We can all get better. Feedback is a tool for that, both for the recipient of feedback and for the one who provides it. Both parties are forced to reflect on the positive and negative aspects of action when they sit down to a feedback round. Whether your association’s volunteers are homework assistants, visiting friends or kayakers are subordinate, because everyone benefits from good feedback. This is why it is very important to give your volunteers useful feedback.
Feedback 5 C’s
There are a number of feedback requirements you could usefully take with you when you’re about to give it. At the Danish School of Media and Journalism, the students feedback each other’s tasks with the distinction to the 5 C’s: Concrete, Constructive, Conceptual, Contextual and Caring.
Be specific, not vague
Feedback is concrete, if it tells what can be done better, or what was good, brushed so it is to understand. The volunteer should never be in any doubt exactly what you thought was good or bad. Vague feedback that “You played well today,” whether it was at a football game or concert, is useless feedback that doesn’t tell the person who was being feedbacked.
Always say what could be done better
To feedback is not to trash, i.e. to verbally step someone in the dust. Don’t ever just say something was bad, and that’s it. Your feedback should be constructive, which means that every time you point to something that was not so good, follow your take on what could have been done better.
Use the words that are special in your association
The third support of the feedback is conceptual, and it has to do with using the right words in your feedback, just the professional terms that go back into your association. The feedback becomes more credible and concrete when you use the terms that are good jargon in the field your association is dealing with. Playing basketball, keep the concepts of the sport in mind when you’re feedbacking: your rebounds have been faster, your dunks stronger, your crossovers more fluid.
Feedback not on anything other than the agreed
The feedback must also be contextual, which means that it must keep the performance that is feedbacked against what is expected of the performer. If you have agreed with a volunteer that she should try to be more active during activities at the club, it is not that you know feedback on how it has gone, start blaming her for the quality of the work she has done. As the School of Journalism states: “The task must be assessed in relation to the formulation of the task”.
We’re here to help each other
Finally, feedback must be loving. The purpose of feedback will never be to expose someone or create rifts, but simply to make each other better at what you do in your association. You should be able to walk away from the feedback without the feedback ed feeling humiliated, stupid or inadequate. You may never get the volunteers a little hit by your feedback, but as long as it doesn’t get too much, that’s fine. Feedback must be felt before it is effective. It has to hurt before it does good.
For the those who get feedback
If you’re in the role of the one who gets feedback, you’ll keep quiet while the feedback persists. Don’t object to anyone else’s feedback, even if you disagree with it, and make no apologies. You need to be silent throughout the feedback, and then, when it’s over, you can choose and choose between which feedback you can use going forward.
Follow this guide and the tips in it and learn to give your volunteers useful feedback that you can all benefit from.
Author:
Journalism students at the Danish School of Media and Journalism. Blogger at MinForening.