242: The secret to having feedback conversations your family will actually hear

Denise, hi everyone. I am Denise, a longtime listener of Your Parenting Mojo. I love this podcast because it condenses all the scientific research on child development, compares it with anthropological studies, and puts it into context of how I can apply all of this to my daily parenting. Jen has a wealth of resources here, so if you're new to the podcast, I suggest you scroll through all her episodes. I'm sure you'll find one that will help you with whatever you're going through, or one that just piques your interest if you'd like to get new episodes in your inbox, along with a free infographic on 13 Reasons Your child isn't listening to you and what to do about each one. Sign up at yourparentingmojo.com/subscribe. Enjoy the show.

Hello and welcome to the Your Parenting Mojo Podcast. I'm Anne, and I have been listening to the podcast for over six years now, since my son was seven months old. I work in STEM curriculum design and professional development for STEM Educators, and a few months ago, I was at a conference for professional development and leading it and facilitating it. And my favorite session that I went to at that conference, and top 10 other all conferences, was led by Joellen Killion and on the feedback process, which is a book that Joellen wrote, and it's a way of sharing feedback that is actually helpful to the real recipient and developed for use in school district. Because it was developed for the education industry, I could immediately see in the session how it was applicable to my job and my work team, and because my whole team was there, we've already implemented that into our professional development and use it with each other more informally and one on one conversations to just, you know, grow in areas that we desire to grow in. But what really stood out to me during that session is that perhaps this could also be applied personally in family life. So that's, you know, it's really, I've been thinking on this for months now. And I mentioned to Jen, I was like, I think this would be really great to do topic of the podcast on, because I think it could be applicable to families and, you know, learning like parenting, partnerships, children, people in our personal lives. And so let me introduce Joellen Killion. Joellen is a Senior Advisor for the organization learning forward, having previously served as its Deputy Executive Director and its president. She is author of numerous papers, books, reports, workbooks, and serves as a reviewer on the international journal on mentoring and coaching and education. She supports schools, districts, state, regional agencies, and now parents do design, implement and evaluate professional learning that supports educator and student success. Welcome Jo Ellen!

Thank you, Anne. It is such an honor to be here, and I'm just fascinated with this idea of applying the feedback process to parenting, I think it makes such good sense, and I'm so eager to talk about it with you.

Yay, great. Well, let's get right in then I'm going to ask the first question. There's an idea in the forward year book that really stuck out. Jim Knight wrote, we can learn about what a Learning Partnership is by considering what it is not. I spoke with an assistant principal who was in the first year of his position, and told me about the difficulties he was facing as he tried to implement district's teacher evaluation model the way I see it. He said, If the teacher doesn't cry or get angry, it's a good feedback session. It's pretty much mirrors the ineffective feedback that I've received throughout my professional career. Could you start by telling us a bit more about your thoughts on why feedback that we usually practice is ineffective and how the feedback process is different.

The key distinction between what I call typical feedback, or traditional feedback, and the feedback process is that feedback, in its more traditional way, is transactional. It is something that is handed over to someone else, almost without consideration of who that person is, how that person intends to use the information, or even if the person will use the information. And I contend that the feedback process is a process of learning, when a learner, and I call that, the person who's in the conversation with whom I'm hoping to engage in this process, that person constructs his or her own understanding of the information, to be able to make it their own in order to use it appropriately in the context of their work, and to have it simply make sense, rather than have it be my message to someone else, the ideal feedback process ends with a learner constructing their own feedback. That's the beauty of the feedback process, and I believe that when a learner constructs that learning. It is immediately relevant, immediately applicable within the work or the parenting or the skills being demonstrated, and it will be more lasting.

It sounds very different from what in the book you generously call the feedback sandwich, which is what I used to get the feedback sandwich. And you say that that leads to miscommunication. It lessens the learner’s motivation to act. It eliminates their opportunity to be analytical and self-critical. And also, that there was a study you cited, of a meta-analysis of over 131 papers, finding that over a third of feedback resulted in decreased performance. It seems as though there's a real reason to focus on how we give feedback.

