure that is more hierarchical, you can still establish a sense of safety where honest feedback won’t jeopardize relationships or position.
2. Feedback is Best When It Is Requested
To ask for feedback is to say, to yourself and to others, “I am open to learn.” Requesting feedback is so uncommon (see point #1 about the scariness of feedback) that often people will need a bit of convincing that you actually mean it when you ask for feedback; that you aren’t just fishing for compliments (though you’ll take them if they’re appropriate and honest), but that you really want to know how your actions are coming across to others.
Finding the right time to give or receive feedback is important. It should be at a time when both people are able to be attentive to each other. Don’t do “fly by” feedback.
Sometimes feedback is imposed. It can be a required part of an educational program or work assessment. Nevertheless, going in with an attitude of openness and willingness to learn will make all the difference.
3. Feedback is Specific and Grounded in Experience
It’s nice to hear, “You’re great.” It’s not helpful feedback, especially if you’re trying to grow or be better. How are you great? Why? What should you keep doing?
Be specific when you give feedback. What is the behaviour that you appreciated, or didn’t? If you can name a particular incident (eg. “Last Thursday when you raised that question in the staff meeting…”) all the better. Try to describe the impact that behaviour had on you, rather than imposing some sort of universal judgment. (eg. “You named a thing that I had been thinking but was nervous to say, and your question allowed the conversation to go deeper.”)
This is where “I statements” can come in handy. (“I felt hurt when you dismissed my concern without discussing it,” as opposed to “You were rude!”) Staying grounded in your own experience gives you a particular kind of authority – you know how you experienced things – but also leaves open the possibility of other people having different experiences. Grounding yourself in your own experience can keep you from getting drawn into unhelpful debates.
4. Be Honest
Sometimes we have to say hard things. You want to say it carefully and clearly so the other person can hear it. But if you’re too cautious, if you agonize over every word and pre-apologize and squirm throughout, the other person will start thinking about what you’re not saying. How horrible must they be if you’re afraid to even talk about it?? Saying it straight is the best way to go. That way, they don’t need to second-guess what you’re saying or why.
Part of being honest might also include acknowledging the limits of your knowledge. (“This was how I experienced it. Other people might have a different experience.”) But don’t underplay your truth out of fear.
Sometimes it’s useful to make sure the communication has been clear by asking the other person to rephrase it back for you, to see if what they heard was actually what you meant.
5. Know Your Intercultural Context
Feedback theory (including what you’re reading here) comes from a particular cultural context. In an intercultural environment, with an awareness of diversity, it is useful to consider how different cultural norms might impact the way we give or receive feedback. Directness or indirectness in communication are factors in intercultural communication, as are issues of “saving face”.
Other factors, like organizational culture, differences of age or status, ability and disability, neurodiversity, etc. will also have an effect. Talking with each other about assumptions and expectations will help.
6. Feedback is Useful Information
Feedback allows us to see ourselves from different angles. The more perspectives you have, the clearer your image of yourself and your impact on the world can be. Keeping this in mind can help you from slipping into defensiveness when receiving feedback.
People get defensive when they view themselves as a binary – all good or all bad. If you receive challenging or difficult feedback, you must be a bad person, right? If you get some good feedback, you’re a good person! Fight this urge. Feedback is data; important and valuable and useful. But if you let it define you, you will either fight against hearing hard but useful things or you will hang your sense of self on the opinion of others. Neither is good. Taking feedback in as information allows you to go, “Hmm, interesting; I don’t know what to do with that yet but I’m writing it down.” Or “I’ve heard something different from other people, so I’m curious how these different views fit together.” Especially if receiving feedback makes you nervous, treating it first of all as information can sometimes provide the emotional distance necessary to let you hear the truth through your fear.
And as a feedback giver, this means trusting that the other person will take your feedback and do with it what they need.
7. Offering Feedback is a Commitment to Growth
At CCS we ask our students to offer each other “affirmations” and “encouragements”. Affirmations are behaviours, skills, or qualities that you appreciate and admire. Encouragements identify behaviours that had a less positive impact or blind-spots the other person might not be aware of. “Encouragement” is not a euphemism for criticism. When you frame critiques as encouragement, you are putting yourself on the other person’s team. You aren’t the judge, you’re the cheerleader who keeps cheering even when the ball is fumbled or the shot is missed. You legitimately want the other person to do better, and you believe they can do it. That’s why you’re encouraging them. And sometimes that encouragement is “Keep going! I see you trying, I see you working at getting better, I see you taking steps toward your goal. You’re not there yet, but keep going.”
It’s best when feedback is in the context of relationship. Encouragement feels most authentic when it comes from someone who has been there for you and will continue to be there for you. You can offer feedback to someone you’ve just met and you’ll never see again, but it doesn’t carry the same weight.
You’ve heard of the “compliment sandwich”? Where you bury critical feedback in between more complimentary comments before and after? Research suggests that it’s not actually all that effective. What’s more important than the order of your feedback is that the receiver knows that all the feedback, even the stuff that’s hard to hear, is delivered from a belief in the hearer’s capacity to grow and a commitment to support them in their growth.
Would you like a chance to develop your feedback skills? Centre for Christian Studies learning circles are a great place to practice in a supportive learning community.
