How to give constructive feedback – a guide

Before giving constructive feedback, ask yourself a few basic questions: What does feedback mean to you? Do you find this type of feedback encouraging or discouraging? Does feedback always mean praise to you? This blog post is intended to serve as a guide on how to give constructive feedback.

What exactly is feedback, and what does it mean to give constructive feedback? Feedback is an opinion, a form of response. The word "respect " ("looking back") lies behind it.

Imagine a family of ducks on the water: the mother duck swims ahead and the ducklings follow her. By orienting themselves toward their mother, they show a form of respect. Feedback therefore serves as guidance and strengthens or weakens our impact and how we perceive it. Personal responsibility plays a particularly important role here. The question "Where do I stand?" is a crucial one.

Giving constructive feedback requires personal responsibility.

Feedback and how to deal with it correctly still causes many misunderstandings and false expectations. We often want to use positive, encouraging feedback to compensate for our own weaknesses.

For many people, "Give me feedback!" means "Praise me!"

But why is that? To explore this question, it is important to consciously perceive ourselves and recognize our own impact. We often hope that positive feedback will compensate for our weaknesses. On the other hand, we often do not accept critical feedback. However, both are important if you want to give constructive feedback. It is important to perceive feedback, whether it is perceived as encouraging or discouraging, in a differentiated manner. Feedback always means the expression of an opinion, a personal impression. The feedback of an individual is often very personal, and feedback becomes precise through many different views.

In order to receive constructive feedback ourselves, we should be aware of our personal responsibility. The following applies: Feedback can strengthen or weaken us, but no one can make me feel bad unless I give them permission to do so. We ourselves bear responsibility for how we perceive feedback and how we change our actions.

The effectiveness of constructive feedback lies in striking the right balance.

So how can we maximize the impact of our feedback? How can we give constructive feedback to our counterpart, encourage them, and develop ideas? Effective feedback is not just praise, but it is also not just criticism. As is so often the case, it is the power of the golden mean that achieves the greatest effectiveness.

Between praise and criticism, between closeness and distance, there is emotional neutrality, or "redirection." Redirection consists largely of questions that are intended to lead back to the path. But we can also make statements here. I ask questions that bring the other person back on track and promote an effective outcome.

But how much weight should we give to praise and criticism, and how much of constructive feedback is about redirection?

We can now identify three different types of feedback. If someone deviates slightly from the actual path, our feedback should consist of redirecting them. If someone deviates significantly from their path, it is necessary to express criticism. If we want to encourage the chosen path, we can do so by offering praise.

Ideally, praise and criticism should each make up 15 percent of the feedback we give when providing constructive feedback. The remaining 70 percent is filled with redirection, i.e., asking questions and providing guidance.

Be aware that when giving constructive feedback

• Praise (closeness) and criticism (distance) are interdependent.
• Only praise or only criticism will not achieve effective results.
• the power lies in the golden mean (redirect).

We are emotionally dependent on feedback

Emotions are part of proper, constructive feedback. Just as closeness (praise) and distance (criticism) are interdependent, we also depend on the emotion in our counterpart's reaction.

Contrary to the previous assertion that there are three ways to give feedback, we can also identify a fourth option. Our feedback can also consist of no reaction at all. However, whenever we use this type of feedback, something dies emotionally in the other person. We should therefore refrain from this reaction and keep the proportion of effective feedback at zero percent.

If you want to give constructive feedback in order to bring about change, we need to see what the other person is doing in order to provide feedback. Only then can we reinforce or redirect. Criticism is often emotional. When we express criticism, it means that redirecting, i.e., bringing the person back to the chosen path, has had no effect. Instead, we need to show them a different path and create a new fork in the road.

We see that emotions play a major role in constructive feedback. We depend on receiving feedback that appeals to our emotions. Ignoring our work, on the other hand, triggers emotional death within us.

Consider feedback as a whole

If we now look at the components of effective constructive feedback, it becomes clear that it consists of the sum of three elements: praise, criticism, and redirection. We need to ask questions to inform ourselves and to clarify our feedback in some areas by making a statement. Nowadays, it is primarily the expectation of praise that accompanies the request for feedback. Our self is often weak, and we do not see ourselves as responsibility our own impact. However, we ourselves are responsibility for how we deal with feedback. Criticism is just as important as praise and redirection.

Giving feedback: Our tips:

Analyze your own communication behavior: How do you divide up the 100 percent when you give feedback to another person? Our tips: Recognize your current status and ask yourself how you can optimize your feedback. Observe yourself and your mental attitude. Try to make initial shifts toward balance. Don't see praise, criticism, and redirection as the responsibility of others, but become aware of your own impact and personal responsibility.