Providing Feedback Quotes

Most enjoyable activities are not natural; they demand an effort that initially one is reluctant to make. But once the interaction starts to provide feedback to the person's skills, it usually begins to be intrinsically rewarding.

In an extroverted society, we rarely see ourselves in the mirror. We get alienating feedback. Alienating feedback comes in the form of repeated encouragement to join or talk, puzzled expressions, well-intended concern, and sometimes, all-out pointing and laughing. Alienating feedback happens when we hear statements like, “What kind of loser would be home on a Saturday night?” Alienating feedback happens where neighborhoods, schools, and offices provide no place to retreat. Alienating feedback happens when our quiet spaces and wilderness sanctuaries are seen as places to colonize.

...the concentration is usually possible because the task undertaken has clear goals and provides immediate feedback.

In the best classrooms, grades are only one of many types of feedback provided to students.

There is a powerful case for the market mechanism, but it is not that markets are perfect; it is that in a world dominated by imperfect understanding, markets provide an efficient feedback mechanism for evaluating the results of one's decisions and correcting mistakes.

All efforts at self-transformation challenge us to engage in on-going, critical self-examination and reflection about feminist practice, and about how we live in the world. This individual commitment, when coupled with engagement in collective discussion, provides a space for critical feedback which strengthens our efforts to change and make ourselves anew.

civic life. It is the habit of solving problems together, in the public sphere, through the tools of government and in the trenches of civil society. It is solving problems in ways that give the people you are helping a say in the solutions, that offer that say in equal measure to every citizen, that allow some kind of access to your deliberations or at least provide a meaningful feedback mechanism to tell you it isn’t working. It is not reimagining the world at conferences.

The Chinese manager learns never to criticize a colleague openly or in front of others, while the Dutch manager learns always to be honest and to give the message straight. Americans are trained to wrap positive messages around negative ones, while the French are trained to criticize passionately and provide positive feedback sparingly.

Even the most motivated and intelligent student will advance more quickly under the tutelage of someone who knows the best order in which to learn things, who understands and can demonstrate the proper way to perform various skills, who can provide useful feedback, and who can devise practice activities designed to overcome particular weaknesses.

writing it down on paper or on a computer where you can see it is because the brain, unlikely as it may sound, is no place for serious thinking. Any time you have serious thinking to do, the first step is to get the whole shootin’ match out of your head and set it up someplace where you can walk around it and see it from all sides. Attack, switch sides and counter-attack. You can’t do that while it’s still in your head. Writing it out allows you to act as your own teacher, your own critic, your own opponent. By externalizing your thoughts, you can become your own guru; judging yourself, giving feedback, providing a more objective and elevated perspective.

It’s hard to be your own coach, but not impossible. The key thing is to set up structures that provide you with objective feedback—and to not be so blind that you can’t take that feedback and use it.

The combination of the Main brain with its central nervous system, and the ancient Animal Brain with its somatic, enteric nervous system in the inner body—in the gut—and the constant dialog between them provides a self-correcting feedback system, which regulates the behavioral qualities of the organism when consciously cultivated—preferably in early youth.

Making art provides uncomfortably accurate feedback about the gap that inevitably exists between what you intended to do, and what you did.

Characteristics of sound feedback include that it should be frequent, give students a clear picture of their progress and how they might improve, and provide encouragement.

Feedback is important to people. We all want to know how well we’re doing. That’s why it is essential for an effective performance review system to provide ongoing feedback.

We have to remember that we are not just giving students feedback; we are also teaching them to provide it.

The best kind of feedback to get is corrective feedback. This is the feedback that shows you not only what you’re doing wrong but how to fix it. This kind of feedback is often available only through a coach, mentor, or teacher. However, sometimes it can be provided automatically if you are using the right study materials.

We have also seen that they give clients feedback about the impact they are having on the therapist—and others. It can be a gift when therapists use process comments to provide interpersonal feedback, and therapists can find constructive, noncritical ways to help clients see themselves from others’ eyes and learn about the impact they are having on others (such as regularly making others feel bored, intimidated, impatient, overwhelmed, confused, and so forth).

You already know what you have to offer — a talisman. You do not need to assign budgets, nor to buy extravagant gifts. You could focus on the symbol, on the person you want to offer it to, and on the quality of the feedback that it provides.

I recommend instead focusing first on something much more difficult: getting employees to give candid feedback to the boss. This can be accompanied by boss-to-employee feedback. But it’s when employees begin providing truthful feedback to their leaders that the big benefits of candor really take off.

the phenomenology of enjoyment has eight major components. When people reflect on how it feels when their experience is most positive, they mention at least one, and often all, of the following. First, the experience usually occurs when we confront tasks we have a chance of completing. Second, we must be able to concentrate on what we are doing. Third and fourth, the concentration is usually possible because the task undertaken has clear goals and provides immediate feedback. Fifth, one acts with a deep but effortless involvement that removes from awareness the worries and frustrations of everyday life. Sixth, enjoyable experiences allow people to exercise a sense of control over their actions. Seventh, concern for the self disappears, yet paradoxically the sense of self emerges stronger after the flow experience is over. Finally, the sense of the duration of time is altered; hours pass by in minutes, and minutes can stretch out to seem like hours. The combination of all these elements causes a sense of deep enjoyment that is so rewarding people feel that expending a great deal of energy is worthwhile simply to be able to feel it.

KM: Yes. Mrs. Lopez, she's human. And you know, clearly, she'd like people to show some appreciation for her hard work. But if people just, you know, take her pie and don't even say, "Hey, nice pie," they just scarf it down or whatever- MH: I could see how that would get to be annoying. I mean, if you're constantly providing...pie. And getting no positive feedback- KM: Right! And what about your future? I mean, how do you know people are still going to want your pie in the future? Supposing they become a famous rock star or something. People are going to be offering them pie all over the place. If they haven't promised only to eat your pie, well, where does that leave you?

Avoid staying too distant. You need to know your people extremely well, provide and receive regular feedback, and have quality discussions.

