{"id":643,"date":"2016-10-04T11:00:45","date_gmt":"2016-10-04T15:00:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/feedback\/?p=643"},"modified":"2017-03-03T13:12:28","modified_gmt":"2017-03-03T18:12:28","slug":"feedbacklash","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/feedback\/2016\/10\/04\/feedbacklash\/","title":{"rendered":"Feedbacklash"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Riki\"A lot of great stuff has been written about the feedback process, especially how to deliver it: Talk to the person first. Send a draft of the review in e-mail form. Balance the positive and negative feedback. <\/span><\/p>\n

Here\u2019s the problem: <\/span>these points are all centered on sparing the feelings of the person receiving the feedback.<\/span><\/i> We spend no time discussing the feelings of the person giving the feedback.<\/span><\/p>\n

Have you ever given feedback to someone only to have them react defensively? Maybe you felt like the conversation was a waste of time, so you chose not to follow up with a written Judge Center review. Or maybe you entered the review but then got an email response disputing each point in your feedback.<\/span><\/p>\n

Welcome to <\/span>feedbacklash<\/span><\/i>, the latest in the Feedback Loop\u2019s string of <\/span>made up words<\/span><\/a>. <\/span>Feedbacklash<\/span><\/i> may be a made-up word, but it is a very real problem: backlash stifles people\u2019s desire to give feedback.<\/span><\/p>\n

If you\u2019ve gotten <\/span>feedbacklash<\/span><\/i>, think about how it made you feel. More than likely you felt bad, like you had done something wrong; or frustrated that your perspective wasn\u2019t valued; or maybe that you had hurt or offended your judge colleague. Since you\u2019re human, it\u2019s only natural that you\u2019d go out of your way to avoid the circumstances that led to that feeling because you don\u2019t want to feel that way again.<\/span><\/p>\n

Let me tell you an interesting anecdote about myself. Whenever someone offers me some gum, I take it. Every time. Okay, maybe not when I\u2019m actively eating something. I\u2019m now imagining that people will put this statement to the test. My mouth is prepared for your gifts of gum.<\/span><\/p>\n

This a habit I\u2019ve built up over the years for a simple reason: I assume that people are offering me gum because my breath smells bad and gum is their way of getting around telling me this directly. In the past, I\u2019ve asked if my breath smelled bad and gotten everything from \u201cNo, just offering gum\u201d to \u201cYeah\u2026please take the gum and chew before you say anything else.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Now imagine if when offered gum, I instead said, \u201cOh? Are you offering me gum because you think my breath smells bad? I\u2019ll have you know that I brushed my teeth this morning, so I find it highly unlikely that my breath smells bad. In fact, it may be your olfactory senses that are off. Who elected you to be the grand arbiter of breath smells?\u201d My obvious exaggeration illustrates the extreme defensive posturing that people can take when confronted with an attempt at constructive criticism.<\/span><\/p>\n

When I\u2019m offered gum, I cut out any pretense of defensiveness. I just say \u201cthank you\u201d and take the gum. I also try to apply this mentality to the way I receive feedback from other judges. In fact, my approach is pretty simple. I say <\/span>Thanks for the Feedback<\/span><\/a> and take it.<\/span><\/p>\n

Ok, my response is usually a bit more nuanced than that since feedback can be complex. I may need to think about the feedback a while to understand it better, but for the most part I take it and smile. What if they\u2019re wrong? It doesn\u2019t matter. What matters is that this person took some time to help me, and it\u2019s important to nurture that sentiment no matter\u00a0how much I disagree with the specifics of the feedback. You\u2019re always free to ignore feedback that you disagree with.<\/span><\/p>\n

Responding with <\/span>feedbacklash<\/span><\/i>, on the other hand, diminishes someone\u2019s efforts to help you now and reduces their willingness to help you or others in the future. Here\u2019s my advice:<\/span><\/p>\n

Next time you receive feedback, take it and chew on it a while.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A lot of great stuff has been written about the feedback process, especially how to deliver it: Talk to the person first. Send a draft of the review in e-mail form. Balance the positive and negative feedback. Here\u2019s the problem: these points are all centered on sparing the feelings of the person receiving the feedback. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":275,"featured_media":268,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[41,6,25],"tags":[23,46,53,38],"language":[78],"class_list":["post-643","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-evaluation","category-riki-hayashi","category-strategy","tag-edited-by-angela-aliff","tag-evaluation","tag-riki-hayashi","tag-strategy","language-en"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/feedback\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/643","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/feedback\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/feedback\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/feedback\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/275"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/feedback\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=643"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/feedback\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/643\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":646,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/feedback\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/643\/revisions\/646"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/feedback\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/268"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/feedback\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=643"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/feedback\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=643"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/feedback\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=643"},{"taxonomy":"language","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/feedback\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/language?post=643"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}