Why I love to take a break before giving a structured feedback
In short: When you want to give recommendations that really help someone move to the next steps, you sometimes need to take 5 to 10 minutes to prioritize and synthesize to find out what truly matters. Taking a break for this gives me the mental space to do it.
What's great with a break before giving feedback
The break has a few beautiful qualities:
- It gives me time to prepare a quality feedback
- It gives a break to the learner who shared a lot or did a performance
- It shows professionalism as people notice you aren't just reacting, you are really designing the feedback content and moment
Context
I've followed a training on giving effective feedback given by Andreas Cincera. His approach is one based on deep psychological understanding. The goal is to give the feedback in a way that gives a clear direction, without triggering stress or fear so that learning can happen. For that he has a very structured way of giving feedback. Getting into this new approach takes a lot of mental energy, and for now it's hard for me to do that on the spot after a learner has shared something with me, like a preview of their final presentation that will decide if they get or not a Master in Service Design.
The break unlock
So what do you do when you're tasked to give on the spot a feedback, but you need time and energy to make sure the feedback you give is really based on a structure that makes it possible for the person to recieve and hear the feedback?
The unlock is simple. Take a break. Say to the learner or person you are giving a feedback to:
"To give you a structured and synthesized feedback, I'll need a 5 minutes break. I'll come back with key competencies you've showed and with a few recommendations to go further".
During the break I then go over my notes and synthesize them, transform them to fit the structured framework and prioritize them.
Do I always take a break?
No. When the feedback is just about one element, I can do it on the fly, but when the feedback is about a 20 minute presentation, which is really a make or break element (like a jury presentation that defines if a learner gets a degree or not) I prefer at the moment to take that break.
I do it because at the moment, I'm not yet used to this method, so it takes me a bit more time.
But when I reflect about it, I realize that even when I'll be comfortable in doing it on the spot, I might still use a 3 minute break more to signal the seriousness, professionalism and care that I want to give to this feedback moment. So that its clear, this feedback isn't just a gut reaction, it's one that is deeply reflected on.