Yes, very much. If we want the feedback to be useful, if we want the learner to actually understand what's being said and to have it seem important to integrate it into whatever is being practiced, then the learner ultimately should be the person who's constructing that messaging, and I think about that in light of young children. I know that when I parented, I would say to my children often when I wanted to correct their behavior, I would often tell them what they did wrong and end my message with and I still love you. Yes, that got to be by the time my son in particular, was a teenager, kind of a script that would play in his head, and he would know immediately to discount that message because it had no relevance to him, and so I shifted my practice. I asked him what he wanted to learn. I asked him what he was learning as I was identifying what happened in a particular situation, and encouraged him to do the analysis, and encouraged him to think it through, reflect on it and tell me what he was learning in that situation, when I told him it kind of rolled off his shoulder and deposited wherever that information got deposited.

And I think what you're alluding to is actually one of my first questions that jumped out at me when I read the book, which was that when you're in a work situation, there's sort of this implicit understanding that you are going to get feedback, that there is somebody who is your superior, who knows what good performance is in your workplace and is going to tell you how to adjust your performance to meet that definition of good performance. And in our relationships outside of a work setting, I think we have a real desire for autonomy. And you know, what I hear in your description is your son had a real need for autonomy and wanted to be the one that made decisions that felt important to him. And of course, isn't it interesting that isn't it interesting that when we want to change our kid’s behavior, we call it discipline, when we want to change our partners behavior, we call it feedback.

That is interesting.

When we're working in these family relationships, what I'm was trying to puzzle through when I first started reading this book was, how does this idea work, with the idea of consent and how we can be in a consent-based relationship with our partners, with our kids, as we are involved in this feedback process.

I look at it very much as a negotiation in some respects, about what we both want. I want to encourage my partner or my children or my siblings to be able to tell me what they see and what they want, and I, in those situations, recognize that I do not have power over them. I do not have authority in those relationships to tell them what I want. I must be willing to understand what they want, encourage them to listen to my perspective and then find a place where we can agree in a positive way, to create a family dynamic communication patterns with each other, with our children, with our extended family members, to find those patterns that will allow all of us to be productive, constructive, feel heard and valued and recognize that no one of us has power over others, even in a parenting situation. I think I parent with my children in many respects, and certainly that happens as they grow older and develop stronger communication skills, but I want to teach them how to express what they want and what they're learning.

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense, and I think it's implicitly linked to the question Anne had next. Do you want to go there Anne?

And sure, yeah. Speaking of power, in the traditional feedback sense, there's a correct way of doing things right. And, you know, in parenting, like partners, might have different ideas about what is the right way to raise our kids, right? That's correct frame of mind. Well, you're wrong. Like, this is the way that we should be raising our kid, right? So how can we navigate that around, I guess, around that right away from that with the feedback process model.

I think the first way to get to recognize that there are some basic safety issues that we want to agree on. There are certain situations where I will be very directive in my messaging to my children when I perceive danger that will be immediately harmful, and it's not a situation where I can take time for them to engage in a conversation with me and learn sometimes, I do have to say, don't touch the hot stove. Yet I might not help them understand the reason for that, if I don't follow it with a conversation about what was risky in that situation, the reasons why it was important to avoid a hot stove or a finger in a socket or whatever the case might be jumping on a trampoline inappropriately, whatever the situation, I recognize that when there are risks, I do use a desist mode, stop that and then add the correction to it, so with a parent, if I perceive with a partner that what my partner perceives as correct might cause potential danger, and often not immediately, but perhaps long term, I'm going to enter into a conversation that will start with, let's make explicit what we want to learn about parenting in this kind of situation. Let's make that explicit so that it is a shared problem in a sense that we're solving. Tell me your criteria of success, I'll share with you my criteria, and then we'll look at some data. When this has happened, what's happened when this has happened, what's happened? We literally go through the steps of the process to come to some common understanding. It honors my partner, it honors our relationship, and it recognizes that both of us can be correct, but maybe not at the same time.

Okay, so I'm thinking this through from a practical perspective and I'm super curious. And you've had a few months working with these ideas, if you've been able to sort of apply this in your parenting, I guess my first thought that comes up, right? Is, I'm thinking of maybe a parent who is, I don't know, maybe the kid has hurt themselves, or they're, you know, they're crying for some reason, and one parent wants to validate the child and let them feel their feelings, and the other one is trying to get them to shut the crying off. And one parent sees crying as, yeah, that means the child knows that their feelings are accepted here. And the other parent sees crying as evidence that things are not going well. And I can, I can imagine working through the process and getting stuck when it seems like we have different measures of what is success, right? When one parent is measuring crying almost as a measure of success, in a way, and the other parent is measuring it as you know, this is the opposite of that. How do you navigate that tension using this method?

