The Power of Feedback
I love acknowledging and celebrating the success. "Lavish in praise", I once said. I love saying thank you every time I feel like it.
I had a model in my head, a model of a feedback. Brené has a wonderful chapter in her book, "Daring greatly", on vulnerability as a core of the feedback. Here's the printout. So, let us take the situation where both sides of the feedback are daring greatly and are sensitive, and engaged/involved, fully present.
First, celebrate the success. Point out (every little thing or through generalizing into groups) what you loved about the object of the feedback - the strengths. Second, turn to opportunities: while recognizing strengths offer how a person might make his/her work more capturing, brilliant etc using those strengths. Offer help, if needed. Cherish, if a person wants to use some opportunities and show you the result of the improvement.
Yesterday I participated in an hour-long feedback session on my yoga class. By the end of the session I finally realized why two people had been talking and one had been holding me during the second part of the session. Yeah, that was hard.[Details]
It was harder than I had expected because it was another model of the feedback. There were neither strengths nor opportunities.
"Let me ask you some questions. How were you feeling during the class? How did you feel the moment the class finished? What do you want to do about this? How much of this lesson do you want to leave as it was? What do you want change? How do you want to make it differently? Okay. I see. And here's what I felt and thought". I listened attentively and remembered and wrote down opportunities for me.
One hard part was that I had to say in terms 'I want' what I felt to be improved in the lesson. If I didn't say 'I want', I was asked, 'Do I get this right - that you want to...' By 'I want' I mean something different - not future but mostly present perfect continuous. Too much 'I want' for me, I guess. But I asked for feedback and I chose to speak their language.
One more hard part was that I realized that no one was interested, why I had done this or that. Many times I was hearing 'I saw you doing... and I felt...' and I realized the reasons for my behavior but I also realized that I didn't have say it out loud. If those who were giving feedback were interested in reasons they would have asked. Explaining, why, is an excuse. No one (except for court jury, perhaps) is interested in explanations and especially excuses. (sounds desperate; as for me, I am interested in reasons, I want to understand) In this particular session of feedback it was enough that if I caught the reasons for my behavior I could see the ways to adjust what I do. Yes, 'I know why I did this. Aсtually, I'm free not to do this'. I perceive it as a kind of a home task - to think what I can do. YES, "what I WANT to do". Goddamnit.
Summing up.
- as I don't believe that in my lesson there was really nothing to tell me "You did a great job in this" or "I saw how you were trying to do your best" (well, I'm... I'm trying really hard to believe that there was at least something), I presume that in this kind of feedback the person who gives the feedback says 'I felt this and that' and leaves the one who receives the feedback with a choice to act, to think if he or she wants to do something about that. It's just another model, without any praise because praise might be like a... reward for a dog. I don't know. And like I don't seriously think about right/wrong, maybe there is no such thing as "you did great" or "you did bad=it might be worth improving". You simply "did". And there are people who feel something about what I did, and I might want to do something about what I do, having heard their feedback.
- Brené was writing that vulnerable feedback, teaching and learning are no way comfortable. Yes. One hour of discomfort - I am glad and grateful to have had experience. Normalizing the discomfort is essential.
- and as this model was unfamiliar to me, I would say that I did great. Or just simply did.