sensitivity
When I am giving feedback I view the body language of the person to become sensitive to how they are accepting or rejecting my criticism.
Janet that's a great idea, when I give feed back (I am a culinary instructor) I make my students taste the food with me, as they eat I discuss things like mouth feel, flavor, seasoning, and temperature. This enables the student to not only understand what they can improve on they relate the feed back to how they went right or wrong.
great post!
I teach culinary arts to my students and when giving feedback students can be very sensitive to everything I have to say to them. One reason is because they put their heart in soul into their dishes and when you taste that it needs more salt, could be cooked longer, have a neater presentation, etc you might as well have thrown it in the trash with the looks you get back. I use the sandwich technique. I start with a positive, negative and end with a positive. No matter what they should be walking away with at least 2 positive facts and 1 negative to work on, but in all they seem to take the critiques much better than, "needs salt, next!"
Janet,
I agree that body language speaks volumes in relation to feedback. Defensive mannerisms such as crossed arms and lowered heads call for a different approach than when someone is bright-eyed and visibly eager to hear commentary on their performance.
Kathleen
Janet, observing a persons body language is a true identifer on if that person is receptive to your input. The trick is if you can respond to the persons body language in a positive manner when it might not be a positive situation.
Peter
I agree with that; every Chef here does their best with these tricky student situations/issues that each of us experience on a regular basis.
This is an excellent point. I also agree that you have to read the reaction the student has to the feedback and be ready to make adjusments in how you handle the situation. This is especially true for defensive students. When I see that they are becoming defensive I like to try and get them to give feedback about a task they performed or if it is regarding a test question I ask them to provide me with feedback how a question could be worded, etc. I then enphasise the areas I originally wanted to correct them in and it seems to work by not offending the students feeling or getting them frustrated.
Great observation, Kimberly! I tend to watch body language and tone (both mine and the student's) to get a pulse on how the feedback is being received and processed.
Jay Hollowell
The truest thing I learned in school was that all behavior has a reason behind it. The person exhibiting the behavior may not even know the reason, but if the exhibitor learns to "tune into their body" ( why am I tense? why is my voice getting higher? why am I not looking at the person talking to me..? etc.)it often is a trigger or a clue that says their body is responding to something that they may not be ready to acknowledge on a conscious level.....
Why do female students always cry when you are trying to coach them into the correct behaviour? There are some dangerous situations in our profession and as an instructor I cannot allow an unsafe behavior to persist. These issues are carefully covered in class before the students are ever in the lab working and are reviewed and reviewed to assure student compliance and understanding. And yet, I had a student who seemed to think that the rules don't apply to them. I had tried gentle coaching during the behavior, meeting with the students after the behavior with a more formal discussion and ratioanlization for my comments, gave the student multiple chances to improve but the student had this attitude that she was going to do whatever she wanted and I would just have to deal with it. The end result, to the everyone's relief, was that the student left the program. So, what could I have done differently?
