Effective Feedback: Focus on Alignment, No Opinion

Dr. Cynthia DiCarlo:

Yes, and so, okay, one of the things that I talk to everybody who’s giving feedback, I don’t ever want it to be that I don’t think you should do this because it’s not about me. And it’s not about whoever the coach is or whoever the mentor is, it’s about the tool. And so you phrase everything as it relates to this is a tool that is a standard in our practice, this is deemed to be the gold star tool, and it represents what we believe in as a field. And so what we’re talking about is alignment with the tool. So it’s not about I don’t want to see you doing that again, it’s never about you as the mentor or the coach or the trainer. It’s always about the teacher’s alignment with the tool. And so that’s one thing because if I come in and I say, I don’t like this, then it’s like we all hate Ja Carlo, we hate her. We’re not going to listen to her. But if it’s about the tool that makes it a little more challenging to argue with.

We also try and start off with strength. So when you are going in, it’s kind of like the golden rule. You have five positives, very one minute manager, kind of a mindset. You start off with something really positive, then you kind of sandwich in your constructive criticism. And it needs to be very concrete, very specific, which is a basic tenant of early childhood. It’s what we’re doing with children all day anyway. And then we end with something positive, really go-getter. You have great energy and I have no doubt at all that you can pull this off, want to keep it constructive,