I think the first way to navigate it is to agree on what those criteria are. If we don't see eye to eye on those criteria, it's in the criteria that we want to find some common ground. And the process, almost immediately after it starts asks, what are the indicators of success? So what would be an indicator of success if a child is crying from falling off a swing, for example, let's have that laid out. Let's work through a few situations in those moments where there has been a visible, we both seen it. We've seen a situation where a child became injured or unsafe. What would we want? What would we want in that situation? It would be very different than if the child's having a temper tantrum from being told, no, you can't have a sweet at this time of day. That's a whole different situation. Parenting is very complex, and I know you two know that very well. It's those criteria in those situations that we want to have some agreement on. That's how I respond.

Yeah, having been able to play with these ideas for a little bit now, have you been able to find agreement on criteria that maybe you hadn't been able to before? Have you been approaching it in that way even?

No, I you know, that's why I wanted to do this podcast. It's like to learn how to do that in this context, right? I was able to immediately apply the concepts, and we'll kind of get to the types of feedback. But I recognized that the way that I was trying to give feedback was ineffective, so I stopped doing that, and then, like, you know, and things automatically improved because I stopped adding to the problem. But I would love to figure out, like, how I can move forward with the process, particularly with my parenting partner and my child, and agreeing on the feedback is already helpful, but no, I haven't been able to do it in my first.

Okay. And can you imagine a scenario with your child's behavior that you can see? Oh, yeah, I can now. I can see why we're having this trouble, right? Because we don't agree on the criteria of what is success.

Yeah, I think it's easier with my parenting partner, you know, like, big feelings, right? You know, like we disagree on whether that is a good thing or a bad thing, right? I think starting on the criteria, like we'll, and agreeing on that, like whether this is a good thing or a bad thing, instead of stop doing that, stop thinking that way, right? Would be a really helpful place to start with my child. I think maybe even big feelings is the same because, you know, he's seven now, and he's been socialized in the public school system, and he, too, doesn't believe, that big feelings are acceptable except in situations where he's physically hurt. I think, you know, he will continue to cry and wail and be totally fine with that if he gets hurt. Part of that is because my parenting partner also accepts that it's the emotional wounds that we disagree on that expression of.

That’s interesting that sounds like a really fascinating thing to tease out in your conversation of criteria.

Yeah for sure, it's a great start.

Yeah, okay, and, of course. Implicit in this, right is we're not having this in the moment when your kid is melting down. So let's imagine ourselves in a situation where tensions are already high and we're seeing our partners say something to our kids like, you know, you better tidy up your room or you won't get screen time for the rest of the week, something like that. And maybe we've even already agreed with our partner that we don't want to talk to our kids like that in this situation, right? Maybe we've agreed on the criteria, and in the moment that they do it, we feel threatened as well, because it reminds us of how our own parents yelled at us and all of the difficulties that created for us. And we're, you know, we're witnessing this difficult interaction, and we are wanting to not give feedback. Maybe we are actually wanting to give feedback, but we're in a difficult situation. What do we do in that moment and in the moments afterward?

Yeah, in that moment, I would say, if the message tidy up your room or you won't get screen time has been delivered to the child, I would not comment on it in the moment, I would look for an opportunity very soon to pull my parenting partner aside and say, I want to talk with you about the comment. And here's what I want to learn about that situation. I thought we had an agreement that was X, Y and Z, and what I heard in this conversation just a few minutes ago was different, and I want to know what you want to learn from the difference in our agreements and your actions, what I don't want to ask why, because why is very defensive. I want to engage in understanding what's different about what happened here. What do you notice about what occurred in this situation, avoiding the you did as much as possible. Name the behavior, name the agreement, and talk about what we can both do to either change the agreement or change the behavior, and I hold us both accountable in those situations.

Okay and so does that mean we have to have agreed in advance on sort of how we're going to handle a wide variety of types of behaviors that come up with our child. How does that part work?

Wouldn't it be lovely if we were required upon birth to write our parenting manual.

And we should do it before birth, actually, because that's what we find out. If we're actually on the same pages.

