What Kinds of Messages Help Kids Grow?
One of the articles I read on feedback strategies was titled "Preschoolers and Praise: What kinds of messages help kids grow?". Although it's mainly about children and preschoolers I think the message covered in this article can really help us creatives on how to give better feedback and help improve each other.
It starts off by talking more about growth mindset, which you can read about here, and how parents can instill a growth mindset in their kids. But moves onto praise and how different types of praise can help a child's mindset grow. "Generic praise" is what most people are given, things like "good job" are often heard, but these don't give the person any info or let them know why the job was done well. This should be swapped out for "non-generic praise", which is descriptive praise that lets a person know what they have done right so that they can do it again in the future.
This type of praise has worked well in helping children's mindsets grow and I think it could be a very valuable tool for giving feedback to others in our course.
How to Give Bad Feedback Without Being a Jerk
We covered giving positive feedback but I think what is equally important is bad feedback, which is very relevant to our course because I feel that when we have to provide feedback on each other's work that people are afraid to say something negative.
The article starts off by criticizing the normal way to give negative feedback, the "compliment sandwich" which is to start and end your criticism with praise, this doesn't work because either the compliments fall on deaf ears because they're waiting for the bad news or the positives can drown out the negatives. Instead, you should explain why you're giving the feedback, take yourself off a pedestal, ask if they even want the feedback, and be clear and transparent.
It's better to be open and honest with people instead of sugar coating it, personally, I much prefer just being told out straight instead of someone trying to compliment me before they criticize me, and I think everyone in the course can learn from this.
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