Useful feedback to your dance partner

Over the years I have heard really crabby feedback from leaders to employees, trainers to athletes, peer to peer or between partners in tango classes. The willingness to give feedback is there, the intent is often very good but the quality sucks: it gets too pessimistic and negative with a focus on what doesn't work rather than what does.

Therefore I decided to write this post about feedback. The goal is to inspire you and your dance partner to give useful feedback to each other. 

The fact is that we as dance partners in the learning situation has huge effect on each other, and with positive and goal oriented feedback, that influence will be very attractive, as opposed to negative feedback that will make the learning situation frustrating and sometimes make you want to have another dance partner or stop dancing at all.

Why give feedback – what is the goal?

The content and form of the feedback is determined by the goal: what does the person who gives the feedback want to achieve. In this post I will argue that feedback in a learning situation always aims to contribute to learning and development, preferably in a fun and positive atmosphere. The goal is that the person you give feedback can use it to learn and develop and become even better.

• Goal with feedback: to help oneself and others to learn
• Method of feedback: to give information’s about the things your dance partner do good and where there’s room for improvement.
• Presupposition: forget the idea that it always is your dance partner who has to change or improve. In that perspective dancing is like life: in 99 times out of 100 there is room for improvement for both parts, leader and follower.

Five tips for useful feedback

1: Say what you want to achieve, not what you want to avoid. The brain cannot concentrate on the opposite of something, for example, if I say: “don’t think of a pink elephant” your brain will have to construct a 'pink elephant' before it can start spending a lot of energy on, often fruitless, forgetting it again. Therefore it is better so stress what you want to achieve rather than what you want to avoid. For example: “can you put more energy into your rotation?” (rather than: “please don’t stop in the middle of your rotation”)