We do have a little bit of time after birth, when we're both so busy and overwhelmed to think about those things, but we don't. I do think having conversations with partners about what did you appreciate about parenting? What were the things that you didn't appreciate about parenting? What are what are your worries about parenting, your fears in your hopes about parenting, and what do we want to stand for as parents? What are the values we hold together? And what does that? How does that those values manifest in our behavior toward one another and with our child.

Yeah, and I'm just trying to piece this together with sort of what I see in the families that I work with, and what I'm trying to fit together is how to make it because I see how your language says, you know, I want to know what you want to learn. But that's still very gently implying that I know a better way. I can imagine it being read that way by a partner who hasn't done as much reading as I have, right, who hasn't done as much learning and as much growth and as much healing as I have, and maybe our partner. I'm thinking about the stages that you outline, stages of change that's in your book, and that we've talked about in as we're working with our kids on their social skills as well. If you're kind of in that early, pre contemplation stage, and you don't even see there's a problem that needs to be addressed, it seems as though it's they're just going to be like, I don't want to learn anything. There is nothing to learn here. The kid was doing something I told them not to do, or they didn't do something I told them to do, and so I gave a consequence. How do you address it when, when you're coming at it from that perspective, in a relationship?

Well, and I think a different way to frame the question is, what do you want? What do you want in this situation? It isn't always what I want, driving any situation. It's a shared parenting, is a shared process and agreement. We won't always have agreement, but what do you want a child's crying, maybe having a meltdown because of some experience? What do you want in this moment? What do you hope to gain you, personally and for the child? And how can we explore other wants and make a decision? I often think about the position and interest process and conflict management. We each have wants, and we can problem solve with a set of identified wants. I can figure out a creative way. If you want the child to stop crying and I want to have the child experience, perhaps there's we're going to let the child cry for five minutes, as long as we know it's not as a result of an injury that we need to be investigating, and then one of us will intervene and have a gentle conversation about, how are you feeling, what's going on, what's prompting the crying, and we can use that as an opportunity then to figure out the next action with the child. In the moment it's so hard to be thoughtful and to have all of this process in your head and not be reactive, but to be proactive. I believe, the more we process this as almost after-action review, we've had a situation. This has occurred. Let's talk about that. Let's talk about what we would want to be different.

Once the moment has passed and you know, the we all are back to kind of an emotional baseline where we can start to engage with this process again. You know, I think we've talked about a lot on the podcast and the membership, how important it is to come back after the situation and after the emotions have settled. Once we want to do that, something I found really helpful and interesting at the conference was the typology of feedback, right? And to engage in the feedback process, knowing where you are and what type of feedback is appropriate, was really helpful to me. I'm just wondering if you could tell us a little bit more of the typology of feedback. And how do we know what type of feedback to use in any given situation?

The feedback typology depends on one whether or not there's a safety or risk factor that we're willing to take if there's no imminent danger, then we can literally begin to think about using a more learning-oriented feedback. But the typology is dependent on two overarching criteria. One is whether or not we want the learner or our feedback partner to be engaged as a learner in the process or to be a recipient of information. So I call it information or learning, is sort of the ends of that continuum upon which the feedback typology is placed.

I just want to point out is a massive departure from how we learn throughout most of our lives where it's assumed that information and learning are the same thing.

Yes, indeed, it is hugely different. And then the other criteria is the degree to which our learner is responsible engaged and cognitively processing during the process, or whether the learner is a passive recipient of information. And I contend that when the learner is a passive recipient of information, just like my son would listen to me and then let it roll off his shoulder into that bucket of useless stuff. He's not engaged; he's not processing. There's no benefit for him, because I haven't supported him in being that kind of a partner in the process. If typology lays out feedback all the way from one end, that's called desistance, which literally means stop that. And I acknowledge that there are many opportunities to use that kind of feedback when the person the child, is in danger, I'm not going to pause and have a conversation at that point, I'm going to stop the behavior. If I want to add a little more of a learning orientation to it, I'll add a correction to it, which would be, here's what to do instead. But it's still me delivering all the information. It's still me in control; it's still me telling what is good practice. It does not give the learner the opportunity on the other end of the typology to be constructing his or her own understanding of this situation and developing, truly developing, or generalizing from this situation. Oh, when there's a hot surface, perhaps I don't want to put my hand directly on it, the more the learner can own that, articulate it, discover it, or be able to approach something that's hot and pull back that is, in my mind, genuine learning, and it might come as a result of me saying, stop that, here's a correction. Here’s some things to look for. But when a child is in a kitchen and I'm cooking, I can keep saying, stop that, stop that, stop that or I can help the child understand what's acceptable and what's not acceptable by engaging that child in some discovery process.