Almost any kind of feedback can be enjoyable, provided it is logically related to a goal in which one has invested psychic energy. If

The essential function of feelings is to provide feedback and pass through us organically like water flows in a river.

Both thinking over feeling provide vital feedback to support your survival and help you flourish.

Patricia turned to Al and Tim. “Nice work, you two.” Providing positive feedback would help establish her leadership. “You saved that woman’s life.” Al nodded at this. Tim

It is proper Netiquette to provide positive reinforcement, feedback, for posts we Like. NetworkEtiquette.net

No methodology can guarantee success. But a good methodology can provide a feedback loop for continual improvement and learning.

The concentration of the flow experience—together with clear goals and immediate feedback—provides order to consciousness, inducing the enjoyable condition of psychic negentropy.

Scheff called shame the social emotion because pride and shame provide the social evaluative feedback as we experience ourselves as if through others’ eyes.

Achieving a mixture of both short term and long term goals provides a healthy composite of feedback, where we reap the rewards of our efforts on a consistent basis.

…control has to be by feedback from the work done. The work itself has to provide the information. If it has to be checked all the time, there is no control

Generally speaking, meaningful positive feedback is one of the crucial factors in maintaining motivation. It can be internal feedback, such as the satisfaction of seeing yourself improve at something, or external feedback provided by others, but it makes a huge difference in whether a person will be able to maintain the consistent effort necessary to improve through purposeful practice.

Fill the group’s windshield with clear, accessible models of excellence. • Provide high-repetition, high-feedback training. • Build vivid, memorable rules of thumb (if X, then Y). • Spotlight and honor the fundamentals of the skill.

Superusers …   1. Check in frequently and consistently—not just once a year for an intense engagement.   2. Create content that others can access.   3. “Police” the community and ensure that cultural norms that strengthen the group are enforced.   4. Have a two-way relationship with the organization itself—providing feedback and suggestions.   5. Demonstrate genuine desire to help other members.   6. Attract new members.   7. Aid in the onboarding of new members.

This focus on stretching your ability and receiving immediate feedback provides the core of a more universal principle—one that I increasingly came to believe provides the key to successfully acquiring career capital in almost any field.

I came across a quote from the book Art and Fear that says it best: “Making art provides uncomfortably accurate feedback about the gap that inevitably exists between what you intended to do, and what you did.”3 And the gap never stays silent.

Failures provide a certain kind of feedback that is then used in a process we call error correction. With this simple loop in place, knowing that something doesn’t work can be as valuable as knowing that it does. Of course once again there are

Remember, though, that self-explanations will be most helpful when the learners receive feedback on their work—so you still might follow up peer activities with a large-group session in which you solicit some explanations and can provide a response.

The greater the challenge, the higher the probability that one seeks and needs feedback, but the more important it is that there is a teacher to provide feedback and to ensure that the learner is on the right path to successfully meet the challenges.

So, why do we do development work in these short cycles? To learn. Experience is the best teacher, and the scrum cycle is designed to provide you with multiple opportunities to receive feedback—from customers, from the team, from the market—and to learn from it.

...they simply liked the phrase 'I like to watch you play.' Rachel started to use this phrase with her kids and realized how it immediately lifted the pressure off her kids. She wasn't providing criticism or even feedback. It just focused on the joy watching them play their sport,or instrument, brought her.

To be exploited fundamentally means to be confused. When you're not confused you can't be exploited because you have clarity about the situation. To confuse people you must provide contradictory information. People who really want to do you harm will provide you confusing measures of good and bad feedback because that keeps you disorientated. Evil always want to camouflage itself as virtue witch means all the bad things that evil does is called justice against immorality. So they camouflage their brutality as a mask of virtue. Camouflage is so fundamentally an aspect of the predator-prey relationships. The mugger does not camouflage himself but, that's because he can leave. He is gonna run off and you'll never find him or catch him or at least that's the goal or plan right? The relationships were you're supposed to stay and continue to provide resources are the ones were camouflage is the most essential because you're constantly looking at somebody who is a predator and that have to continually camouflage themselves as somebody who is not a predator. The most fundamental thing is the camouflage of non-empathy with empathy. This is why people who lack empathy always use the language of empathy and that's whats so confusing. There are a lot of great antidotes to this. I mean, you just ask that person questions about yourself that they dont have any self interest in knowing and find out whether they know the answers. All the things personal to you that dont have any direct impact on the other person. It's a great way to find out whether they have empathy or curiosity about you or not.

Experts in diagnostic errors provided an answer to the puzzle that had been nagging me: How was it possible for missed diagnoses to be so common and yet not perceived by doctors as a major problem? The problem is that physicians, while generally aware that mistakes happen, greatly underestimate how often they make them. In his talks to doctors on the topic, Graber often asks how many have made a diagnostic error in the past year; typically, only about 1 percent of the hands go up. 'The concept that they, personally, could err at a significant rate is inconceivable to most physicians,' he writes. In short, they think it's the other guy. This overconfidence is not necessarily their fault: doctors simply do not get the feedback needed to gain an accurate sense of their batting average. They assume their diagnoses are correct until they hear otherwise. Since there are few, if any, health care organizations that systematically measure diagnostic error rates, they typically learn of their mistakes only from the patients themselves.

When practice conditions are varied or retrieval is interleaved with the practice of other material, we increase our abilities of discrimination and induction and the versatility with which we can apply the learning in new settings at a later date. Interleaving and variation build new connections, expanding and more firmly entrenching knowledge in memory and increasing the number of cues for retrieval. Trying to come up with an answer rather than having it presented to you, or trying to solve a problem before being shown the solution, leads to better learning and longer retention of the correct answer or solution, even when your attempted response is wrong, so long as corrective feedback is provided.

Jobs also attacked America’s education system, saying that it was hopelessly antiquated and crippled by union work rules. Until the teachers’unions were broken, there was almost no hope for education reform. Teachers should be treated as professionals, he said, not as industrial assembly- line workers. Principals should be able to hire and fire them based on how good they were. Schools should be staying open until at least 6 p.m. and be in session eleven months of the year. It was absurd, he added, that American classrooms were still based on teachers standing at a board and using textbooks. All books, learning materials, and assessments should be digital and interactive, tailored to each student and providing feedback in real time.

