Candid and Compassionate Feedback

by Joseph Jones, T.J. Vari

Too often educational leaders are caught in a "culture of nice," finding it difficult to give their teachers and staff critical feedback to improve their practice. This important book helps leaders become both candid and compassionate, unrelenting and supportive, and demanding yet caring. Exploring real scenarios and situations, this book helps you through the common traps of trying to improve performance, and the strategies to move beyond these pitfalls to achieve desired results. Addressing best practices for driving change such as informal feedback mechanisms, collaborative decision-making, and teacher leadership, this important book will help you create a trusting and supportive environment where you can have candid educational conversations in person and in writing, during informal chats, in PLCs, and with other leaders.

176 pages, Hardcover

Published November 29, 2018

Reviews

[Christy Hall · Rating 5 out of 5]

I should probably read more professional growth books. When given an opportunity to read for pleasure or work, I’ll choose pleasure every time. This go round, my principal assigned the academic admin team to read Candid and Compassionate Feedback and I’m so glad she did! If you are an administrator or a teacher leader, you should definitely read this one. The first section focuses on the process of roundings and walkthroughs, which become great vehicles for giving good feedback to teachers and creating a strong vision for academic goals. The second part focuses on effective meetings. I seriously sit in some very unfocused and ineffective meetings now that I’m an administrator. It drives me nuts! I’m hoping this helps everyone on our team to be more focused on the vision and productive in making decisions. I know I can use quite a bit of this for the teams I lead. The third section focuses on how to coach people more effectively. I am going to use many of these elements to help me guide and coach our teacher leaders and department chairs. I enjoyed how the book was set up by focusing on theory and application of theory. Then transitioned to illustrating and analyzing models. Best professional development book I’ve read in a very long time!

[Lizzy · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book paints a picture of very subtle, but extremely powerful shifts in communication that I think can transform a school culture. In some of the models, I thought, "That sounds like how I would lead the conversation," and then I heard the conversation redos, which are tremendously more impactful. Jones and Vari bring together ideas that I haven't found in any other education book. Will this book magically change the way you communicate? No, it makes it clear that you will have to work hard at it along the way and have the courage to face difficult conversations until you begin to think in a new and different way. The culture they are proposing is not the norm in schools, but they lay out clear tools to help you start the journey there.

[Tom Cork · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved the theory and scenarios on candid, supportive communication in a variety of common school contexts. I am not yet ready to integrate the last part of the book (leading teacher-leaders) into my practice, but the authors have given me a lot to consider to prevent being pulled into an illusory “culture of nice” that circumvents honesty and openness.