You've talked a lot about sort of being with a child at the very beginning and the sort of rectified, desist end of the spectrum, and then as you move along these categories in the typology, we're ending up in sort of a very reflective, metacognitive state and in between those we've got the regulate state where we're looking to expand the alternatives that we have to move towards what you call accomplished practice. And I'm wondering, can, if you know, don't put your hand on the stove, is an example of being, being at the very sort of rectify, desist end of the spectrum. Could you give us some examples of what the feedback process looks like in the regulate middle stage, and the sort of the metacognitive reflect stage?

In that middle stage, that regulate I would use questions, perhaps that might sound like this, what are the reasons for not touching a hot surface directly? Or I might ask, what might happen if you touch that surface and you see the red light indicating hot what might happen? What are some other alternatives here, rather than touching that, what are some things you can do? What I'm trying to do in that regulate stage is to help my child in that situation, begin to regulate their own behavior by understanding what the potential consequences are, learning how to be a little more critically analytic when you see the red light indicating that a surface is hot, what does that mean, and what are the appropriate behaviors when you see that?

Okay. And I'm extrapolating this to our relationship with our parenting partners, right, where there's the very dangerous and there might be a, you know, please don't drive 100 miles an hour with our kid in the backseat when they don't have their seatbelt on, kind of thing. In the regulate aspect, it might be, what you know, what do you want to learn about this? The question that you answer, that you asked earlier, what do you think is appropriate? What is your what is your level of risk here? What are you comfortable with that is that the kind of question we're going for and,

Yes, what might happen if this behavior continues? What are some potential consequences? What could happen? What might happen? What are the pros and cons? Will you get to the dentist on time? We also might cause.

Hopefully with some of our teeth.

Yes yes.

Okay, thank you. And then as we move into reflection metacognition, how does that look with a child? You don't have to stick with the stove example and the, you know, driving example, but with any example that comes to mind, what is reflecting and metacognition look with a child and with a parenting partner?

I'm going to go to the trampoline, because that's always an area of anxiety for some parents if they happen to have that device in their yard and many, many injuries happen. So even before a child gets on the trampoline, I might just say, what are the things you know about being on that trampoline? What do you want to exhibit when you're on that trampoline? What do you hope to come away with? And let's give it a go. And what are you discovering as you're on the trampoline? What might happen? What could happen? I think these are the kinds of questions that help the child truly be engaged in understanding in that situation, the child is in full control of his or her behavior. Now, if the child's three, that might be a little different situation, but we can certainly learn some basics. Stay away from the edge. Be cautious of, you know, bumping into another child, if there happens to be two on a trampoline, there's some very basic things as the child matures and that cognitive process develops, we can engage in. What are the things you know about safety here, and what do you want to practice as you get on the trampoline today.

Okay. And I guess I'm just trying to think through. I'm imagining a parent thinking I'm going to have that conversation with my kid every time before they get on the trampoline.

If you're present. I think that kind of conversation is really helpful. I might not be every single time, but I might say, what's the one thing you want to be careful about today as you use the trampoline?

Yeah, okay, that's a really interesting reframe, because we talk a lot in the parenting membership about the idea of, you know, how do I convey what my concerns are? And I can use the phrase I'm, you know, I'm feeling worried that X might happen, and what you're offering is even a step beyond that, which is, what do you think might happen?

That's right. What do you want? Because then the child owns that behavior, it's not my behavior, it belongs to the child. The child is demonstrating responsibility, accountability, control, and it's that kind of transition in cognitive processing we want our children to understand, to develop self-awareness, self-management, self-responsibility. These are things we can help cultivate in our interactions with our children.

And then, the question becomes, what happens if our perception of risk is just different, right? If I perceive that my child could very well get injured on the trampoline and my kid is like, there is no way, zero possibility, no chance, that I'm going to come off the trampoline with an injury. What do you do then?

And I might say, let me just offer one situation, you jumped too high and you fell on the edge. What could have happened to prevent that? I might do a little hypothesizing in that situation and ask the child to apply the criteria of safe use in those hypothetical situations.

