Authentic Counselling Training
Giving and Receiving Feedback
[Under construction: 12 September 2005 ]
What is feedback?
“What is feedback?” may appear to be a silly question, not for the obvious reason that ‘everyone knows what feedback is’, but because the simplicity of the question implies that the answer is simple and meaningful, which it is not. Questions such as “What is a metamorphic rock?” and “What is a quadratic equation?” have meaningful answers, the complexity of which may depend on the cognitive grasp of enquirer and respondent.
“What is counselling?” is a little more difficult to answer meaningfully.
“Counselling is a way
of helping people.”
“What sort of way?
What sort of people? What sort of help?”
“Counselling is a kind
of relationship.”
“You mean it involves
a relationship?”
“Yes, but it also is the relationship.”
At its simplest, feedback is what (a noun) is said in response. In the context of counselling trainees who are feeding back having watched a listener (counsellor) and speaker (client) participate in an observed counselling practice session, what is fed back consists of observations made by the observers, and something of their understanding of what they observed, and maybe some suggestions for how things might have been handled differently, and maybe for some thoughts about what was missing, and of observations made by the speaker (client) about their experience of being ‘listened to’ and facilitated in their exploration of their issues, and what worked and did not work for them, and maybe what irritated them, and of thoughts by the listener about their intentions, and their reflections on what appeared to work or not work, and so on. An observer of a feedback session might recognise that feedback is not solely about what (noun) is said, but also about how (adverb) it is said. The ‘how’ concerns everything from the tone of voice used by the feedback deliverer, through whether the feedback is spoken or written or both, whether spoken feedback is being audio recorded, to the structure of the session (e.g. resorting to ‘the shit sandwich’). In counselling training, the topic of feedback might be almost anything, including one’s experience of each other in the group (this latter process having been used extensively as a training tool by Relate). However, all of this is but a snapshot, and falls short. Feedback is an organic process involving self, relationships, the development of conceptual understanding, the development of communication strategies, and the development of counselling competence. In other words, unless one is a lexicographer, simply asking what feedback is and thus trying to grasp the concept solely cognitively has relatively little value. Understanding feedback in counselling training involves engaging in it and with it.
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