Why Giving and Receiving Feedback Skill is Important for Creatives

How to Give and Share Feedback in Creative Teams

Creative feedback is a crucial part of project management and creative partnership to ensure continuous improvement and alignment with the project’s goals. Moreover, project management is not just the initial project planning stage, but it’s the entire process from start to finish—this calls for consistent progress checks. Mastering the art of giving and receiving feedback is an indispensable project management skill for you as a creative person.

So, how does this apply to you, as an artist seeking to manage your creative projects?

How Feedback is Crucial in the Creative Industry

Feedback in any industry is unavoidable—especially in the arts and the creative industry. Despite its commonality, criticism can still deal a huge blow to motivation or ego. More often than not, artists leave a part of themselves in their creations, so negative feedback can feel much more personal than intended. But it’s an essential part of career growth, and the way less-than-positive comments affect you is ultimately up to you.

However, as artists make their way in the industry and start working with clients, expectations and requirements against personal preferences are unavoidable. So, how can artists receive and give great feedback, in the healthiest and most effective ways possible?

What to Do When Giving Feedback

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Remember that the point of feedback is to nurture artistic development—it shouldn’t be used as an opportunity to take a jab at someone’s creation. It’s a powerful project management skill that can help you and your team’s artistic tasks stay in the planned lane.

Note that there is no “right” way to share feedback; it often depends on the situation. However, it can be argued that there is a wrong way—when your feedback is overly hurtful, baseless, and extinguishes creativity rather than fuels it, you’re heading in the wrong direction. Inspire confidence, boost motivation, and nurture quality within your project team.

Here are a few suggestions on how to conduct feedback constructively.

1. Use Feedback Methods

CORE

CORE stands for Context, Observation, Result and nExt stEps. Essentially an effective feedback should reference the situation, describe the art, note its effects, and discuss what must be done next.

Candid Feedback

The principals of this kind of feedback are straightforward—criticise with the intent of helping, while staying humble and leaving room for your own critique. Keep positive feedback; tell them what they did right alongside what they did wrong.

STATE

This stands for Share, Tell, Ask, Talk, and Encourage. Share objective opinions, tell them how it has affected you, ask about the other party’s thoughts, talk to them cautiously, and encourage them to challenge your words.

2. Give Emotionally Intelligent Feedback

When giving positive feedback, remember to empathise with the other party by putting yourself in their shoes. How are they as a person? How do they react to certain things? How are they currently reacting to your words, etc.? However, this should not be at the expense of objectivity because, at the end of the day, your aim is to relay constructive feedback, be it design feedback or creative feedback.

Here are a few key tips for giving feedback empathetically:

• Avoid shaming the other person. Validate and acknowledge any emotions they may be exhibiting.

• Pay attention to body language and tone of voice throughout the feedback session.

• Practise the art of active listening with full attention and no interruption.

• Stay conscious of the intentions behind your feedback. Filtering personal agendas is highly encouraged, as it’s a sign of self-awareness.

However, if you’re in an online environment, this can be difficult. But there are ways to work around it:

Be as expressive as possible. When you are utilising the TESSR project management software to relay your feedback, specifically with the TESSR Review feature, you can provide feedback in a few different ways.

This helps add nuance back into a virtual platform by using emojis, dynamic annotation tools, and voice messages to help you get the job done. Explore more about how TESSR Review allows you and your team to collaborate by reading this article here.

Tips on How to Receive and Incorporate Creative Feedback

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You cannot control what kind of feedback you receive, but what you can control is how you decide to take it. Just like any other piece of information you come across, feedback should be filtered and observed. Question if the feedback is genuine, useful or if it’s biased.

1. Identifying Negative, Uncritical Feedback

In a professional working environment, you have the right to expect well-delivered feedback. In general, great creative feedback is delivered in a respectful way and communicates the (i) Issues (ii) Expectations, and (iii) Resolutions of your work.