BIG BUTS: 5 OBSTACLES TO PROVIDING GREAT SERVICE Key Points: There are five reasons businesses and organizations do not answer every complaint, in every channel, every time. Each of these obstacles must be overcome to hug your haters effectively: There are too many channels. There is too much feedback. You take complaints personally. You fear getting scammed. You don’t have a customer service culture.

If aspirations are to be achieved, capabilities developed, and management systems created, progress needs to be measured. Measurement provides focus and feedback. Focus comes from an awareness that outcomes will be examined, and success or failure noted, creating a personal incentive to perform well. Feedback comes from the fact that measurement allows the comparison of expected outcomes with actual outcomes and enables you to adjust strategic choices accordingly.

Since Lyster and Ranta reported their findings, many more observation studies of corrective feedback in second or foreign language classrooms have been carried out. Some of them report similar results—that recasts are the most frequently occurring type of feedback and that they appear to go unnoticed by learners. However, others report that learners do notice recasts in the classroom. Below, two studies are described in which learners were observed to notice and to respond to recasts provided by their teachers.

Jobs asked some questions about education, and Gates sketched out his vision of what schools in the future would be like, with students watching lectures and video lessons on their own while using the classroom time for discussions and problem solving. They agreed that computers had, so far, made surprisingly little impact on schools—far less than on other realms of society such as media and medicine and law. For that to change, Gates said, computers and mobile devices would have to focus on delivering more personalized lessons and providing motivational feedback.

Feedback works well when it provides useful information that can guide future learning. If feedback tells you what you’re doing wrong or how to fix it, it can be a potent tool. But feedback often backfires when it is aimed at a person’s ego. Praise, a common type of feedback that teachers often use (and students enjoy), is usually harmful to further learning. When feedback steers into evaluations of you as an individual (e.g., “You’re so smart!” or “You’re lazy”), it usually has a negative impact on learning. Further, even feedback that includes useful information needs to be correctly processed as a motivator and tool for learning.

What did you think?” she asked Michel, smiling. “You mean that racist shit we just saw?” Sara raised her eyebrows, signaling that this was out-of-bounds. Only sanctioned critiques, please. “Racist? How so?” “Snow Yellow?” “I’m pretty sure it’s a comment on racism, it’s not doing racism.” “What’s the difference?” “Um, it’s sort of an interrogation into . . . I don’t know, notions of authenticity in the Western world. Like gestural marks that are meant to—maybe—provide like, a feedback loop into network ecologies of beauties, and like, other ways of interaction conceived as data flows?” Michel looked at her incredulously and laughed. “Who has done this terrible thing to your speech?

As with any other flow activity, family activities should also provide clear feedback. In this case, it is simply a matter of keeping open channels of communication. If a husband does not know what bothers his wife, and vice versa, neither has the opportunity to reduce the inevitable tensions that will arise. In this context it is worth stressing that entropy is the basic condition of group life, just as it is of personal experience. Unless the partners invest psychic energy in the relationship, conflicts are inevitable, simply because each individual has goals that are to a certain extent divergent from those of all other members of the family. Without good lines of communication the distortions will become amplified, until the relationship falls apart. Feedback

Faculty professional development workshops are often top-down, designed and offered by the college’s administration with little input or feedback from the faculty themselves. Workshops are also isolated from the classroom: they provide participants with an opportunity to learn more about a topic or technique, but when or how the technique can be effectively applied in each participant’s own class remains unclear. 44 Furthermore, workshops are typically unaccompanied by additional structures to help faculty sustain and build on their learning across time. Taken together, the top-down, decontextualized, and short-term nature of many faculty development workshops conspire to create an experience that instructors characterize as “painful,” “boring,” and “insulting.” 45

What we're now starting to see, as online retailers begin to capitalize on their extraordinary economic efficiences, is the shape of a massive mountain of choice emerging where before there was just a peak.... By necessity, the conomics of traditional, hit-driven retail limit choice. When you dramatically lower the costs of connecting supply and demand, it changes not just the numbers, but the entire nature of the market. This is not just a quantiative change, but a qualitative one, too. Bringing niches within reach reveals latent demand for noncommercial content. Then, as demand shifts toward the niches, the economics of provided them improve further, and so on, creating a positive feedback loop that will transform entire industries - and the culture - for decades to come.

Play Fair You’re sure to elicit a threat response if you provide feedback the other person views as unfair or inaccurate. But how do you avoid that, given how subjective perceptions of fairness and accuracy are? David Bradford of the Stanford Graduate School of Business suggests “staying on our side of the net”—that is, focusing our feedback on our feelings about the behavior and avoiding references to the other person’s motives. We’re in safe territory on our side of the net; others may not like what we say when we describe how we feel, but they can’t dispute its accuracy. However, when we make guesses about their motives, we cross over to their side of the net, and even minor inaccuracies can provoke a defensive reaction. For example, when giving critical feedback to someone who’s habitually late, it’s tempting to say something like, “You don’t value my time, and it’s very disrespectful of you.” But these are guesses about the other person’s state of mind, not statements of fact. If we’re even slightly off base, the employee will feel misunderstood and be less receptive to the feedback. A more effective way to make the same point is to say, “When you’re late, I feel devalued and disrespected.” It’s a subtle distinction, but by focusing on the specific behavior and our internal response—by staying on our side of the net—we avoid making an inaccurate, disputable guess. Because motives are often unclear, we constantly cross the net in an effort to make sense of others’ behavior. While this is inevitable, it’s good practice to notice when we’re guessing someone’s motives and get back on our side of the net before offering feedback.

