Feedback Thoughts

 

Graphic by Gerd Altmann, sourced from Pixabay

I read the feedback articles "Seven Ways to Crush Self-Doubt in Creative Work" and "Silence the Critical Voices in Your Head".

I found the articles to be rather interesting. I particularly liked the advice from "Seven Ways to Crush Self-Doubt in Creative Work" that covered treating your work like an experiment. Figuring out what works and what doesn't. It's an interesting approach that I hadn't necessarily considered before. It's a much healthier way to look at learning how to do something, it's not a series of failures and successes, it's trial and error. 

"Silence the Critical Voices in Your Head" actually covered something quite similar to a principle of feedback I've become very much familiar over the years when I work with other creatives and seek to give them feedback or critique. Which is that people need to get more than just negative feedback. Yes, people should understand where they could improve, but they also need to see where they do well.

I've personally found that for both giving and receiving feedback, this two-pronged approach tends to work the best. The negative, but necessary, feedback often loses a lot of its sting when its intermixed with feedback that provides well-earned praise.

While I've unfortunately tended to often be on the receiving end of feedback that is strictly positive or strictly negative, I've got a decent bit of experience being the one giving that mixed feedback that paints a better picture of how they performed overall. I always try to make it a policy of mine to find a solid mix of positive and negative feedback when people ask me to help out by giving feedback or critique on something they've been working on. And given the typical reception I receive when I give feedback like that, it's become quite obvious to me that giving feedback in that manner is one of the best ways to give feedback.

Oh! There's one other key thing I've learned about feedback over the years, which is that the best way to handle negative feedback is to focus on solutions and learning rather than the problems. Giving an explanation about why something doesn't work and what they could do to fix it is much more beneficial than just giving them a laundry list of problems. A laundry list of problems can feel like a massive obstacle in their path, but a laundry list of ways to grow and improve is much nicer to take on.