Feedback Strategies

You can learn from criticism (Source: Cheezburger)

I am completely in love with the term feedforward. It is such a good positive outlook on the traditional term, feedback. Marshall Goldsmith explains it the best in his article Try Feedforward Instead of Feedback. As Goldsmith states, the reality is that none of us like receiving negative feedback nor giving them. We could all benefit a lot from learning the "right" rather than proving the "wrong". The problem with feedback is that it is focused too much on the past rather than the future. I recommend this article as it really convinced me of the large impact on saying feedforward instead of feedback, 

Alfie Kohn reports in his article Five Reasons to Stop Saying "Good Job!" on how a simple saying could be detrimental to the growth mindset. In my opinion, the saying is just so so boring! Kohn makes an excellent point in emphasizing how the saying can create a large amount of pressure to "keep up the good work." This is something I never really thought about. Instead, the better alternative is to say exactly what is up. I strive to say what exactly is it that is the "good job".

Overall, I do believe that feedbacks are what we need to improve and grow. Although praises are what we enjoy hearing, most of our desire to improve comes from criticisms and feedbacks. As the articles have taught me, there is a better outcome in giving criticisms and feedbacks in a positive matter, also known as feedforwards.