Feedback strategies: How to be constructive

People meeting over coffee and tea. Source: Eric Bailey on Pexels

This week's feedback assignment let me read a few helpful articles on giving feedback and praise in ways that are both encouraging and helpful.

I read The Difference Between Praise and Feedback, from Mindshift. I thought it was helpful to make a distinction between "process praise" and praising traits or innate qualities about someone. I'd recently read something about giving more thoughtful compliments from a body-positivity standpoint, and this reminded me of that. Rather than praising someone's outer self or things they can't change about themselves, praising what someone does can be more helpful. I'll keep this in mind when I do my blog comment assignments in this course.

I also read the transcribed version of Jenn Gibbs' "How to Craft Constructive Feedback." I thought the advice about giving neutral statements of feedback was really helpful. I like the "observe, describe, suggest" method of giving feedback — I can see myself using this method in this course, but also in my work as an editor at the OU Daily.

I give a lot of feedback to my peers through my work at The Daily, but I think these readings can help me be more conscientious and effective at it.