Your feedback behaviours

Let’s take a moment to drill down into a particular model of feedback literacy and reflect on your strengths and areas for improvement.

You might remember filling in a survey at the start of this course. It’s called the Feedback Literacy Behaviour Scale, and it was developed to measure what people do in feedback situations. When you filled it in, you might have found some of the questions a little curious.

In this step, we will go through the model that underpins the survey, and what we were trying to measure. At the end, you’ll join in a discussion about something you think you do well in feedback, linking it back to that model.

Please note that due to the nature of this study, we are unable to provide you with your score.

We mentioned the five areas measured by the Feedback Literacy Behaviour Scale in the previous step: seeking feedback, making sense of it, using it, taking action, and managing affect. Let’s go into each one in a bit more detail.

Seeking feedback information

Seeking feedback involves you asking someone (or something) for an appraisal of your work. People often think of seeking feedback from a boss or teacher, but really you can seek feedback from almost anyone: peers, family members, friends, online communities, clients, and even artificial intelligence tools.

Some people even seek feedback by looking at past feedback they have received, or trying to find feedback other people have received on a similar task to what they are working on.

Making sense of feedback information

Making sense of feedback involves taking the raw feedback information you receive, and turning it into something that, well, makes sense.

Often we get feedback comments from other people and they don’t immediately seem that useful or clear. Making sense can include going back to the feedback provider and asking for clarification, but that’s not the only way. Some people like to discuss feedback they receive with a close friend or colleague. Others like to rewrite feedback into action items or a list of to-dos.

Many people talk about needing to just take a day or two to let the feedback sink in. Sometimes you might get feedback from multiple sources that don’t agree with each other, and making sense involves choosing which inputs you’ll use and which you’ll discard.

Using feedback information

Using feedback is when you take action to improve your work based on the input you’ve received. There are sometimes obvious ways to do this, such as actioning specific requests someone has made about how your work should improve.

Other times you might find yourself with a comment that identifies a problem, but doesn’t tell you what the solution is. Or you might find yourself with advice on how to address a particular issue in part of your work, and you are expected to make similar changes across the rest of it without support. We’ll cover ways to make this easier later in the week.

Managing affect

Managing affect involves working with emotions, and it happens throughout the feedback process.

Emotions can be one of the hardest parts of feedback – they can even lead us to disengage entirely from the feedback process. However, they can also be part of what motivates us to improve; for example, when someone’s critique makes us feel a need to show we can do better. In Week 2 we will discuss strategies for working with our emotions around feedback.

Providing feedback information

We also often find ourselves on the other end of feedback: being the provider. Everyone needs to develop this capability too, not just teachers and managers. You never know when someone is going to say, ‘Can you give me some feedback on this?’

There’s a lot to providing feedback information that is useful to someone else. It’s a mix of communication, understanding, and knowing what good work looks like.

Reflection

Consider the five feedback behaviours, and ask yourself, ‘Which of these is a key strength of mine, and which one would I like to improve?’ Post in the comments section below explaining why.