Some resources
ten common mistakes when giving feedback from the center for creative leadership
fast company article give good feedback
What do I want from a feedback letter?
From our class discussion on Feb 20, your collective thoughts ....
- Be clear
- Identify specific things that I did right and that I did wrong/could do better
- Give concrete observations of what you saw or heard me do
- If relevant, tie in any other data you have (e.g. observations outside this class and project; quotes; other evidence)
- Focus your letter
- Personalize feedback to what I want to hear about. Tie feedback to my stated goals, if you know these, or to 990's common themes (next slide)
- Address what you think are my main strengths and challenges, not everything
- Help me to understand why
- Do you see this skill, capability, or behavior in varied contexts or is it situational? How?
- If you are speculating (e.g., attributing a cause to a behavior), make sure you flag that as your own guess, and only include such a speculation if you think it's helpful
- Make it useful
- Suggest how to improve (what will make these improvements credible? State your source: Flag suggestions that are your own new ideas, and link others to readings, class discussions, visitor comments, or things you saw other teammates and your hosts do)
- Say it so I can hear it
- Mention effort, as well as changes you see in my behavior over the course of this class
- Some diplomacy!
Further ideas
McGill and Beatty (in "Action learning: A practitioner's guide", London: Kogan Page, 1994, p. 159-163) provide useful suggestions about giving effective feedback:
- Clarity – Be clear about what you want to say.
- Emphasize the positive – This isn't being collusive in the person's dilemma.
- Be specific – Avoid general comments and clarify pronouns such as "it," "that," etc.
- Focus on behavior rather than the person.
- Refer to behavior that can be changed.
- Be descriptive rather than evaluative.
- Own the feedback – Use 'I' statements.
- Generalizations – Notice "all," "never," "always," etc., and ask to get more specificity – often these words are arbitrary limits on behavior.
- Be very careful with advice – People rarely struggle with an issue because of the lack of some specific piece of information; often, the best help is helping the person to come to a better understanding of their issue, how it developed, and how they can identify actions to address the issue more effectively.
(this summary taken from http://www.managementhelp.org/commskls/feedback/feedback.htm)