13. Outline the importance of giving feedback?

Feedback is a way to let people know how effective they are in what they are trying to accomplish, or how they affect you. It provides a way for people to learn how they affect the world around them, and it helps us to become more effective. If we know how other people see us, we can overcome problems in how we communicate and interact with them.

Feedback is a must for people who want to have honest relationships. A powerful and important means for communication, giving feedback connects us, and our behavior, to the world around us. Feedback helps us to become more aware of what we do and how we do it. Receiving it gives us an opportunity to change and modify in order to become more effective. To be helpful, feedback needs to be given in a concerned and supportive way and to include both positive and negative observations. In giving feedback, try to focus on:

·         The behaviour rather than the person.

o    What he does rather than what we imagine he is.

o    Use adverbs which relate to actions rather than adjectives which relate to qualities.

·         Observations rather than inference – what is said or done, not why.

·         Descriptions rather than judgment.

·         Limiting the amount of information to what the receiver can use rather than the amount you would like to give.