Okay, and you've sort of implicitly worked through some of the stages of the feedback process, right, which is kind of the core of your book. And we've talked about sort of reviewing the goals and the outcomes, and what do we agree is sort of the standard? What are we going for here? And what indicators do we have that we have been successful in doing that, the next stage is determining data. And in my mind, I was thinking in family conversations, it's going to be a bit different from professional conversations. It might be, you know, if your partner is talking to your child, and you can hear from the tone and the language that they're using, and look at the child's face and see the evidence of how that is landing. And so that may be your data source, right? If your child is zoning out, disengaged, your data source is your child, you know, our child is not listening. They are not able to receive the feedback in air quotes that you are offering to them right now. Is that you saying yes to that?

Yes, absolutely, absolutely.

And we're gathering this data on how things are going, and then we're analyzing it, and then you start to talk about constructing knowledge, deconstructing knowledge. What's that piece about?

Once we analyze the data, and in the case where a parent has said something, the child is shut down, not listening, we recognize that there's a cause and effect there, then we can use that analysis to begin to construct kind of a generalization. I don't want to say a rule, but it might be a practice that we want to commit to, that we want to be able to communicate to our child in a way that holds our child, holds the attention, engages the child, allows the child to share what they're thinking in that situation. What are we extracting from our analysis? You said this tone, those words, child shut down. We observe that cause effect, what do we want to change in that situation, what did we learn from that. And so there could be learning about tone, about language, about the setup. For you know, let's just take it down a few steps. Let's sit on the floor, take a couple deep breaths before we speak. What's the learning here for us? That's the construction, the deconstruction then would be, when would that not apply, when would that not apply? There might be circumstances when, if we are just learning something, we don't want to deconstruct it immediately, but as we have more data, we might discover situations where big emotions are helpful and they're not helpful. And the deconstruction allows us to say there are very few absolutes about parenting, and what makes us really articulate as a parent and competent and confident and courageous is recognizing that things change, parenting is contextual, it's situative. Almost any dynamic relationship is that and so there are no absolute rules, and deconstruction allows us an opportunity to begin to think about when it when might that not work.

Okay. And then we're going to determine our next actions. And then after that, reflect on the feedback process and integrate our knowledge and reflecting on the feedback process seems to me like, how was this process of generating feedback, how did it work for us? Is there anything about that process that we want to change? What's integrating knowledge? What is that? And how do we do it?

The integrating is that whatever we've learned, we take it and put it into practice, and we end those conversations with an intent to learn and to be more competent in our practice. And by integrating in the future whatever we've learned helps us be more competent, because each experience is an opportunity to learn. And I think every time we have an interaction, we learn something. And if we become more conscious of what we're learning, that helps us be more deliberate in our actions, more intentional, more thoughtful.

Okay. As we integrate knowledge over a lifetime, it's wonderful if we do it in the process, right? And we're all engaged, and the consent is given co creating knowledge. But as we've engaged in this, in traditional feedback, where we've been given the feedback sandwich, like, I'm just going to, ease into this really nicely and then tell you something you're doing wrong, and then close out with a compliment, so you still feel good, but you know that doesn't, that ever does, doesn't land that way, right? We've learned, or we've integrated knowledge, essentially, that feedback is bad, it's criticism. Is something to get defensive against, and you know, especially partners, parenting partners that have been together for a while and are parenting a child, which is inherently difficult in our society right then we we've started to fall into these patterns of criticism, where we see criticism as bad, and how do we move beyond that. How do we what do we do if we don't get consent for feedback we're giving? And I think you've kind of alluded to this over the course of the interview, right? Like, okay, stop and reframe. But how do we move from unproductive criticism into the feedback process to where we can actually start learning together?

