Giving Feedback
Training Exercises and Resources

This exercise helps delegates to practice communication skills. In particular it focuses on observation skills, how to describe something in simple yet meaningful ways and how to provide feedback. It is an ideal exercise for team building as it helps to improve inter-team communication. 

Knowing how to communicate well with others is an essential skill.

Here, you will be introduced to several communication skills exercises suitable for kids and young adults. The way you run these exercises highly depends on the age of your audience so you will need to adjust them as necessary.

While communicating with others, it is important to use active listening skills. Listening attentively can significantly improve relationships and minimise misunderstandings. The best way to learn active listening is by practicing it while communicating with others in a realistic setting. This exercise helps delegates practice active listening in various contexts depending on your choice and training needs.

When first presented with new ideas, many seem to be quick to highlight the potential problems with the idea rather than focusing on its potential. This attitude often leads to destructive criticism which can be particularly ineffective in brainstorming sessions and meeting. This exercise helps to highlight the negative aspects of destructive criticism and how positive feedback can significantly boost enthusiasm and encourage further contribution. Delegates also learn how to formulate their negative feedback as constructive feedback during this exercise.

Positive feedback can have a dramatic effect. In this exercise, delegates will learn to appreciate the power of positive feedback, however small, when it is provided repeatedly during the course of a conversation. The aim of the exercise is to be thought provoking so you can then continue with a session on giving appropriate positive feedback. As a result it is ideal to go through this exercise at the beginning of a session on giving feedback.

The core idea in this exercise is that one person has a particular goal in mind and uses that goal to direct the conversation to a particular topic. The conversation is directed to a new topic using positive feedback.  

When was the last time you praised someone? If you have to think to answer this question, then you are not doing enough. People are extremely praise-deprived. They long for praise from anyone all the time. We never seem to get enough praise.

This article explores what stops us from praising others and provides a number of techniques that act as a reminder to praise others and therefore systematically improve their performances. These techniques are ideal for those in management roles who can significantly benefit from the positive effects of praise both for themselves and for their organisations.

This is an engaging exercise for those who work in marketing, sales or customer services. It allows them to see their organisation from the customer’s point of view. They can then use this knowledge to formulate strategies that improve their sales and customer services. This exercise is ideal for delegates from the same organisation.

We all want a better life, better job, more money, better recognition and so on. But do we really know what satisfies us the most in case we were going to be rewarded? Does your organisation know what you would consider as a great reward?

This exercise is effectively a questionnaire that you can provide to members of staff on a periodic basis (e.g. annually) to collect ideas on rewards and recognitions. Knowing what your staff considers great reward, means you can provide them with what they want and therefore increase productivity within the organisation.

Negativity is contagious. It’s all too easy to complain about everything that goes wrong and this can quickly spread to others. Fortunately there is a simple trick that can be used to eliminate negativity; simply don’t say negative words. Aiming for positive remarks helps people to get energised. Rather than looking for blame, seek opportunities to improve and progress forward.

Here are some examples of negative statements that people commonly use:

• Don’t do that
• We can’t do it
• It can’t be done
• We don’t do such thing
• It is against our policy
• We have never done this before
• It has never been done
• No one knows how to do this
• You don’t know how this works
• The management is clueless
• The staff are clueless
• They sit there all day and do nothing
• No one cares

These statements do not help and are sometime stated as a reflex reaction rather than with an appropriate thought. Sometimes they become a habit and it is important to eliminate them as bad habits.

This simple two stage communication skills exercise helps to increase the awareness of delegates about this issue and helps them to address it. It is ideal for delegates who work closely together or are part of the same team so it can also be used as a teambuilding activity at work.