Direct is Respect: Giving & Receiving Feedback

Educators weigh in on how they prefer to receive feedback and where they struggle when offering it to others.

ROBERTA LENGER KANG
Instructional Design Specialist
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When I started my leadership journey, I was confident that with the right effort and the right systems and structures, the team I was leading would simply be successful. I imagined that I would avoid confrontation through planning, modeling, and being nice. We’d never have any problems!

But we can’t lead a team this way. Each individual needs feedback to increase self-awareness, identify goals, and strategize a path forward. They deserve actionable feedback that supports their work, and it needs to be direct, clear, and kind. 

Whether you’re the person receiving feedback or providing it to others, you bring your entire self to the conversation, which means there is no one-size-fits-all approach. We recently spoke with a group of educators who were kind enough to share how they would like to receive feedback, as well as some of their most pressing concerns when it comes to offering feedback to others. 

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How do you want to receive feedback? 

Jeff, Costa Rica 
I think the most important thing is that feedback is driven by compassion, and even love and care for me. This is not a time for scolding or trying to make someone feel less than, but a chance to build someone up by helping them be successful. 

Avyanna, Bronx
I like when people are direct and actionable. If they notice something can be improved about my practice, then I like to hear what can be improved and a suggestion of how to approach it, or at least the willingness to brainstorm solutions with me. 

Brian, Queens
I would like to receive feedback that is clear and has strategies I can try, in order to meet the desired target.
 
Laura, Queens 
Feedback that is easy to understand and not too overwhelming. 
 
Becca, Pennsylvania
When I receive feedback, I want to hear specific suggestions. I want those to be couched in supportive terms; I want to feel like the person giving me feedback is on my team, working with me to try to improve my practice, rather than "grading" my practice. 
 
Katherine, Singapore 
I want direct and honest feedback myself, but struggle with consistently offering that to others, instead allowing a fear of damaging the relationship or contributing to hurt feelings get in my way. 
 
G, Queens
I like to receive clear, kind feedback. It doesn’t need to be “nice” but I bristle if it’s unkind. 
 
Rasha, Brooklyn
I’d like to receive constructive feedback that focuses on promoting the quality of my work and addresses both strengths and weaknesses, or the sandwich of “glows” and “grows”. Although some people are not in favor of the sandwich feedback, I still prefer to hear some positivity before pinpointing the flaws. 
 
Shannon, New York 
I like being invited into the conversation, and being asked what I think went well, what part of the lesson I felt could have been stronger, or where were I was hoping for a different outcome. These types of questions open up to a conversation rather than just finding areas to critique without context. 
 
Matthew, Queens 
I would like to receive feedback that is clear, actionable, and includes the full truth. It lets me know where I stand and how I’ve been progressing. 

Ysladia, Queens 
I like honesty and direct feedback that will help me improve.

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Addressing the challenges of giving feedback

What do you do when, regardless of how you give feedback, the other person takes it personal? I have a couple of teachers that have had different people try different approaches to offering feedback, and yet they still get defensive and take it as a personal slight. How do you get past these walls?

Part of offering feedback is learning to communicate in ways that the other person can hear. The first step here is relationship building — we want the person receiving our feedback to have confidence that we have their best interests at heart. One of the best things we can do as a leader is build personal relationships with our teams. Ask questions, be curious about their lives outside of school, what their hobbies or interests are, how their kids are doing. This isn’t hard to do, but it can take extra effort (especially if we’re more introverted). Sharing about our own lives also goes a long way toward building relationships. 

Beyond relationships, another strategy is to pose the same questions to others that we’d want to be asked: How do you like to receive feedback? When we have our observation discussions, what do you want to get out of the conversation? What are some of the goals you have to grow your practice, and how can I help? Even asking teachers if there’s anything in particular they want feedback about when you visit gives them a sense of ownership and empowerment, and when they get feedback they can remember they asked for it! 

It can also be helpful to address the elephant in the room — if someone is getting defensive, upset, or emotional, it’s okay to say something like, I want to pause here because I can sense that you’re having a heartfelt response to this feedback. Are you feeling . . . [hurt, frustrated, emotional, defensive, upset]? Can you tell me more about what’s brought that on? If we offer a word to describe their reaction, even if we’re wrong, we demonstrate that we care about them personally, and that we want to understand how they’re feeling. Most people are likely to clarify “yes, because,” or “no, but …” and that’s a great space to dig into the underlying fears or concerns that are blocking their ability to productively reflect on their practice. 

Ultimately, we can’t take responsibility for someone else’s feelings, their ability to receive feedback, or their emotional/professional maturity. But we can strive every day to do our best, acknowledge our own mistakes, and try again next time.

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What is the balance between questioning and providing direct feedback? 

We use questioning to engage another person in their own critical reflection, which is an important skill for deep and transformative learning over time. This work requires engagement and an exchange of ideas between a teacher and a student, or a teacher and a school leader. We engage through questioning to increase curiosity and inquiry, because if/when people have their own a-ha moments, they’re more likely to shift their practice. 

Using questioning to drive feedback conversations doesn’t mean we don’t provide direct feedback, but it can mean that we organize the conversation through questioning, and then we frame the feedback through the discussion. We can also summarize the feedback at the end of the conversation to synthesize and highlight the next best steps.  

Sometimes we find that people are not open to reflection, or are resistant to identifying their own next steps. They’re likely to say things like, just tell me what I need to do, or we might realize in a discussion that the person we’re talking to had a very different experience than we did and we need to reframe what happened. Those might be times to take the lead through more direct statements, and then return to using questioning after we’ve established a clear context.

As someone who partakes in teacher evaluations, I often wonder about positionality. I tend to position myself as a teammate working to help colleagues improve their practice, but how genuine does that feel if I am also writing up an observation as part of someone’s professional evaluation? My struggle lately, I think, is how to separate feedback from "grades".

If feedback is the shortest distance between where we are and where we’re going, then as an
evaluator, our role is to give feedback that helps another person (student or adult, peer, supervisor,
or “direct report”) reach their goals. In situations where we’re the evaluator or the grader, our
feedback helps the person understand what we’re evaluating and how they can reach the
goals that have been set for them.

The evaluation doesn’t make the feedback less meaningful, or less authentic, but it does raise the stakes —  especially if the person has goals that are connected to their performance (e.g. I want to be rated highly effective, or I want to pass an AP Exam). Where this can become tricky is when it feels, to the person being evaluated, that the goal posts are shifting or changing, or that their evaluator is changing expectations. 

This is why we ended to do a deep dive first, to really understand what growth is needed, what the best sequence is for change to take place, and how we can create action plans that can be implemented realistically.

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When we want people to take action, we need to be strategic about how and when we offer feedback — more is not always more. 

Even when we’re not in a position of power, our words carry a lot of weight — and it’s worth examining how we can communicate feedback to others with authenticity and clarity, and in a way that allows them to receive our words.


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DR. ROBERTA LENGER KANG
CPET Center Director & Instructional Design Specialist

Dr. Kang started her coaching career in 2006, after nearly a decade of teaching in Denver, CO and NYC schools. In her role as CPET's Center Director, Roberta cultivates partnerships with schools, districts, and organizations in critical areas of focus, such as: developing academic rigor, refining literacy in high school, creating meaningful instruction for high-stakes assessments, and leveraging city and state mandates for authentic school change. You can reach her at kang@tc.edu.

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