If you don’t receive the information mentioned and unhelpful criticism is laid out in front of you instead—it can be considered uncritical or negative feedback. Here are some examples:

• Personal attacks: The feedback lacks respect, appears sarcastic, and/or depreciates the work, such as: “This is terrible.”, “Oh wow, so you consider this “Good to go”?”

• Vague and non-specific: This type of feedback expects you to keep looking for a solution without knowing their expectations—this can affect productivity and may be demotivating. This might be shown as “I just don’t like it.”, “Something doesn’t look right, but I can’t tell you what.”

Receiving this kind of feedback can push us into negative headspaces, stagnating healthy growth and advancement. So, how can we deal with this?

a. Remind yourself of your value: If you are already doing your best, don’t stop! Take your time processing feedback given and try not to take negative comments personally because those are projected attacks that have nothing to do with you or your art—don’t let false criticism drag you down. It’s easy to let your emotions get in the way of your work and plans, hindering your workflow and ability to execute projects objectively.

b. Respond with respect and establish requisites: If responding is unavoidable, ask questions to clarify (i) What are the issues ii) What are the expectations, and (iii) Are there any suggestions for amendment? When you don’t receive clear answers, gently put your foot down by setting requisites—be upfront about needing specifications and clarity.

c. Seek support from your circle: Even if you can discern when you should or should not take things personally, continuously receiving negative feedback might cause doubt and insecurity. Therefore, artists should make sure they have a support system where they can share and seek advice if needed.

2. Leveraging Constructive Feedback

Not all negative feedback is bad. We’ve detailed a few examples of it above, but generally:

If they’re clear, actionable, and come from a place of empathy and experience, take from it.

1. Be Receptive

The age-old saying about how you “Never stop learning, because life never stops teaching." rings true, once again. There’s always room for growth, and your art will only become more enriched as you see and hear new things. Stay humble—it’s in the best interest of your creations and your projects.

2. Reach out: Ask for Multiple Sources

Ask for several opinions from people you value. You may hear varying feedback from the team in the performance review—and that is exactly why it’s important. Gain insight from numerous perspectives, examine them, and apply them. Effective feedback is an important aspect of project and team management.

3. Focus on the Positive, too

It’s easy to get too into your head when you receive feedback such as design feedback or creative feedback with any sort of negative connotation. But remember that constructive criticism typically includes what you did right as well.

Work on the negatives but focus on the positives. Let that motivate you to grow—the more you improve, the more likely you’ll continue to receive positive comments. This is just one art project out of many to come—so don’t let negativity hold you and your team back from improvement.

Conclusion

Effectively giving and receiving feedback may not come to you immediately, but with discipline and consistency, this communication skill is bound to stick. To support your career growth, you can practise giving great feedback and receiving feedback to ensure it is helpful and supportive. Artists like you can feed off of constructive feedback, so don’t let this goldmine of learning go to waste!

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

How can feedback improve the creative process?

Constructive and critical feedback can help ignite new ideas and guide creatives toward more effective solutions. Additionally, feedback is also helpful in identifying blind spots that were not seen by the people themselves but by other people who work together.

Why should I give constructive feedback to others?

Giving feedback to others can help sharpen your critical thinking, enhance your communication skills, and develop your leadership skills. Moreover, giving constructive feedback is one of the ways to contribute to a supportive creative team or community to help them grow and innovate more.

How can I create a culture of effective feedback in my creative environment?

Creating an effective feedback culture is not an easy task, but the outcomes of it are greatly beneficial for everyone. You can start by encouraging open communication where team members have the freedom to share insights without worry of being judged. Then, you can start organising one-on-one sessions to include regular feedback, that will be tracked in the performance review. Also, recognise and celebrate small improvements for all team members to reinforce the value of feedback.

Author Bio

From Malaysia, Leia Emeera is a writer at TESSR, and a published author. She has been putting pen to paper ever since she learned how to, and has an anthology to her name, titled 'Ten'. Leia loves music, games and her beloved labrador retriever, George. She aims to further her studies in English Literature and Creative Writing the moment her gap year ends. 'Till then, you will find her sitting behind a desk, writing with TESSR.

Connect with her on LinkedIn:  Leia Emeera