"With no feedback, no coaching, there’s just no way to improve." Bill Gates
I have worked in businesses where there was no feedback and in others where feedback came only when things went wrong: they were run on confusion and fear. They were going nowhere fast and their people were neither happy nor successful. Yet the power of feedback to improve performance is demonstrable.
Researcher Ayelet Fishbach suggests that positive feedback increases people’s confidence, gives them belief that they can achieve their goals and encourages them to pursue them with more motivation. Even more, a positive feedback loop* can develop, whereby feedback leads to success in one’s goals, which, in turn, feeds satisfaction, leading to higher goal-setting and heightened motivation to achieve more – and so on. The reverse can occur, however, if a person receives only negative feedback.*(Ellen Winner 1996).
But there is a potential feedback trap, as Carol Dweck explains fully in her recently updated book Mindset. Feedback should not be about praising a person’s innate intelligence or ability, as this does not foster self-belief; on the contrary, it can lead to complacency and aversion to risk-taking. Consequently, full potential is neither striven for nor achieved. It is, therefore, “curious that we spend more time congratulating people who have succeeded than encouraging people who have not”. (Neil deGrasse Tyson, astrophysicist and author). Positive feedback is essential to encourage those who are not succeeding and It can take the form of praising determination and/or appropriate procedure. In failure, this is a very encouraging and constructive form of feedback: praising effort and process leads to a lifelong love of learning, builds resilience and enables greater accomplishments in all areas.
This YouTube clip is a short and effective way to illustrate this positive praise approach "growth mindset" - Carol Dweck - A Study on Praise and Mindsets.
With so much negativity surrounding us, looking for the positive and celebrating it will help us all be more motivated, more resilient and more productive. So let’s seek out every opportunity to see the good and praise it, in our students, in our staff and in our colleagues – wherever it occurs. Make it about energy, exertion, struggle, progression, development and method. And as a regular accompaniment thank you goes down well too.
Thank you.