The Art of Giving Feedback

Using questions to transform obstacles into opportunities for professional growth

Be sure to check out the opportunity at the end of this post. Subscribers will be able to enroll in my upcoming course on communicating better feedback. It will be based on my book Leading Like a C.O.A.C.H.: Five Strategies for Supporting Teaching ....

Feedback is only as effective as the client is able to hear it. Can they consider the information objectively? How well can they apply a new idea to their practice?

The conditions for a successful coaching experience cross all contexts:

1. Relational trust

2. Clarity around the goals

3. Proper support, including time, professional development, and resources

4. A belief that another person is capable of growth and excellence

Conversely, it is clear what conditions do not lead to improvement. This became evident during a recent visit to a coffee shop.

My daughter had a soccer match in a Madison, Wisconsin suburb. Getting there early for warm-ups, I had time to kill. So I stopped at a Starbucks to order a Pumpkin Spice Latte (or as my daughter refers to it as, a “PSL”).

As I waited for a barista to come over and take my order, a Starbucks employee who appeared to be on break was standing behind me, looking around impatiently. “Have you ordered already?” he asked me. I replied I had not. Apparently not wanting to waste any more of his break time, he went around the counter, entered his own order, and went to make his drink.

Noticing the situation, another staff member came over to their colleague. While I was still standing in line, she publicly corrected his behavior. “You put your order in while a customer was waiting in line. We can’t do that here.” The guilty party sheepishly glanced around, possibly looking for a place to hide, and finally replied, “But I am on break.” His colleague was unmoved. “That doesn’t matter. The customer always comes first.” He nodded slightly, then quietly walked away and sulked in a booth with his drink.

The barista stepped behind the register and apologized. I replied, “Not necessary, but thank you.” She then turned to her manager, who was rushing by to deliver a drink to the drive-thru station. “What do we do for our customers when they don’t receive excellent service?” she asked her. The manager grumbled about being busy and didn’t have time to answer her question. The barista turned back to me, smiled, and said she would figure out something to make up for the situation. “Really, it’s okay,” I closed the conversation as I paid.

I am not going to pick apart this coaching/feedback example. It’s clear that a) there was no coaching, and b) the feedback will be applied at a compliance level at best. It’s really a systems issue. It needs to be addressed at an organizational level.

And yet we do see errors in others’ work. Their practice is public. We may not have authority to make system-level changes. Yet we care enough about our customers’ experiences, a.k.a our students and their learning, to do something about it.

How do we create the conditions that support instructional improvement?

I have found posing questions to be an effective way to build trust, clarify priorities, and help a client become more resourceful while feeling respected. Coupled with data from the classrooms, questions can change an educator’s perspective, helping them to see their practice from a more objective point of view.

Below are seven promising questions that have potential for fostering growth and renewal, cultivating the conditions for successful coaching conversations.

1. Examining this data, what comes to mind for you?

I like this type of question for transitioning from small talk about instruction, to building more presence around a teacher’s practice. It’s a nonthreatening question that places the client in a position of power. The interpretations of teachers matter most in this context. For example, evidence from the classroom, such as anecdotal notes about what students say and do during the literacy block, grounds their reflections in reality.

2. What do you want?

Sometimes the most obvious question is rarely shared. Asking teachers what they want out of their instruction gets at the heart of their work. It invites teachers to recall why they entered this profession, allowing them to explore their larger purpose and momentarily detach themselves from the complexities of teaching and learning.

3. If you could wave a magic wand, what would you change?

This can work as a follow up question to #2. People get hung up too soon with the obstacles of their work, or with thinking too much about they want. Articulating a vision for success is about the horizon, not the pathway. It’s not necessary to rationalize their wish. They can want what they want without justifying it.

4. What does success look like for you?

Now that the vision is articulated, describing what that wish looks like becomes easier. It’s about taking that vision and making it tangible. For example, if a teacher’s wish is that her students were risk takers as readers, then success could look like lots of time for independent, self-selected reading. The teacher would envision herself conferring with her kids, coaching them to expand their literary diet.

5. What feels challenging?

Too many coaching sessions and professional learning experiences in general fail to acknowledge the obstacles that stand in a teacher’s way. We imagine a pathway to success but don’t anticipate the curves and roadblocks. If growth is the outcome, there has to be some type of challenge. Helping teachers consider what may get in their way helps inform their plan for improvement.

Following the previous example, if a teacher wants her students to read with abandon, a considerable obstacle could be the overstuffed literacy curriculum.

6. How could we make this easy?

We want to reach the mountain top, that vision of excellence. But it starts with a first step. Asking this question, which comes from Effortless by Greg McKweon, can help break down a plan for improvement into that very first and actionable step. An easy start to building courageous readers could be the teacher modeling it for the kids. (I also like a similar question, “What’s safe enough to try?” from The New School Rules by Anthony Kim and Alexis Gonzales-Black.)

7. What do we need to let go of to feel successful?

I have found the most common obstacle that gets in the way of professional improvement and renewal are the beliefs, practices, and resources that educators are still holding on to, for example:

• An outdated literacy curriculum

• A teaching routine that isn’t meeting a student’s needs

• Teachers not seeing and presenting themselves as readers and writers

It is uncanny how the most transformative growth I have observed in teachers is when they remove something from their work. It’s almost never an add on; they let go of this need to control all the processes and outcomes of their work. They trust their students.

For change to occur, the conditions have to support courageous conversations about past approaches that are no longer serving student learning (if they ever were). Asking questions like the seven shared here can create the space for growth and renewal.