Basic Guidelines for Giving Feedback

McGill and Beatty (in "Action learning: A practitioner’s guide", London: Kogan Page, 1994, p. 159-163) provide useful suggestions about giving effective feedback:

1. Clarity -- Be clear about what you want to say.

2. Emphasize the positive -- This isn’t being collusive in the person's dilemma.

3. Be specific -- Avoid general comments and clarify pronouns such as “it,” “that,” etc.

4. Focus on behavior rather than the person.

5. Refer to behavior that can be changed.

6. Be descriptive rather than evaluative.

7. Own the feedback -- Use ‘I’ statements.

8. Generalizations -- Notice “all,” “never,” “always,” etc., and ask to get more specificity -- often these words are arbitrary limits on behavior.

9. Be very careful with advice -- People rarely struggle with an issue because of the lack of some specific piece of information; often, the best help is helping the person to come to a better understanding of their issue, how it developed, and how they can identify actions to address the issue more effectively.

For the Category of Interpersonal Skills:

Recommended Books

General Information

The following books are recommended because of their highly practical nature and often because they include a wide range of information about this Library topic. To get more information about each book, just hover your cursor over the image of the book. A "bubble" of information will be displayed. You can click on the title of the book in that bubble to get more information, too.