Feedback Strategies

The first article on feedback strategies, "Be a Mirror" by Gravity Goldberg (Source), was very explicit with its feedback strategies. The article began by mentioning the growth mindset that I wrote about last week! This make perfect sense to me- you develop your skills as you hear and respond to feedback in order to better yourself. The two tips presented in this article that seemed the most useful to me were "focus on what they are doing (not what is missing)" and "make sure your advice can transfer."
I know that when I give advice on any sort of writing I have a terrible habit of simply telling the person what they didn't do. I originally thought it was useful because then the person would know what they needed to add to improve their work. However, the first time I was given advice like this, it was something along the lines of "you don't have a conclusion" for a piece of writing I had clearly not finished. I knew that I did not have a conclusion. My peer telling me it was missing didn't make a difference. Since receiving that feedback, I've tried to ensure I don't give others that same sort of useless feedback.
"Making sure your advice can transfer" is a good tactic that I want to try to adopt. It tends to be much easier to give advice specific to what is being critiqued. Yet, telling the person how what they can do to improve this single paper in a way that can apply to things they write in the future seems like one of the easiest ways to ensure that they take that feedback to heart.

This article explains that advice should be treated like a mirror- focus on what is present in front of you

Source

The second article, "How To Give Feedback Without Being a Jerk" by Adam Grant (Source), seemed to apply more to life in general than when you are specifically asked to give feedback. For example, when giving feedback to peers who have come to you to seek out feedback, there is no reason to ask if they want feedback- it would be silly. This article seemed to apply more to life as a part of an organization where you aren't necessarily in a position to give your boss and/or coworkers feedback.

I think the tip of "have a transparent dialogue, not a manipulative one" sounds fairly common sense but is hard to act on. For example, it will be easy to give feedback to a person I don't know through my laptop that serves as a form of protection. This doesn't work when needed to give advice in real life. Then different things complicate the situation- my emotions, their emotions, interactions we had earlier in the day, the power dynamic in terms of bosses and coworkers, etc. Telling people what they need to hear, rather than what they want to hear, is the only useful feedback.