Therapists must be familiar with their own dark side and be able to empathize with all human wishes and impulses. A personal therapy experience permits the student therapist to experience many aspects of the therapeutic process from the patient’s seat: the tendency to idealize the therapist, the yearning for dependency, the gratitude toward a caring and attentive listener, the power granted to the therapist. Young therapists must work through their own neurotic issues; they must learn to accept feedback, discover their own blind spots, and see themselves as others see them; they must appreciate their impact upon others and learn how to provide accurate feedback. Lastly, psychotherapy is a psychologically demanding enterprise, and therapists must develop the awareness and inner strength to cope with the many occupational hazards inherent in it. Many

At each of the meetings, I was struck that there seemed to be two kinds of reviewers: some who would look for flaws in the papers, and then pounce to kill them; and others who started from a place of seeking and promoting good ideas. When the “idea protectors” saw flaws, they pointed them out gently, in the spirit of improving the paper—not eviscerating it. Interestingly, the “paper killers” were not aware that they were serving some other agenda (which was often, in my estimation, to show their colleagues how high their standards were). Both groups thought they were protecting the proceedings, but only one group understood that by looking for something new and surprising, they were offering the most valuable kind of protection. Negative feedback may be fun, but it is far less brave than endorsing something unproven and providing room for it to grow.

When applying agile practices at the portfolio level, similar benefits accrue: • Demonstrable results—Every quarter or so products, or at least deployable pieces of products, are developed, implemented, tested, and accepted. Short projects deliver chunks of functionality incrementally. • Customer feedback—Each quarter product managers review results and provide feedback, and executives can view progress in terms of working products. • Better portfolio planning—Portfolio planning is more realistic because it is based on deployed whole or partial products. • Flexibility—Portfolios can be steered toward changing business goals and higher-value projects because changes are easy to incorporate at the end of each quarter. Because projects produce working products, partial value is captured rather than being lost completely as usually happens with serial projects that are terminated early. • Productivity—There is a hidden productivity improvement with agile methods from the work not done. Through constant negotiation, small projects are both eliminated and pared down.

There were also many cases of feedback between physics and mathematics, where a physical phenomenon inspired a mathematical model that later proved to be the explanation of an entirely different physical phenomenon. An excellent example is provided by the phenomenon known as Brownian motion. In 1827, British botanist Robert Brown (1773-1858) observed that wen pollen particles are suspended in water, they get into a state of agitated motion. This effect was explained by Einstein in 1905 as resulting from the collisions that the colloidal particles experience with the molecules of the surrounding fluid. Each single collision has a negligible effect, because the pollen grains are millions of times more massive than the water molecules, but the persistent bombardment has a cumulative effect. Amazingly, the same model was found to apply to the motions of stars in star clusters. There the Brownian motion is produced by the cumulative effect of many stars passing by any given star, with each passage altering the motion (through gravitational interaction) by a tiny amount.

When people reflect on how it feels when their experience is most positive, they mention at least one, and often all, of the following. First, the experience usually occurs when we confront tasks we have a chance of completing. Second, we must be able to concentrate on what we are doing. Third and fourth, the concentration is usually possible because the task undertaken has clear goals and provides immediate feedback. Fifth, one acts with a deep but effortless involvement that removes from awareness the worries and frustrations of everyday life. Sixth, enjoyable experiences allow people to exercise a sense of control over their actions. Seventh, concern for the self disappears, yet paradoxically the sense of self emerges stronger after the flow experience is over. Finally, the sense of the duration of time is altered; hours pass by in minutes, and minutes can stretch out to seem like hours. The combination of all these elements causes a sense of deep enjoyment that is so rewarding people feel that expending a great deal of energy is worthwhile simply to be able to feel it.

The family context promoting optimal experience could be described as having five characteristics. The first one is clarity: the teenagers feel that they know what their parents expect from them—goals and feedback in the family interaction are unambiguous. The second is centering, or the children’s perception that their parents are interested in what they are doing in the present, in their concrete feelings and experiences, rather than being preoccupied with whether they will be getting into a good college or obtaining a well-paying job. Next is the issue of choice: children feel that they have a variety of possibilities from which to choose, including that of breaking parental rules—as long as they are prepared to face the consequences. The fourth differentiating characteristic is commitment, or the trust that allows the child to feel comfortable enough to set aside the shield of his defenses, and become unselfconsciously involved in whatever he is interested in. And finally there is challenge, or the parents’ dedication to provide increasingly complex opportunities for action to their children.

As our studies have suggested, the phenomenology of enjoyment has eight major components. When people reflect on how it feels when their experience is most positive, they mention at least one, and often all, of the following. First, the experience usually occurs when we confront tasks we have a chance of completing. Second, we must be able to concentrate on what we are doing. Third and fourth, the concentration is usually possible because the task undertaken has clear goals and provides immediate feedback. Fifth, one acts with a deep but effortless involvement that removes from awareness the worries and frustrations of everyday life. Sixth, enjoyable experiences allow people to exercise a sense of control over their actions. Seventh, concern for the self disappears, yet paradoxically the sense of self emerges stronger after the flow experience is over. Finally, the sense of the duration of time is altered; hours pass by in minutes, and minutes can stretch out to seem like hours. The combination of all these elements causes a sense of deep enjoyment that is so rewarding people feel that expending a great deal of energy is worthwhile simply to be able to feel it.

As our studies have suggested, the phenomenology of enjoyment has eight major components. When people reflect on how it feels when their experience is most positive, they mention at least one, and often all, of the following. First, the experience usually occurs when we confront tasks we have a chance of completing. Second, we must be able to concentrate on what we are doing. Third and fourth, the concentration is usually possible because the task undertaken has clear goals and provides immediate feedback. Fifth, one acts with a deep but effortless involvement that removes from awareness the worries and frustrations of everyday life. Sixth, enjoyable experiences allow people to exercise a sense of control over their actions. Seventh, concern for the self disappears, yet paradoxically the sense of self emerges stronger after the flow experience is over. Finally, the sense of the duration of time is altered; hours pass by in minutes, and minutes can stretch out to seem like hours. The combination of all these elements causes a sense of deep enjoyment that is so rewarding people feel that expending a great deal of energy is worthwhile simply to be able to feel it. We

