Walking a Fine Line

Source: Pixaby

Giving feedback has always been a stressful process for me.  Oftentimes, it's because I don’t feel qualified to give that person feedback; I’m terrified of making their work worse.  When I am confident about what needs to be fixed, I always feel like I’m walking a fine line between being offensive or not being assertive enough to get the person to take me seriously.  It wasn’t until I started tutoring and had to give feedback on a regular basis that I found where that balance was.

One of the first things that I noticed when I started tutoring was that, when someone is asking for feedback, the line wasn’t nearly as thin as I thought it was.  As Adam Grant explains in his article, “How to Give Bad Feedback Without Being a Jerk,” people who ask for feedback tend to be less defensive when receiving criticism.  Grant also points out that it is helpful to explain why you’re giving feedback.  Whenever I was giving tips to someone, it was always better received after I explained how those tips have helped me.  It is easier to take a critique when there’s proof that the critique will actually help.  Once I had realized these two things, I found giving negative feedback to people far easier; most people don’t automatically assume that someone is trying to be mean.

Okay, now that giving feedback isn’t as scary, there is still the problem of how to make sure that the feedback is helpful.  Gravity Goldberg suggested in her post, “Be a Mirror: Give Readers Feedback That Fosters a Growth Mindset,” that feedback should be both specific to the issue, but also broad enough to apply to future problems.  Feedback shouldn’t be left up to interpretation.  However, after helping a person with one math problem, if that person wasn’t able to take that critique and apply it to help solve the next problem, then I hadn’t really helped that person at all.

I also found that casually giving someone praise wasn’t helpful either.  As Anya Kamenetz describes in her article, “The Difference Between Praise and Feedback,” when children are given praise for their achievements, they may start to believe they’ll be a disappointment if they don’t continue to achieve.  I noticed this with quite a few of the people that I was tutoring; they were afraid of not being perfect.  Kamenetz described giving praise for effort instead of achievement as a solution; remind people that they should be proud of the effort they put in, regardless of how successful they end up being.

Giving a person feedback is a tricky thing.  It can be difficult to know what will actually help a person or what will just be a waste of their time.  Continuously being told the wrong things can cause lasting effects on a person.  However, giving feedback isn’t nearly as scary as many make it out to be.  Don’t be afraid of crossing that fine line, because, oftentimes, that line isn’t all that fine at all!