Favorite Concept

I enjoyed learning how to provide constructive feedback. For years, I have tried to sandwich any criticism I make between two things that are complementary to the person I am critiquing; however, properly doing constructive feedback takes this even further.

The authors of our book write, “offer constructive feedback that uses descriptive statements without judgment, labeling, or attribution of motives." They go on to provide guidelines for providing effective group feedback, which include, in their words:

• Talk first about yourself, not the other person
• Phase the issue as a statement, not a question
• Restrict your feedback to things you know for certain
• Provide positive feedback as well as negative
• Understand the context
• Don’t use labels
• Be careful not to exaggerate
• Do not be judgmental

All of these guidelines make sense to me. I like the concept of constructive feedback because it will help me when I am providing constructive feedback to my kids, my husband, my coworkers, even my boss. If I do it correctly by adhering to the guidelines, there’s much less of chance of offending the person to whom I am giving feedback. And there’s more chance that the person will take some of what I have to say to heart and possibly work on whatever behavior I am critiquing. In addition, when someone is critiquing my behavior, I will recognize that if they use these guidelines, they are trying very hard to give me truly constructive criticism, and I’m more likely to listen.

Looking back at this course

In this class, I learned to look at the groups to which I belong with new eyes. I find I sit in a board meeting and think, “he’s this type of leader” and sit in a newly formed group and think, “I can’t wait to get over the forming, storming and norming phases to get to the performing stage,” and yet now I now that all of these stages are necessary for the effective functioning of the group. In meetings at work, I watch how the members interact and the different roles they play. I watch how I interact and evaluate whether it’s effective.

My favorite thing about this class was actually attending the group for our group process. I have never been a part of a support group and really didn’t see how a group could help people. Through my observation, I saw how extremely helpful attending and participating in the group was to people as they learned that other people also shared their same issues and heard fresh ideas of how to cope and learned new skills that might help them with their issue. In addition, I enjoyed seeing the concepts I learned in this course in a real-life situation. It sure would be helpful to long-term retention if all courses had an opportunity for a practical application!

My least favorite thing in the class was studying for the quizzes and tests; however, I know that through the process I gained better retention f the material.

As far as how this class can be improved, I would only suggest that it be required that the first three postings be completed by midnight Wednesday so that the rest of the week would provide the opportunity to read all postings before responding to the required three. So many good postings came in on the last day to which I would have liked to respond; however, I’d already completed my responses by then and moved on to other work.

Group Observation Project

I thought the Group Observation Project was extremely useful in that it provided an opportunity to observe in real life what I had been learning. I learned that a structured group allowed the group to know what to expect, which put everyone at ease. I observed that five to seven group members really does make an effective group, whereas a group with two members definitely was counterproductive. I observed effective active listening being modeled by the group leader and adopted by the group members. I watched as the diversity of the group members helped the group come up with creative solutions.

The good part about the project was being required to attend at least two groups. If it hadn’t been a requirement, the learning I did while in this course would not have been reinforced. It was quite interesting to see the concepts we studied this semester played out in a real group. As I observed, I would say to myself, “Oh, that went well because the group is cohesive,” or, “he’s saying one thing, but his non-verbal language is saying another,” and so on.

As to how the project could be improved, I believe perhaps requiring three meetings rather than two might be helpful. Then if one of the two meetings is less than successful due to whatever reasons as happened in the second meeting I attended, the two more effective meetings would provide enough first-hand experience to use when writing the paper.