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”)

2: Build on what works. In our culture we have the idea of ​​'you gotta learn from your mistakes'. I can agree with that, but I know from experience that it is also a good idea to learn from the successes: give credit to yourself or your dance partner when there is something that works, be generous and say it to your dance partner. For example: I notice that your balance is much better, it's nice, super, cool. (Here you will, from time to time, as a result of a high degree of self-criticism, find that your dance partner does not accept your praise, but then you just insist and repeat - basta)

3: Keep it short. The brain can only absorb information in small chunks. Make therefore your feedback concise. You can use the following template: first say one thing your dance partner is doing well, then one thing that can be improved. Explain why. For example: “your side steps are super good, it is quite clear what to do and if you can do the same in your forward steps it would help me to know when to walk and how far”.

4: Start with your own development. Ask your dance partner if there is anything you can do to improve. First of all: there always is, and it creates a generous ambiance where it also becomes easier for your dance partner to ask for advice or receive feedback. For example: “is there anything I can do to make this figure work better?”

5: Feedback belongs in the class, at workshops and private lessons. Give ABSOLUTELY no feedback at a milonga - it's a NO GO. This is true whether it's your usual dance partner or someone you dance with for the first time. This applies even if you find that you have come out on the dance floor with a beginner or someone at a different level than you. Milongas are not workshops but social events with tango dancing and fun as the only goal. To 'teach' a beginner on a milonga is therefore strictly FORBIDDEN.

A few words about self-criticism

"It's hard" is a phrase we teachers often hear. The phrase relates more to a person’s perception of something than anything factual, and is a result of self-criticism. That anything is hard or difficult can only be determined by it’s relation to something, and in the learning situation, it is often the student's expectations for him or herself that sets the standard. The student relates his learning to what’s missing and not what he/she has achieved. A classic distortion of expectation is that the student believes that he or she must be able to it all at once and to do it the way the teachers are doing it. The student completely forgets that we teachers have trained and danced for many years (and, by the way, also are quite good at hiding when we do something wrong, at least to an inexperienced eye). Drop the self-criticism and comparison with those who are better than you. Feel free to use the good dancers as a model, but the measure of your progress is your starting point – i.e. the development from what you were able to do yesterday to what you can today.