(This is a resketch of yesterday's post.)
Giving feedback is about meeting the other person where they are -- understanding the context of what you're being asked to do and what you're actually meant to be bringing to the table.
Here, I'm talking specifically about explicit feedback cycles on pieces of work, rather than the looser concept of 'feedback' as in Thanks for the Feedback (which is still a very useful way of thinking about it).
There are three main contexts, at least in my current thinking about the topic, where you might be giving feedback on such a piece of work. These encode various assumptions about the relevant considerations and what you, as the feedback giver, are able to offer:
- An audience's reaction to a piece of work
- Helping to shape a piece of work for release
- Offering peer or mentor coaching within your field of expertise
There are probably others, but let's start here. To help me refer to them, I'll give them some short names, based on the role of the feedback-giver:
- An audience's reaction to a piece of work: Responder
- Helping to shape a piece of work for release: Editor
- Offering peer or mentor coaching within your field of expertise: Coach
There are also a bunch of shorthand mechanisms for feedback that I can think of from various places. There are almost certainly some I'm missing here, and I'd love to refine this in a future resketch:
- Change suggestions ('how about if you tried changing this thing?')
- Direct editing ('do it like this')
- Statements of effect ('it made me feel like...')
- Focus areas ('try this exercise'/'next time, how about you try')
- Opinions ('I don't like this bit)
Which of these mechanisms are appropriate vary based on the role of the feedback giver (well, technically, based on the circumstances in which the feedback is being given, but I've collapsed the two for now).
As an Editor, it makes sense for me to offer change suggestions or direct edits -- they're often expedient, and the author can push back if they feel strongly or I've missed some information.
Direct editing makes no sense as a Responder, and in places that explore the Responder role in depth, such as Liz Lerman's Critical Response Process, change suggestions are also deliberately excluded. A Responder, who is either someone without domain expertise or someone who is being asked to play that role for the purposes of the feedback, they don't have the context or the information to offer helpful change requests (they often become useful only for 'the note behind the note' -- the underlying statement of effect they point to -- while ignoring the change suggestion; better to just get to the note).
Direct editing from a Coach can be helpful, but often buries what's really important -- lessons for development and focus areas for the future.
This doesn't quite map on to the Appreciation, Evaluation, Coaching model from Thanks for the Feedback, but does have some elements in common. Principally that problems arise when the feedback giver and receiver are expecting different things.
Out of time for today, but I might do more thinking on this. I like the idea of a set of broad feedback 'tools' which can be combined in different ways for different needs. That's my approach to craft in general -- building toolsets, developing diagnostic instincts, and cultivating rules for when to apply them.