Feedback Strategies: Giving Feedback

(Found on Google Images, feedback icons)

Try Feedforward Instead of Feedback: I really liked this article because of the emphasis on focusing on specific goals rather than just targeting someone's work as a whole. Growing up as an athlete, I always struggled with receiving criticism from my coaches because I wasn't able to apply what they were saying to one specific thing. If they told me I needed to be quicker on my feet, I twisted that into thinking I was slow, not a strong player, and not needed. This type of thinking definitely hindered my ability to perform at my best, and I wish I had learned how to stop this type of thinking a lot sooner. By highlighting one area of work specifically, you're also able to provide praise to specific things they're doing well.

Five Reasons to Stop Saying "Good Job!": This article was super interesting to me. Over the past year, in some leadership roles I've experienced toxic positivity. By this, I mean I had numbed out any negatives because I was so concerned with performing well and receiving positive feedback. One of my supervisors was huge into words of affirmation, but the constant reassurance did more harm than good. I started to feel that it was never genuine, and that anything positive that was said about my work was actually just them disregarding what I was doing. There needs to be a balance of the "good jobs" with the constructive criticism.