Over the years, what I have learned if I am being criticized, it often lands to me, and this is for me, it may not land this way for others that the other person who's being critical has power over me and is not giving me the opportunity to choose to act. I feel disempowered, and that's the reason Jen you mentioned the studies that people were often after being given so much feedback, worse off than they were before because their cognitive capacity to choose how they want to act in a situation is diminished. It's removed from them and if we enter almost immediately into a fight, flight, reactionary kind of situation. So yes, we all grew up with parents who were very, not very, but often critical of our behavior, because that was all they knew, or they'd start with the sandwich, I love you, and this is what I want you to know, but I still love you. It didn't engage me to help me learn how to change my practice, why I would want to change my practice, and it didn't give me an opportunity to examine the full range of data that occurred in any situation. So criticism, yes, I'm not saying it can't be constructive. It can be if it is constructive and, in my mind, constructive criticism is understanding sufficiently so that the learner is able to articulate the criticism and be able to identify what needs to change, why it needs to change, how that change will adhere more to normative practice, if that's the case, and to literally be able, by doing that, demonstrate some degree of motivation to make that change. If I'm simply being told, you know, don't do that, there's no motivation on my part to change my behavior. So how I engage in the conversation with my partner, can I believe, produce motivation in my partner to want to change, to know how to make that change and understand why it's important to do so.

Can I ask you, like a specific example. Traditionally, if I were to give a feedback sandwich and, a harder issue. This is not like a safety issue, like the trampoline or the hot stove, but like a kind of more harder, higher cognitive load issue I was, you know, my feedback sandwich might be like, you know, you're doing really great as a parent, and I've also noticed that tend to want to shut down our child's crying, but I think you're really, you know, you've really come a long way, and, you're a great parent. That's my feedback, how do I move from that to like, how would I start a feedback process on, validating emotions and being okay? or, again, I'm assuming, that I'm right. How would I start a conversation on, maybe what I want, which is for our child to be able to express emotions freely. How would I start that conversation?

I might start it with that I have a goal. I have something I value. I'm curious about what you value. And then given if we had different values in that situation, how would we come together about understanding how we can parent co-parent with diverse values? Where do we find the middle ground or consensus so that we can be consistent in our parenting? And that would be indicators of success. Here's what I want to learn about the way I want to handle emotion with our child, and I'm curious what you want to learn about that, where's our where's our agreement, where's our disagreement. Let's look at a couple situations that would be the data opportunity. Let's look at a few situations that have occurred where our child has expressed emotion and we approached it differently. Let's understand those situations. Let's analyze what happened for each of us. How did we feel in those situations, how did our child react? What were our behaviors? What was the response? Now, let's take that apart and decide, ideally, if we could create the ideal, what would it look like? What would we each be doing? And that would be the construction of new understanding for both of us. And then we might ask, when might that not work? Well, it's obviously not going to work if we're not together, but if we're working through a situation with our child and we're in the same space. What do we want? What do we agree on?

Yeah, I could see having that conversation and get it going a lot better. Thank you.

And I just want to pull out some specific elements of that right. Once again, we're coming back to this idea of we're not having this conversation in the moment when your kid is having a meltdown that we're doing after the fact. And I think it's also helpful to sort of take physical and mental and emotional capacity into account. And you know, if you're if your partner is really depleted at the moment, then trying to create some space there. And also want to acknowledge that it's very often going to be the woman in a set partnership who is doing this work and who is monitoring her male partners, mental and emotional and physical capacity to propose this at just the right moment and acknowledge kind of the structures there and then also, what I heard Joellen not doing right is it's not about you always or you never or there's this some part of your character or personality that is not working here is the specific behaviors and their impacts that we are working on here. And then I think another really important part that I got out of the book Joellen is that we're creating these reciprocal structures. It's not just me giving right, which I know we don't do anymore. We don't give you feedback, is that we're doing this together, and I am also open to feedback on what I'm doing. And to me, the truly radical part of this is then doing it with our kids, right? Of being willing to have that conversation with our kids, how am I doing as a parent? How you know, are there things that you think I could do differently that would be more supportive of you? How many of us have had that conversation with our kids? Is it scary to even think about having that conversation with our kids?

Yes, it's a little scary. However, I often was told that by my teenage children, stop doing this, or I wish you would, they often offer that information even when you might not be open to hearing it in the moment. However, if we paused and had those conversations a little more often that might be really helpful to demonstrate to our child the value of pausing and doing some examination of our own behavior.

Oh, gosh, the value of that modeling, right? If we see things that our kids are struggling with, that we wish they would do differently, and they have articulated something like that to us, and we have not paused and asked them more about it.

Yes, it's pretty remarkable, how those and I call them simple, but they're not simple practices. How those practices can really help develop that full, that whole child, that cognitive, social, behavioral, all of those dimensions of a human being we influence so often.

