Actionable Feedback for Professional Growth

Facilitator: Michelle Kuhns

After twenty years in international schools, Michelle moved stateside and founded Balanced Professional Learning, guiding schools and coaching leaders through strategic planning for learning that leads to transformative change. With an interest in building leadership capacity across industries, she has also facilitated leadership training for corporate C-Suite and middle managers, specifically in the areas of coaching, feedback, productivity, and behaviors of inclusion. Michelle is the Curriculum and Strategy Specialist at International Schools Services and SISU Schools and a partner in the Vision to Action Collaborative.

To learn more about how Michelle supports schools: https://balancedpl.com/ and https://www.visiontoactioncollaborative.org/

Session Overview

This practical one-day workshop will explore the vital role that specific, receivable, and actionable feedback plays in professional growth. Borrowing from corporate management research, we will identify useful strategies for giving, receiving, and asking for feedback within and among our teams. We will compare the world of C-Suite management to the world of school leadership, identifying areas that crossover and experiencing new research and ideas. We will practice responding with questions and explore how coaching increases motivation and confidence in the people we lead. Participants will leave with tools, templates, and strategies to help them navigate these important conversations.

Session Outcomes

  • Understand the imperative of giving receivable, actionable feedback for professional growth.

  • Apply key strategies that support the interplay between coaching and feedback in supervisory relationships.

  • Explore the relationship between unconscious bias, feedback quality, and career opportunity.

  • Identify methods for assessing whether the feedback process has generated learning that leads to change.

Research Connections

  • Aquilar, E. (2013). Art of Coaching: Effective strategies for school transformation. JOSSEY-BASS. 

  • Correll, S. J., & Simard, C. (2016, April 29). Research: Vague feedback is holding women back. Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/2016/04/research-vague-feedback-is-holding-women-back 

  • Killion, Joellen. The Feedback Process: Transforming Feedback for Professional Learning.

  • Mueller, A. S., Jenkins, T. M., Osborne, M., Dayal, A., O’Connor, D. M., & Arora, V. M. (2017, October 1). Gender differences in attending physicians’ feedback to residents: A qualitative analysis. Allen Press. https://meridian.allenpress.com/jgme/article/9/5/577/201284/Gender-Differences-in-Attending-Physicians 

  • Pink, D. H. (2018). Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us. Canongate Books..

Who Should Attend

School leaders, leaders who supervise, coach, or mentor others, HR

Next

Developing a Schoolwide Balanced Assessment System with Jennifer Delashmutt