Feedback Strategies for Overthinkers like Me!

 As someone who overthinks a LOT I tend to struggle with giving negative feedback. I am always worried that I will hurt someone's feelings, come across as mean and too harsh, or will cause someone to think they are stupid (which I guess is the same as hurting feelings). For this assignment, I decided to focus on articles I believe will help me put my overthinking fears to ease.

Feedback: Max Pixel

How to Give Bad Feedback Without Being a Jerk

First of all, I believe we have all heard of the compliment sandwich. You start off with a "Good Job!" or "Nice Work!" and then put all the "bad stuff" in between and then end with a final compliment. According to this article, there is data that shows the compliment sandwich actually braces people for impact, as the compliment was just softening the blow from your mean words. People also usually only remember the beginning and ending of things, thus, any negative feedback you give might just be drowned out by the compliments.

So how do we stray away from the compliment sandwich without sounding like a bully? You can use terminology like, "I am giving you this feedback because I have high expectations that I know you can reach." This will prevent the person from feeling attacked and instead accept a challenge that you give them. You can also use your own personal experiences, such as, "I have benefited a lot from people's feedback and am trying to pay you the same way." This helps the person notice that you are not perfect either and are just trying to help.

Clearly, the way you give negative feedback is important as you do not want to seem attacking but you still want to give good feedback.

Be a Mirror

This article relates a lot to the Growth Mindset that we learned about earlier this semester. I believe this article is really helpful to keep in mind for everyone and not just overthinkers. 

This article emphasizes five qualities of feedback. The first quality is be specific. If you are not specific, the feedback may not even be helpful to the person reading it. The second is focus on what they are doing and not what they are not doing, as a mirror cannot show what is not there. A third quality is focus on the process of how the person did their work. When you focus on the process, you can show that you paid attention, cared, and that their efforts are important. The fourth is make sure what you say can transfer. This means that you should be specific to their post, but not so specific that they cannot use the advice for another writing. The last quality is to take yourself out of the feedback. You should not use "I like how you" or something similar because this creates a mindset that people should write to please others and not to write academically and for their own ideologies.