“I like it.” Thanks, I guess?

A few weeks ago, I shared my thoughts that feedback is a gift, and it really is. In that post I mentioned that the key is for feedback to have positive intentions behind it. However, good feedback also needs to have some meat.

Around the same time I wrote that post, my friend Brandie wrote about people that “like it” when asked for feedback. While liking something is positive, it’s not particularly helpful. In Brandie’s case, while she was an assistant professor at East Carolina University, she literally banned the word “like” when giving feedback.

Brandie’s entire post is excellent, and this paragraph sums it up:

When someone defaults to what they like, suddenly the entire discovery process has been discarded (or as my Southern grandma would say, “thrown right out the window.”) What happened to all the goals and objectives we agreed upon? What about the creative brief? What about the documentation gathered in the discovery process? What about the research on audience, competitors, objectives, tone, voice and approach?

Learning to give great feedback is a valuable skill to have, and removing “like” from your vocabulary is a great place to start. Check out Brandie’s full post to see more.

Originally published at https://www.mickmel.com on March 15, 2023.