Feedback Strategies: Feedforward

If you come from Eastern culture, you might understand more thoroughly what i say here soon. I am sorry for using the word "Eastern" loosely because not every father or mother from Eastern culture have this characteristic. That is, hope that their babies group up to be doctors (Doctor is the most dreamy job ever). To do that, they force their babies learning from a very young age (since the babies can't speak fluent Vietnamese, the parents bring them to school for English).

Children are expected to be exceptionally good in many nature courses such as math, physic, chemistry...  and are expected to have good grade, which mean A and above, not A-. When they got lower grade, their parents would questioned why and  plus penalties. They might have not to play that night or they would be spank instead.

I am lucky since my parents are not like that, but they were still expected me have a good grade. I admitted that i cheated sometimes then so that i could bring home a paper with A+ on. At that time, not only me, but my friends either be spanked or be praised like "She's good at math", "she will be accepted to the University" (It is hard to pass the exam to learn in a university in Vietnam though). I would rather choose to be praise.

A praise either encourage people or cause pressure on them. In A Troubling Side Effects of Praises, Youki Terada says that overuse praises causing pressure on children and therefore makes they willing to cheat. In this case, instead of feedback, feedforward became a useful tools.

In the article Try Feedforward instead of Feedback of  Marshall Goldsmith, Feedforward is considered the suggestion for future, not criticize for the past. My parent never spanked me, but shouted at me when i got lower grade. However, they brought back the math problems that i got them wrong and asked why i did this but not that. Therefore, i am so thankful for those who points out my mistakes and show me directions.

I found this picture very familiar to what i said above, "Why did you do this, but not that?" Pointing this out can help a person fixes the mistake and also provide guidance for future steps.

Picture from Moving Writer.

If you want to know more about parent's expectation for the kids in Eastern culture, you might want to read the book, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother written by Amy Chua. A real story of raising kids.