FOR MANY YEARS, I was on a committee that read and selected papers to be published at SIGGRAPH, the annual computer graphics conference I mentioned in chapter 2. These papers were supposed to present ideas that advanced the field. The committee was composed of many of the field’s most prominent players, all of whom I knew; it was a group that took the task of selecting papers very seriously. At each of the meetings, I was struck that there seemed to be two kinds of reviewers: some who would look for flaws in the papers, and then pounce to kill them; and others who started from a place of seeking and promoting good ideas. When the “idea protectors” saw flaws, they pointed them out gently, in the spirit of improving the paper—not eviscerating it. Interestingly, the “paper killers” were not aware that they were serving some other agenda (which was often, in my estimation, to show their colleagues how high their standards were). Both groups thought they were protecting the proceedings, but only one group understood that by looking for something new and surprising, they were offering the most valuable kind of protection. Negative feedback may be fun, but it is far less brave than endorsing something unproven and providing room for it to grow.

all teachers in the content-based French immersion classes they observed used recasts more than any other type of feedback. Indeed, recasts accounted for more than half of the total feedback provided in the four classes. Repetition of error was the least frequent feedback type provided. The other types of corrective feedback fell in between. Student uptake was least likely to occur after recasts and more likely to occur after clarification requests, metalinguistic feedback, and repetitions. Furthermore, elicitations and metalinguistic feedback not only resulted in more uptake, they were also more likely to lead to a corrected form of the original utterance. Lyster (1998) has argued that students receiving content-based language teaching (where the emphasis is on meaning not form) are less likely to notice recasts than other forms of corrective feedback, because they may assume that the teacher is responding to the content rather than the form of their speech. Indeed, the double challenge of making the subject-matter comprehensible and enhancing knowledge of the second language itself within content-based language teaching has led Merrill Swain (1988) and others to conclude that ‘not all content teaching is necessarily good language teaching’ (p. 68). The challenges of content-based language teaching will be discussed further in Chapter 6.

I began to see that the stronger a therapy emphasized feelings, self-esteem, and self-confidence, the more dependent the therapist was upon his providing for the patient ongoing, unconditional, positive regard. The more self-esteem was the end, the more the means, in the form of the patient’s efforts, had to appear blameless in the face of failure. In this paradigm, accuracy and comparison must continually be sacrificed to acceptance and compassion; which often results in the escalation of bizarre behavior and bizarre diagnoses. The bizarre behavior results from us taking credit for everything that is positive and assigning blame elsewhere for anything negative. Because of this skewed positive-feedback loop between our judged actions and our beliefs, we systematically become more and more adapted to ourselves, our feelings, and our inaccurate solitary thinking; and less and less adapted to the environment that we share with our fellows. The resultant behavior, such as crying, depression, displays of temper, high-risk behavior, or romantic ventures, or abandonment of personal responsibilities, which seem either compulsory, necessary, or intelligent to us, will begin to appear more and more irrational to others. The bizarre diagnoses occur because, in some cases, if a ‘cause disease’ (excuse from blame) does not exist, it has to be 'discovered’ (invented). Psychiatry has expanded its diagnoses of mental disease every year to include 'illnesses’ like kleptomania and frotteurism [now frotteuristic disorder in the DSM-V]. (Do you know what frotteurism is? It is a mental disorder that causes people, usually men, to surreptitiously fondle women’s breasts or genitals in crowded situations such as elevators and subways.) The problem with the escalation of these kinds of diagnoses is that either we can become so adapted to our thinking and feelings instead of our environment that we will become dissociated from the whole idea that we have a problem at all; or at least, the more we become blameless, the more we become helpless in the face of our problems, thinking our problems need to be 'fixed’ by outside help before we can move forward on our own. For 2,000 years of Western culture our problems existed in the human power struggle constantly being waged between our principles and our primal impulses. In the last fifty years we have unprincipled ourselves and become what I call 'psychologized.’ Now the power struggle is between the 'expert’ and the 'disorder.’ Since the rise of psychiatry and psychology as the moral compass, we don’t talk about moral imperatives anymore, we talk about coping mechanisms. We are not living our lives by principles so much as we are living our lives by mental health diagnoses. This is not working because it very subtly undermines our solid sense of self.

The aim is to get the students actively involved in seeking this evidence: their role is not simply to do tasks as decided by teachers, but to actively manage and understand their learning gains. This includes evaluating their own progress, being more responsible for their learning, and being involved with peers in learning together about gains in learning. If students are to become active evaluators of their own progress, teachers must provide the students with appropriate feedback so that they can engage in this task. Van den Bergh, Ros, and Beijaard (2010: 3) describe the task thus: Fostering active learning seems a very challenging and demanding task for teachers, requiring knowledge of students’ learning processes, skills in providing guidance and feedback and classroom management. The need is to engage students in this same challenging and demanding task. The suggestion in this chapter is to start lessons with helping students to understand the intention of the lesson and showing them what success might look like at the end. Many times, teachers look for the interesting beginning to a lesson – for the hook, and the motivating question. Dan Willingham (2009) has provided an excellent argument for not thinking in this way. He advocates starting with what the student is likely to think about. Interesting hooks, demonstrations, fascinating facts, and likewise may seem to be captivating (and often are), but he suggests that there are likely to be other parts of the lesson that are more suitable for the attention-grabber. The place for the attention-grabber is more likely to be at the end of the lesson, because this will help to consolidate what has been learnt. Most importantly,Willingham asks teachers to think long and hard about how to make the connection between the attention-grabber and the point that it is designed to make; preferably, that point will be the main idea from the lesson. Having too many open-ended activities (discovery learning, searching the Internet, preparing PowerPoint presentations) can make it difficult to direct students’ attention to that which matters – because they often love to explore the details, the irrelevancies, and the unimportant while doing these activities. One of Willingham's principles is that any teaching method is most useful when there is plenty of prompt feedback about whether the student is thinking about a problem in the right way. Similarly, he promotes the notion that assignments should be primarily about what the teacher wants the students to think about (not about demonstrating ‘what they know’). Students are very good at ignoring what you say (‘I value connections, deep ideas, your thoughts’) and seeing what you value (corrections to the grammar, comments on referencing, correctness or absence of facts). Thus teachers must develop a scoring rubric for any assignment before they complete the question or prompts, and show the rubric to the students so that they know what the teacher values. Such formative feedback can reinforce the ‘big ideas’ and the important understandings, and help to make the investment of