Yeah, and maybe we can just kind of close, in a way, I want to close right there. But also, there could be situations where the other person just doesn't want to hear it right? They're rejecting our feedback. They're not on board with having the conversation or the outcomes of the conversation. What does you know, what should we learn from that? What should we take from that? How do we approach it?

There's an opportunity for analysis right there, and we look at the data, what's going on for this person? Could be stress at work, could be not feeling well, could be time crunch, could you know whatever. What's happening for this person? My data, that's my data. What do I understand and what am I learning? That there are times to have these conversations and times not to and when I see X signs or indicators, I'm going to pull back and find a more appropriate time. There's learning for me in that, because if I plow into the conversation, I will be the one who will be disappointed, likely be the one who's going to get angry, and that helps no one.

Okay. And what if it's not a timing issue? What if we've picked an appropriate time, but there's something else going on?

Yeah, I'm just aware. I ask what's happening. I could ask the question, how ready are you for this conversation. Because I think if we're not ready, if we're not open, the conversation is pointless. That's the reason in the feedback process, the very first question is, what do you want to learn? Because that shows a small indication of motivation and openness and willingness, very small. If I don't have that, it's pointless.

Okay, that you're asking for consent in that question really is, what you're doing, and if you're doing, and if you're not getting that consent, you can't move forward. And the use may still get through the feedback process, and the feedback may be rejected. And I think what I got out of the book on this is that if that happens, it's possible that it wasn't, you weren't really in the feedback process. You might have been giving a feedback sandwich, you might have been criticizing, and trying to work through it, but ultimately, underneath it, there was really a criticism, and your partner perceived that, or your child perceived that.

Yes, if it wasn't accepted, then I know the process wasn't followed, because acceptance of information, for me, is not what feedback is about. What it's about is my partner being able to articulate what is being learned. That's what the feedback process is about.

Can you say a little bit more about that, like the difference between giving and receiving feedback and engaging in the feedback process or a learning process.

I often will say you, you are restricted from using two words before the word feedback, and those two words are give and receive, because those two words simply mean that the information is just handed over. There's no preparation, there's often very little cognitive engagement on the person who's receiving the information, there's no expectation, and there's no opportunity for that person to become an active participant, engaging cognitively with the information, making sense of it, connecting it to their own behavior, connecting it to how they perceive the world, how they perceive themselves, and that's what the feedback process is striving to do it. Is to develop that partner's cognitive engagement, which then lends ownership and responsibility for doing something with this, this data that we have in front of us.

Yeah, Anne and I were actually talking before you joined the call about how traditional feedback is like getting a gift right, a holiday gift that you didn't choose. The other person chose it for you? You're not sure what's inside or whether you want it. You take the tear the paperback, and it's something you really didn't want, and now you have to put a smile on your face and say, Thank you so much for this awesome gift,

Yes, and then regifted as soon as you can.

Regift that feedback sandwich. And so instead, it's almost like we're choosing together, right? We're choosing together. What is this thing that we want to do together? And we're engaging in a joint journey, and that's a very different process.

Yes, indeed, very, very much.

Yeah awesome. Well, I'm so glad we were able to have this conversation, and thank you for going to the conference. Is there anything you would like to say to feel complete in the conversation?

Just a lot of gratitude. I mean, I had a lot of gratitude just even leaving the conference. I'm extremely grateful for the opportunity to follow up on the conversation and share it with others, because I think it is very powerful.

Awesome. Thank you so much Anne. And I did want to mention that Joellen's book is called The Feedback Process, transforming feedback for professional learning. And of course, as we have just seen, it's not just about professional learning. Joellen, where can we find more information on you and your work?

You can reach out to me personally. I don't have a website, but you can reach me at jpkillion@mac.com, and, I just want to say to you and thank you for taking the learning that you had and exploring and using it in ways that really help you professionally. And I am so grateful to both of you for pushing me to think about how the process can be used in a parenting arena. I believe strongly in the process. I believe it's applicable in all aspects of our life, and I hadn't really thought deeply about how it fits into parenting, and you prompted me to do that, and I am so grateful.

Thank you so much.

I'm a Your Parenting Mojo fan, and I hope you enjoy the show as much as I do. If you found this episode especially enlightening or useful, you can donate to help Jen produce more content like this. Just go to the episode page that Jen mentioned. Thanks for listening.