Feedback is
essential for any learning experience; it provides you with information about
the impacts of your actions on the outside world; information you can use to learn
about those actions and how to improve them.
Feedback is
also a sensitive issue: it relates directly to your individual actions, and it
may touch you at a personal level (this is indicated by you becoming angry,
sad, depressed, happy, etc.). This is why, in giving feedback, you should be
careful to register (or anticipate) how the person receiving the feedback reacts.
When you are on the receiving side, be aware that you may not really be taking
in valuable information because it makes you feel insecure (or angry, or happy,
or ….).
So, without
becoming totally therapeutic about it, what is a good way to GIVE feedback?
Here are 5 essential points:
1. Make sure you have adequately
assessed the work/actions of the person you are assessing. If you don’t put in
the effort to do this, it disqualifies you from giving feedback, and the other
person is better off without your comments.
2. If you have many points of feedback,
give some structure to them, and make that structure explicit to the receiver.
Make sure you alternate between positive comments [‘I find this really interesting’] and critical remarks [‘I am not convinced this adequately
reflects the literature on this topic’]
3. Formulate your feedback in clear,
concise points. Use sentences that make clear that you are stating your opinion,
not some objective fact. [don’t say: ‘This
is an unconvincing argument’, say: ‘I find this argument unconvincing’]
4. Provide clear arguments WHY you come
to the assessment that you give. Formulate these arguments in such a way that
they provide pointers for the other person how to improve their work.
5. If you have finished writing down
your feedback, take a short break and then read them back, trying to assume the
position of the person who will be receiving these points. You should strive to
formulate them in such a way that you would be happy to receive these comments
yourself, even if they are very critical about your work; this can happen because
the feedback will allow you to improve your work.
It is
equally important to be able to RECEIVE feedback; otherwise learning will not
occur. So from that side, 5 essential points are:
1. Make sure you read the feedback
several times. Register your reaction to it. You may find that there is a big
emotional reaction (either positive or negative); don’t start working with the
feedback until you have regained some level of calmness. Depending on what the
feedback is about (it could be your master thesis on which you spent the last 6
months), this may take up to several days.
2. Always keep in mind that the
feedback is about something you did or make, not about you as a person. This distinction
allows you to learn.
3. Read the feedback as a list of ‘things
to do’ to improve your work. What does it actually entail to make the changes
necessary to counter negative feedback?
4. If you contact the person that
provided you with feedback, be thankful to them. Don´t blame them for the emotions
you may have felt when receiving feedback. Instead, try to involve them in
thinking about how to improve your work. Ask clear questions that serve this purpose.
[‘You find my literature review
incomplete; I am thinking of improving it by doing X and Y. Do you think that
will address your concerns?’]
5. NEVER argue with the person who gave
you feedback about the validity of a comment. If you are totally convinced
feedback is not valid, then just ignore it (but come back to the point later to
see if there really isn’t any value in a certain comment). If you have some
doubt about it, try to eliminate this doubt by asking questions [‘I am not sure I understand exactly what
you mean with comment x’], not by challenging the comment.
And finally, accept that you will have to
learn giving and receiving feedback. So you will not always be able immediately
to follow these suggestions. So please be kind to your fellow students when you
are engaged in the process of giving and receiving feedback to blogs.