One winter day in 1993, Bob, Giselle, and Dan proposed taking me out to dinner with the stated purpose of “giving Ray feedback about how he affects people and company morale.” They sent me a memo first, the gist of which was that my way of operating was having a negative effect on everyone in the company. Here’s how they put it: What does Ray do well? He is very bright and innovative. He understands markets and money management. He is intense and energetic. He has very high standards and passes these to others around him. He has good intentions about teamwork, building group ownership, providing flexible work conditions to employees, and compensating people well. What Ray doesn’t do as well: Ray sometimes says or does things to employees which makes them feel incompetent, unnecessary, humiliated, overwhelmed, belittled, oppressed, or otherwise bad. The odds of this happening rise when Ray is under stress. At these times, his words and actions toward others create animosity toward him and leave a lasting impression. The impact of this is that people are demotivated rather than motivated. This reduces productivity and the quality of the environment. The effect reaches far beyond the single employee. The smallness of the company and the openness of communication means that everyone is affected when one person is demotivated, treated badly, not given due respect. The future success of the company is highly dependent on Ray’s ability to manage people as well as money. If he doesn’t manage people well, growth will be stunted and we will all be affected.

The Pirates' most advanced and widely discussed technological innovation is an online system called LiquidFeedback, which allows the party to better understand what its members think about issues of the day. Here is how it works: Any member of the party can register (with the optino of using a pseudonym) with LiquidFeedback and propose that the Pirates should do x. If more than 10 percent of other members find this proposal intriguing, it passes to the next stage, in which party members can vote for or against it. After the proposal has been submitted, and before it has moved to the voting stage, other party members can launch counterproposals on a similar subject or make suggestions about how to improve the original one. What's interesting is that party members can transfer their votes to those they consider more knowledgeable about a given subject; thus, someone recognized as an expert on transportation policy might end up casting ten votes rather than one. To prevent some such experts from accumulating and abusing power, transferred votes can be recalled to their original "ownders." The votes cast in LiquidFeedback are not bniding; they simply inform party officials about the views of the grass roots. Big policy proposals are still discussed and voted upon at the party congress. LiquidFeedback thus aims to provide the intellectual inputs to the Pirates' work; the outputs are still determined by rather conventional means. This all sounds great in theory...but the reality is much grimmer. In one German region, reports Der Spiegel, the Pirates used LiquidFeedback to gather general opinions on only two issues, while only twenty votes were cast in the controversial law on circumcision.

Ellen Braun, an accomplished agile manager, noticed that different behaviors emerge over time as telltale signs of a team’s emotional maturity, a key component in their ability to adjust as things happen to them and to get to the tipping point when “an individual’s self interest shifts to alignment with the behaviors that support team achievement” (Braun 2010). It is better to know some of the questions than all of the answers. —James Thurber Team Dynamics Survey Ellen created a list of survey questions she first used as personal reflection while she observed teams in action. Using these questions the same way, as a pathway to reflection, an agile coach can gain insight into potential team problems or areas for emotional growth. Using them with the team will be more insightful, perhaps as material for a retrospective where the team has the time and space to chew on the ideas that come up. While the team sprints, though, mull them over on your own, and notice what they tell you about team dynamics (Braun 2010). • How much does humor come into day-to-day interaction within the team? • What are the initial behaviors that the team shows in times of difficulty and stress? • How often are contradictory views raised by team members (including junior team members)? • When contradictory views are raised by team members, how often are they fully discussed? • Based on the norms of the team, how often do team members compromise in the course of usual team interactions (when not forced by circumstances)? • To what extent can any team member provide feedback to any other team member (think about negative and positive feedback)? • To what extent does any team member actually provide feedback to any other team member? • How likely would it be that a team member would discuss issues with your performance or behavior with another team member without giving feedback to you directly (triangulating)? • To what extent do you as an individual get support from your team on your personal career goals (such as learning a new skill from a team member)? • How likely would you be to ask team members for help if it required your admission that you were struggling with a work issue? • How likely would you be to share personal information with the team that made you feel vulnerable? • To what extent is the team likely to bring into team discussions an issue that may create conflict or disagreement within the team? • How likely or willing are you to bring into a team discussion an issue that is likely to have many different conflicting points of view? • If you bring an item into a team discussion that is likely to have many different conflicting points of view, how often does the team reach a consensus that takes into consideration all points of view and feels workable to you? • Can you identify an instance in the past two work days when you felt a sense of warmth or inclusion within the context of your team? • Can you identify an instance in the past two days when you felt a sense of disdain or exclusion within the context of your team? • How much does the team make you feel accountable for your work? Mulling over these questions solo or posing them to the team will likely generate a lot of raw material to consider. When you step back from the many answers, perhaps one or two themes jump out at you, signaling the “big things” to address.

Pulse Surveys Pulse surveys are real-time surveys that are short and provide immediate feedback to managers and the organization. They are excellent tools to drive more employee engagement and create a culture of transparency. Platforms like, TINYpulse, help organizations gather this anonymous feedback by asking just one question per week to gauge employee engagement and provide actionable insights.

Stay Interviews There is a growing trend toward conducting employee-stay interviews in place of, or in addition to, exit interviews. This is primarily due to unsuccessful attempts to gather trustworthy feedback from people on their way out the door. It turns out that current employees are much more likely to give human resources the time of day and even sit to talk about the work environment. Also, they are more likely to provide balanced feedback.

I know a decision journal has helped me change the way I make decisions. It has provided me with a feedback loop, and a mechanism to switch from unconscious to conscious, which is one of the most valuable things you can have.

GCN Wireless provides research, feedback and product information that enables IT managers to identify solutions to address their public sector IT challenges.

