Chapter 8: The Gift of Feedback Supporting Documents: ● Zoom Recording from the spring 2021 call ● Google slides from the call ● Ways to get to feedback you want and need handout for NAP apprentices ● Simple check in and feedback prompts: ● Feedback Tools and Resistance to Feedback.docx ● EDGE Feedback (from The Feedback Book, by Dawn Sillett) Feedback is a gift when given with care and a desire to support one another. Welltimed, detailed praise can catapult your apprentice to a stronger commitment to learning and your operation. Hands down, it’s the most essential tool for professional development and trust building. However, all too many of us arrive in adulthood with a string of mainly negative experiences with feedback that detailed only what was wrong about our effort or result, leaving us feeling inept. If we were lucky to receive good guidance regarding what we did well, and what can be improved and how to improve it, we come to feedback eager to become better at whatever we attempt. Given that both mentor and apprentice have past experiences with discouraging feedback (or the lack of any feedback), giving and receiving feedback can be one of the more fraught challenges of being a mentor. But if we take a moment and remember a time someone we trusted gave us much-needed advice, be it a way to improve our efforts, or praise for a job well done, it becomes clear that we already know a lot about how to give good feedback. There are a few basics to remember, whether you want to give your apprentice a ‘thumbs-up” or tell them they need to improve some aspect of their work. Useful Feedback is: ● Clear ● Specific ● Timely ● Affirming of Effort, even if outcome isn’t what was wanted ● Future Oriented -- what can be done to improve - ultimately, talk about strategies to create improvement
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