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Learning and Growing Together - Constructive FeedbackSep 07 '03 Write an essay on this topic.
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The Bottom Line Our Leads and Advisors have a lot to offer. I would welcome their Constructive Feedback because I want to improve. Let's make every review "Very Helpful."
1.A Stranger in a Unknown Land I’m not sure how many Epinion members are like me. I wandered into Epinions when I did a search on cars and found a list of reviews in the web site. The web site and the types of viewpoints provided stuck in my mind and I decided to join. Anyone that looks at my public profile will note there was a large gap between the time I joined and when I started presenting my own thoughts. I was content to be a reader rather than writer. There are many well thought out and well presented reviews and commentaries on Epinions. I have to admit that when I started writing I had no idea that there was an expectation in terms of review format. I had a member of Epinions that very thoughtfully took the time to advise me that Book reviews followed a general format. In addition, I also received an offer of assistance from this member. I was both very impressed and encouraged. I’ve also received personal emails offering encouragement and positive feedback. So by now your asking, “What’s your point?” The “click on” categories: “Very Helpful”, “Helpful”, Somewhat Helpful”, etc. do provide writers a form of feedback. The question that arises from this feedback is, “What did I do right?” 2.Toastmaster’s International First, I’m not advertising Toastmaster’s International. I’m using it as an example because they practice and teach Constructive Feedback. Toastmaster’s International was started by a small group of businessmen in California. They were being promoted in their companies and they did not have the communication, leadership and business meeting skills they needed. They established this non-profit organization to teach people: a. How to properly conduct a business meeting and or Chair a Board of Directors meeting (Roberts Rules of Order). b. How to clearly communicate your ideas. c. How to provide feedback to fellow toastmaster’s in a constructive and positive way. The goal of the feedback was to encourage and foster continuous growth and development. I was a member of Toastmaster’s International for 8 years and specialized in Speaker Evaluation. I was privileged to have participated in many of the Toastmaster Contests on Speaker Evaluation. The technique most frequently used was the sandwich technique. 3. The Sandwich Technique It consisted of identifying and describing 1 or 2 of the speaker’s strengths. Then the evaluator would select 1 or 2 key areas where improvement was needed. The area for improvement was described and then a description of a possible improvement was given. The sandwich was completed with the evaluator identifying another particular speaker strength. 4.How could we apply this in Epinions? A Lead or Advisor in a particular category must be extremely busy. There are seven people (a small number) that I follow and read whatever they write. I receive daily notices on this limited selection so I can only imagine how busy the Leads and Advisors are. Here is how I thought Constructive Feedback might work in Epinions. On each review 1 advisor reads the review and provides 1 described area of strength in the review plus 1 described area for improvement. Once the area for improvement has been described a short suggestion of “maybe next time you could try this…. “ as part of the feedback. 5.In closing I think Epinions is great, I truly have appreciated the structured feedback, and the personal commentaries sent to me. This is just an idea for consideration. Can we make a good thing even better? Your feedback will determine if we will.  |
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