#ExplosiveGrowthTip 7: A few fanatical customer advocates are worth more than hundreds or even thousands of casual signups. Fanatical users will supply word-of-mouth growth, while providing the necessary feedback to iterate on the product. Do you have at least twenty fanatical users or a plan to get them?

we always have team members go back to their direct reports and share their profile information. This serves three purposes. First, it provides a great opportunity for demonstrating vulnerability with their subordinates. Second, it gives those subordinates real insights into their leaders, so that they’ll feel more comfortable providing feedback and interpreting behavior correctly. Third, it helps the executives develop a better understanding of their own profiles, because teaching is one of the best ways of learning.

First of all, the tone of my muscle cells must hold my skeleton together so that it neither collapses in upon my organs nor dislocates at its joints. It is tone, just as much as it is connective tissues or bone, that is responsible for my basic structural shape and integrity. Secondly, my muscle tone must superimpose upon its own stability the steady, rhythmical expansion and contraction of respiration. Third, it must support my overall structure in one position or another—lying, sitting standing, and so on. Finally, it must be able to brace and release any part of the body in relation to the whole, and to do this with spontaneity and split-second timing, so that graceful, purposeful action may be added to my stability, my posture, and my rhythmic respiration. It is no wonder we find that such large portions of our nervous systems are so continually engaged in controlling the maintenance and adjustments of this tone. The entire system of spindle cells, with both their contractile parts and their anulospiral receptors, the Golgi tendon organs, the reflex arcs, much of the internuncial circuitry of the spinal column, and most of the oldest portion of our brains—including the reticular formation and the basal ganglia—all work together to orchestrate this complex phenomenon. We have, as it were, a brain within our brain and a muscle system within our muscle system to monitor the constantly shifting values of background tonus, to provide a stable yet flexible framework which we are free to use how we will. Nor is it a wonder that these elements and processes are normally controlled below my level of consciousness—if this were not the case, walking across the room to get a glass of water would require more diversified and minute attention than my conscious awareness could possibly muster. It is the old brain, along with the even more ancient spinal cord, that are given the bulk of this task, because they have had so many more generations in which to grapple with the problems and refine the solutions. Millions upon millions of trials and errors have resulted in genetically constant motor circuits and sensory feedback loops which handle the fundamental life-supporting jobs of muscle tone for me automatically. Firm structure, posture, respiratory rhythms, swallowing, elimination, grasping, withdrawing, tracking with the eyes—all these intact and fully functional activities and more are given to each of us as new-born infants, the legacy of the development of our ancestors.

So it is necessary that we have a means of monitoring the tension developed by muscular activity, and equally necessary that the threshold of response for the inhibitory function of that monitor be a variable threshold that can be readily adjusted to suit many purposes, from preventing tissue damage due to overload, to providing a smooth and delicate twist of the tuning knob of a sensitive shortwave receiver. And such a marvelously adaptable tension-feedback system we do have in our Golgi tendon organs, reflex arcs which connect the sensory events in a stretching tendon directly to the motor events which control that degree of stretch, neural feed-back loops whose degree of sensory and motor stimulation may be widely altered according to our intent, our conscious training, and our unconscious habits. This ingenious device does, however, contain a singular danger, a danger unfortunately inherent in the very features of the Golgi reflex which are the cleverest, and the most indispensable to its proper function. The degree of facilitation of the feed-back loop, which sets the threshold value for the “required tension,” is controlled by descending impulses from higher brain centers down into the loop’s internuncial network in the brain stem and the spinal cord. In this way, conscious judgements and the fruits of practice are translated into precise neuromuscular values. But judgement and practice are not the only factors that can be involved in this facilitating higher brain activity. Relative levels of overall arousal, our attitudes towards our past experience, the quality of our present mood, neurotic avoidances and compulsions of all kinds, emotional associations from all quarters—any of these things can color descending messages, and do in fact cause considerable alterations in the Golgi’s threshold values. It is possible, for instance, to be so emotionally involved in an effort—either through panic or through exhilaration—that we do not even notice that our exertions have torn us internally until the excitement has receded, leaving the painful injury behind to surprise us. Or acute anxiety may drive the value of the “required tension” so high that our knuckles whiten as we grip the steering wheel, the pencil suddenly snaps in our fingers, or the glass shatters as we set it with too much force onto the table. On the other hand, timidity or the fear of being rejected can so sap us of “required tension” that it is difficult for us to produce a loud, clear knock upon a door that we tremble to enter.

An accountability partner provides frank, objective feedback on your performance, creates an ongoing expectation for productive progress, and can provide critical brainstorming or even expertise when needed. As for me, a coach or a mentor is the best choice for an accountability partner. Although a peer or a friend can absolutely help you see things you may not see, ongoing accountability is best provided by someone to whom you agree to be truly accountable. When that’s the nature of the relationship, the best results occur.

Help people realize that when they fail to provide peers with constructive feedback they are letting them down personally. By holding back, we are hurting not only the team, but also our teammates themselves.

1. VERBAL NURTURANCE: Eager participation in multidimensional conversation. Generous amounts of praise and positive feedback. Willingness to entertain all questions. Teaching, reading stories, providing resources for ongoing verbal development

WNGF—doing what is winnable, has novel challenges and goals, and provides feedback. Plus, games are always more fun when played with other people.

Whiny neutered goats fly. Picture it in your mind. You’ve just learned what all good games have in common: WNGF. They’re Winnable. They have Novel challenges and Goals, and provide Feedback.

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Having developers share responsibility for the quality of the systems they build not only improves outcomes but also accelerates learning. This is especially important for developers as they are typically the team that is furthest removed from the customer. As Gary Gruver observes, “It’s impossible for a developer to learn anything when someone yells at them for something they broke six months ago—that’s why we need to provide feedback to everyone as quickly as possible, in minutes, not months.

If you are not able to pick up on the subtle feedback cues (e.g., sighs, eye rolling, look of boredom, bodily tension, attempts to interject) that are abundant during a social exchange, you may have to rely on the more obvious clues that do not occur as frequently (statements such as “You’re weird!”). Thus, you may continue to pursue a social approach that causes stress or tension among those with whom you interact. A video game, however, provides immediate feedback. A video game character gets points for each object acquired and loses energy or levels of the life meter when injured. If only social interactions were this obvious.

To get along with others, and also become a successful leader know how to provide tailor made feedback that leads to performance improvement...

