What's a good template for giving feedback that works?

My notion template

This very specific type of feedback structure is new and still a bit challenging for me, so I translated it into a Notion template to help me out.

You can get this structured feedback Notion template here.

When a learner presents something to me I use this template by first taking notes, then I take a break. During this break I then transform my notes into the structured feedback format.

The base structure

This structure is based on three buildings blocks:

• Feed-up: Share what's the goal (where am I going?)
• Feed-back: Share how it's going (how am I going?)
• Feed-forward: Share what's needed next to achieve the goal (where to next?)

These building blocks then are adapted based on the type of feedback you are giving:

• Strengthening feedback: where you want to recognize competencies and skills
• Prospective feedback: where you want to give a recommendation to go further
• Macro feedback: where you want to share multiple aspects that are a mix of prospective and strengthening feedbacks

Macro feedback

When giving multiple pieces of feedback at once, there is also a sequence you can use, inspired by this approach:

• Overview: give an overview of the feedbacks you'll give and mention that you'll then go in the details for each. Basically here you say something like this: I'll share X strengths I want to highlight: title 1, title 2, title 3. Then I'll share 2 recommendations to go further: title 1, title 2.
• Strengthening feedbacks: share each strengthtening feedback, but ask only at the end of all these feedbacks the open question where the person reflects on how they react to it.
• Prospective feedbacks: share each prospective feedback, and at the end of each one, ask the open question.
• Summary: Give a short summary and if needed priorization of what's the most important of what you shared.

A few additional tricks

• No "you" statements: in this type of feedback we speak about the result and competencies and how they felt to the evaluator. So most statements should be formulated with "I", like: I saw, I felt, I observed.
• Max 5 elements: It seems that people can't retain more than 5 main elements. This also forces you as the feedback giver to focus on what is turely the most important.
• Short: Each feedback element should be short, to avoid again confusion and overwhelm.

Where does it come from?

I've learned about this feedback structure in a course about effective feedback led by Andreas Cincera. This feedback structure in the Notion template is inspired by work by John Hattie and Helen Timperley Hattie and the work of Andreas Cincera which I adapted to my own context.