On Saturday morning, September 28, 2024, AWiBers attended the seminar on Giving and Receiving Constructive Feedback facilitated by Nahu Senay Girma, Founder and Director of AWiB.

The session commenced discussing the experiences of the attendees’ in giving or receiving unpleasant feedback. The facilitator then asked questions regarding our culture of feedback. This helped attendees question the reasons behind the way they give feedback. Some admitted that they were afraid of confrontation. Most of the attendees noted how afraid they are to lose the good impression they created around people, pulling them back from giving honest feedback.

The facilitator concluded that whenever someone isn’t honest with feedback or is afraid to give or receive one, he/she is afraid of losing something. However, it shouldn’t be that way, everyone has a right to choose their friend, workplace, and relationships. Yet it is important to keep in mind that when it comes to relationships that someone invests in, critical thinking is necessary before giving feedback. Nahu proceeded to inform attendees of key points that should be considered in giving and receiving constructive feedback. The seminar ended with reflections of major takeaways from attendees.

Key Points

• Assess the situation before giving feedback.
• Getting feedback is taking responsibility for our work performance
• Know whom to ask for constructive feedback
• Inform how you would prefer to receive the feedback
• Feedback comes in the forms of appreciation, coaching, or evaluation form
• Feedback must be effective, timely, appropriate, proactive, focused on behavior, specific, based on accurate and credible information, and given using descriptive language.
• It improves performance, builds self-confidence, boosts career prospects, helps ease concerns, corrects mistakes and leads to promotions and opportunities.

Major takeaways

• “I feedback” creates room for assertive communication
• Disarming the provider of unpleasant feedback by asking questions is very important
• Feedback should be FAIR – Focused, Accurate, Informative and Recent
• Building trust with people makes the process much better
• Communication and timing is a very important tool in giving and receiving constructive feedback

Read our other session recaps here.

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