By definition, a mentor shows you the ropes, offers feedback, and provides strategies for success—all very good stuff.

Alpha: At this milestone, key gameplay functionality is implemented, assets are 40–50% final (the rest are placeholders), the game runs on the correct hardware platform in debug mode, and there is enough working to provide the team with a feel for the game. Features might undergo major adjustments at this point, based on play-testing results and other feedback. Alpha occurs 8 to 10 months before code release.

Follow Your Passion” Is Terrible Advice “I think it misconstrues the nature of finding a satisfying career and satisfying job, where the biggest predictor of job satisfaction is mentally engaging work. It’s the nature of the job itself. It’s not got that much to do with you. . . . It’s whether the job provides a lot of variety, gives you good feedback, allows you to exercise autonomy, contributes to the wider world—Is it actually meaningful? Is it making the world better?—and also, whether it allows you to exercise a skill that you’ve developed.” * Most gifted books for life improvement and general effectiveness Mindfulness by Mark Williams and Danny Penman. This book is a friendly and accessible introduction to mindfulness meditation, and includes an 8-week guided meditation course. Will completed this course, and it had a significant impact on his life. The Power of Persuasion by Robert Levine. The ability to be convincing, sell ideas, and persuade other people is a meta-skill that transfers to many areas of your life. This book didn’t become that popular, but it’s the best book on persuasion that Will has found. It’s much more in-depth than other options in the genre. * Advice to your 20-year-old self? “One is emphasizing that you have 80,000 working hours in the course of your life. It’s incredibly important to work out how best to spend them, and what you’re doing at the moment—20-year-old Will—is just kind of drifting and thinking. [You’re] not spending very much time thinking about this kind of macro optimization. You might be thinking about ‘How can I do my coursework as well as possible?’ and micro optimization, but not really thinking about ‘What are actually my ultimate goals in life, and how can I optimize toward them?’ “An analogy I use is, if you’re going out for dinner, it’s going to take you a couple of hours. You spend 5 minutes working out where to go for dinner. It seems reasonable to spend 5% of your time on how to spend the remaining 95%. If you did that with your career, that would be 4,000 hours, or 2 working years. And actually, I think that’s a pretty legitimate thing to do—spending that length of time trying to work out how should you be spending the rest of your life.

focused on difficult activities, carefully chosen to stretch your abilities where they most need stretching and that provide immediate feedback.

Those who have talent for management have an innate capacity to manage people well by working closely with them to develop their strengths, providing feedback, and holding them accountable.

Feed back often, good and bad: Get into the habit of providing feedback regularly, so you both get used to it. You are on the same team: Check your feedback style and assumptions. Are you being adversarial or collaborative? Address the method, not the madness: Don’t use feedback to try and fix aspects of his character. That attacks a person’s sense of self-worth. Stick to tactics, knowledge, tips, and work routines. Disrupt patterns of generalities: Vague and evasive language can undermine feedback; learn to spot and challenge it. Offer suggestions instead of criticising: Instead of using the feedback sandwich to sweeten criticism, make a suggestion and offer two reasons why it might work. Everything is feedback: You’re always communicating, so take control and give the feedback you have chosen to give.

Provide the feedback as close to when the behavior happens as possible.

The Braintrust's recipe is fairly simple: a group of directors and storytellers watches an early run of the movie together, eats lunch together, and then provides feedback to the director about what they think worked and what did not. But the recipe's key ingredient is candor. And candor, though simple, is never easy.

This person as my manager provides me consistent and helpful feedback to aid in my development. (1 to 5 scale) •​This person as my manager makes him/herself always available to me when I need him/her. (1 to 5 scale) •​Given what I know of this person’s management, I would always want him or her to be my manager. (1 to 5 scale) •​What is one thing your manager could do to make your job easier? •​Is there anything else you would like to add that would be helpful for your manager to develop?

So how do you help your Band-Aid solution stand out with people who don’t know they’re cut? You cut them! Of course, I’m not suggesting you cause any physical harm to your customers. Rather, you should adopt an approach that clearly conveys the problem you solve in advance of communicating the way you solve it. For example, back at my third start-up, when positioning our new-age feedback, coaching, and recognition solution, we could have invoked statements like: “We help employees get the feedback they need to perform their best and grow their careers.” “We help managers become great coaches.” “We help promote your amazing culture by making winning behaviors visible.” All imply that employees don’t get enough feedback at work, managers can often be poor coaches, and your people do amazing things that not everyone sees: fair points and all problems there is value in addressing. But they are also statements that are easy to dismiss. After all, many organizations already feel they provide their employees with sufficient levels of the feedback, coaching, and recognition they crave. We found prospects were much more responsive to our pitch when we preceded those statements with messages like: “Seventy percent of people leave their company because of a poor relationship with their manager.” “Most millennial employees use the word ‘hate’ to describe how they feel about performance reviews.” “Four out of ten employees are actively disengaged at work and cost companies millions in lost productivity.” Why did this approach work so well? The messages were striking. They were laden with specific and compelling statistics. And they invoked real business pains. They made the customer realize that they were already experiencing a loss. In other words, they were bleeding and in need of a Band-Aid.

In the case of Trunk Club, they led with a simple polarizing message related to how their target customers generally feel about shopping. By saying “men want to dress well, but they hate to shop,” they intentionally called out shopping as the enemy of their service. And if you are a man who hates to shop, you will rapidly align with their message without much thought. The beauty of this approach is that it has the opposite effect for clients who are a poor fit for your solution. For example, if you’re a man who loves to shop, you may be immediately turned off by Trunk Club’s value proposition. While being excited about customers not liking your solution may seem counterintuitive, it’s actually a good thing! Bad-fit customers who buy your product are more likely to become dissatisfied and hurt your brand. They may also provide errant feedback that can quickly derail your product or company roadmap if you decide to follow it. In short, polarizing messages can serve double duty by keeping the good-fit customers in and helping the bad ones self-select out. In the case of Trunk Club, this approach worked: they were acquired by US luxury retailer Nordstrom in 2014 for $350 million.