Criticism and feedback

@mohamedhassan22302

Recently, I have been on secondment as a trainee and on this secondment, the culture has been to criticise the newbie.  Criticism is killing. It creates self-doubt and uncertainty, cuts swathes through self-esteem and worst of all creates a climate of fear, especially fear of trying.  Unremitting criticism, is, in short, paralysing and deadening.

No doubt, the intention is to be helpful, from which you are supposed to formulate long lists of "areas for improvements" for bedtime reading. What I notice though, is that if I self-flagellate to my critics, a technique straight out of Chairman Mao's playbook,  it goes down remarkably well.  Why?  I think it's to do with power - it is an acknowledgement of your lowly status with regard to others and this makes those above you feel good. I think it is an utterly toxic and macho culture - perpetuated, surprisingly, by ardent females. I dared to say last week "Did I do anything OK?  Did you not think perhaps that X went quite well?"  The leader snapped back the savage retort: "We are not here to massage your ego".  I notice they have moved on to "your bag was in the wrong place" or "you missed off the letter 'p' in this word".  I take this scraping of the barrel as a sign of progress. 

I cannot describe the shock and sense of demoralisation I felt encountering this value-system and culture where detailed technique is particularly valued.  Outside of this environment I tutor, (I hope as more guide, than teacher) one to one, non native speakers in English and in French, I volunteer teaching English to refugees and I run a tango practica in which I largely just dance with new people and answer their questions based on my experience.  Most happily, for about a year I have had regular conversation exchange with native Spanish speakers where there is more equality and therefore more freedom.  My starting point in all these activities is always how well this person is doing - how motivated they are just to turn up, to participate, to interact, to try.  

The very last thing I want to do is to criticise them or even say, well you need to work on this and this and this because it's overwhelming and unhelpful and depressing. Conversation Exchange has been curious in this respect.  Often people say they want you to correct their English; being fairly literal-minded I have taken this, for months and months at face value.  But I suspect the reality is more often that they just want to speak.  People, I find, will ask you, if they are unsure and if they really want to know.

My mother was a great practitioner of the power of praise, and there is no one you could call less patronising. To praise without patronising is a sublime art. There is always good stuff and that is where I go from when new people rely on me.  People, when they are new to something feel good, from praise and it can be as subtle as a smile or a nod.  But if you are in work situations where you are obliged to "give feedback", there is a saying in primary school:  "two stars and a wish" - two good things and something to work on.  I find this good advice applies across the decades.

Feedback is a vexed and complex subject.  Academic theory shows that is can be be the most valuable tool for development but this is a blunt comment - it depends who you are talking to.  Hints, faint suggestions, people who know more than me taking time to ask me questions which get me thinking have been among the most powerful forms of feedback for me, personally. Unwanted feedback, feedback you are obliged to accept to "progress", from people you don't know, or worse, still, don't esteem is one of the vilest things.  Worse still is when you have to contort yourself to prove you have taken on board and changed things about yourself or your work to fit these people's perceptions of what you should do or should be. It is an extreme form of control.

Feedback assumes an inequality, someone "knowing better", which is a phrase that ought to send shivers down the spine, and in my experience that explicitness does not help human relations.  It is the people with most experience and from whom we can learn most who have least to say, least to prove, least need to give feedback, who are more inclined to answer questions, or rather, to ask them, rather than to give unsolicited advice.  Sometimes, they won't even give solicited advice, a clue that the question is wrong, or even that it is not the moment for it. We choose our best mentors, mutually, or they happen to us, fortuitously, almost like grace.

With things like dancing tango, which is so much not about feedback and analysis, but about sensation and feeling, anything, including feedback, that makes you think, is not likely to be helpful, however much you are convinced, as a neophyte, that you need it.  Mostly, what is needed, is more listening, more awareness and simply, more time.  Mostly, what is needed, is patience.