Practicing Emotional Intelligence through Constructive Feedback
As of this past week, my BA 352 group has been working together for about five weeks and, in order to celebrate this momentous occasion, we had the opportunity to participate in a structured feedback session in class. This session was the moment of truth for our group. We were not only able to let our group members know how we viewed their contributions, but we were also able to hear about how they viewed our contributions. The goal of this feedback was to help us positively adjust our behavior, both as individual and also as a group, for the last four or five weeks of the term as we prepare for our final proposal and presentation.
However, it is not easy to make sure that the feedback you give to others is truthful but also delivered in a helpful way. This is especially true for me. As I detailed in my Leadership Development Plan, one of the areas of emotional intelligence that I struggle in is the social awareness component of being able to read and understand the emotions of the people in my group.
When it comes to giving feedback, this can be dangerous. On the one hand, I could be brutally honest with the people in my group and completely miss the fact that I am hurting their feelings. On the other hand, I could read into their emotions too much and give entirely positive feedback that does not help them grow. In either of these cases, I would not be communicating my feedback in an emotionally intelligent middle of the road way.
This was my challenge during Wednesday’s feedback session. In order to prepare, I made sure to take time before class to think about both the positive contributions of each of my group members as well as what behaviors should change to make our group better. As I thought through each of these things, I also took the time to figure out how I was going to communicate them effectively. I made sure that each of my comments was something that I would be okay hearing myself and was geared towards improvement, not judgement.
During the feedback session, I also worked on my social awareness by asking how people felt about their feedback and making sure that everyone was okay before moving on to the next person. I also made sure that each person got to ask questions about the feedback if necessary and that any issues were worked out immediately and not left unresolved.
Overall, I think that our feedback session went well. Everyone came out with a good idea of where they needed to improve but also with an idea of what they contributed to the group. This process helped me to continue to work on my social awareness of my group members emotions and hopefully this awareness will be helpful as we prepare for our final projects in class.