The Feedback Sweet Spot

On Giving and Receiving Notes: How to Know When It's Too Much or Not Enough

Every creative eventually learns that feedback is the creative crucible that forges your vision, your voice, and your authority.

And we learn pretty quickly that feedback and criticism are not the same thing. That not everyone knows how to give effective feedback.

But here’s the secret sauce:

When you know how to give effective feedback, you can solicit it from others — guiding them to be more effective in how they provide feedback to you.

The art of giving and receiving notes is a lifelong practice that requires devotion to self-improvement to receive them, and a devotion to decentering oneself in giving them. The self-improvement part is no doubt obvious. But decentering ourselves in giving notes gets tricky— especially when those soliciting our feedback want to know: what do you think? Right?

EFFECTIVE FEEDBACK FRAMEWORK

Early in my teaching career, I was surprised by how my students would take feedback intensely personally — from their peers, from the teaching team (me included) — even if it wasn’t intended to be personal. Coming from Hollywood, and as a “theater kid” before that— notes had been such an integral part of my day to day for so long, I’d taken the art of giving and receiving them for granted. With gratitude to my colleagues, I quickly realized that I had to develop a framework to intentionally teach my students how to give and receive feedback.

Pedagogically, I adopted the artist-centered feedback framework, filtered through the ORID model of facilitation of the feedback discussion. In this approach, we seek to provide supportive, relevant, actionable feedback that centers the artist’s or creator’s intent. By observing neutrally, and seeking to reflect the artist’s intent as expressed back to them, we can establish a baseline for collaboration — a level playing field, where we both already agree on the goal of the artistic or creative expression. From there, we can then work together to interpret how effectively — that is, with respect to clarity, coherence (and for writing style, cohesiveness) and cogency — the expression achieves those goals. And then we’re at that point where we can solicit and offer suggestions for decisive action, next steps, revisions, strategic and creative alike.
(ORID: Observe, Reflect, Interpret, Decide)

In this way, we ensure that we decenter our own egos and opinions like, “I think you should do this…” and instead, focus on helping the artist achieve clarity of expression.

And guess what? When we let the creator “go first” — we remove the risk for misinterpretation. We don’t start offering feedback and opinions that forces the creator to backpedal and defend their intention. Removing the potential for defensiveness also eliminates the need for disclaimers that frequently accompany feedback discussions — because when we give the creator a chance to define their intent, the disclaimer becomes irrelevant.

This month, my deep dive takes us into the feedback sweet spot. Understanding how to leverage that framework to get at the most effective feedback for our creative evolution. Behind the paywall:

• Strategies for Delivering and Soliciting Notes

• The Feedback Sweet Spot

• What’s Too Much? What’s Not Enough?

• How Do You Know When To Take The Note?

• Tips For Cultivating Your Feedback Circle

• My Feedback For You | Global Notes

• Subscriber-Only Discount on 1:1 Feedback Services

Hope to connect with you on the other side!

With Creative Fire, Kat