Tell Me So I Can Hear You: A Developmental Approach to Feedback for Educators

This is a wonderful book! As an executive coach, I found this to be quite inspiring for coaching organizational leaders. Great exercises and ways to build a team and prepare them to be a team. The the book has excellent reference tables and summaries on giving and receiving feedback best practices. This could be an important coaching tool for leaders who are working to improve their capacity for giving and receiving feedback and perhaps a brief summary could be a good “cheat sheet” to keep out during conversations. Dr. Drago-Severson covers the 'when' and the 'how' of giving and receiving and best practices tips on ways to make it even more effective.

This book is timely placed within the context of the accountability movement. Drago-Severson and Blum-DeStefano revitalize the term “Feedback,” and bring greater complexity to the concept, just when it was about to be lost within the flood of dehumanizing metrics in public education. The authors provide an extremely thorough analysis of the many purposes of feedback (formal, informal, top-down, lateral, evaluative, formative) and offer very specific, actionable strategies to meet recipients “where they are” from a developmental perspective. They apply Constructive Developmental Theory, in order to provide leaders with a highly customized feedback strategy for each individual in their school or organization. I found this to be highly accessible and immediately actionable, of tremendous value as a school principal in a time when teacher morale is more tenuous than ever.

What I most enjoy about Tell Me So I Can Hear You is how the authors so practically linked the work of educational leaders, particularly principals, with developmental theory. They offer clear and accessible explanations of developmental theory and both how and why it matters for leadership development in the giving and receiving of feedback. Their charts are understandable, with explanations and suggestions that can be put to use immediately. The guidance for the giving and receiving of feedback makes so much sense. I am recommending this book to faculty, superintendents, teachers and students alike. It is one of the more helpful resources I've come across in some time. Reading this book and then putting its suggestions to use can happen almost immediately, and in the busy world of educators, that is priceless.

With clarity and insight Drago-Severson and Blum-DeStefano describe their rousing view of feedback through the lens of Constructive-Developmental Theory. Challenges in providing and receiving feedback are recognized, reframed, and addressed with a promising approach that should allow us to promote growth broadly. Tables delineate key characteristics, distinctions, and recommendations. Prompts at the end of each chapter promote reflection and support application. Tell Me So I Can Hear You is a key reference for all educators, all leaders, all of us as we strive to grow and to support the growth of others.

It came ripped in the cover. I purchased a new one, not used. I needed the book for my class right away. So I kept it.

Outstanding book! A must read for principal, evaluators and anyone who wants to influence practice.

Drago-Severson puts theory into practice with real vignettes all educators will recognize. The clarity of information, the useful frameworks for professional conversations, and the research base is extremely helpful. These strategies can be put into action immediately by teachers, leaders, and coaches. Among the many parts I liked, the four ways of knowing speak to the authenticity of real schools and real educators. Understanding how people receive feedback is one things, understanding how to give feedback based on the developmental level of the other person provides deeper knowledge and skills. Identifying the growth edges of these stages is very timely.

Truth be told, I was surprised to see so many positive reviews of this book. My colleagues and I were all asked to read it in preparation for a guest speaker whose presentation was centered around this topic. We all struggled to get through it, and commiserated over the fact that we found ourselves re-reading the same sentences and paragraphs over and over in an effort to make sense of them. The general consensus was the same: the book is very poorly written, and it’s hard to focus on and comprehend the content because you are so bogged down in the authors’ excessive use of transition words and catch phrases.The entire book is littered with awkwardly placed segues, including (but certainly not limited to): indeed; yet; of course; after all; in fact; in other words; moreover; put another way; put most simply; more specifically. My personal favorites are the phrases “for example,” which appears over 70 times in 187 pages (yes, I counted); and “for instance,” which appears approximately 60 times. Or the word “while,” which I counted NINETY-NINE times before I finally gave up. You could literally play a drinking game with this text (although that wouldn’t be a good idea, as you’d probably end up with alcohol poisoning before page 50).There is no excuse for a piece of literature so poorly written to actually be published. I’m left to wonder, where was the editor? (Was there one?) Who signs off on a book that contains BOTH “in addition” and “more specifically” TWICE on the same page (p. 13)? I have encountered high school students who can write more clearly, more succinctly, and with better command of the English language than these authors have done. The fact that someone has a Ph.D. doesn’t automatically make them a talented writer, and this book is a painful example of that.As far as the content, there is some value in it, but that’s assuming you can successfully slog through all of the unnecessary nonsense to actually get TO the content. The majority of the book consists of the authors repeating something they’ve already said in “another way” or “in other words.” They literally just rephrase the same information over…and over…and over…ad nauseum.Or how about page 112, when they describe “four pillar practices for growth” in a mere two paragraphs and then DON’T MENTION THEM AGAIN for the remainder of the book. Yet, they claim to have “detailed” these pillars (how much can you detail something in half a page?). A co-worker and I were hung up on trying to determine why they would choose to reference something they consider (and I quote) “powerful” and “compelling” so very briefly, with no direct connection to it elsewhere in the reading, either before or after page 112. What was the point? It’s quite confusing, considering how much time is devoted to regurgitating the same information on ways of knowing over and over again, that so little time and attention would be given to these “important” pillar practices.Furthermore, although the content itself isn’t BAD, it also isn’t anything new. Simply re-branding something that already exists doesn’t make it new. If you’ve been in education long enough, you’ve already encountered these same ideas in one way or another, though they were probably called something different. There is nothing earth-shattering to be learned in those 187 pages. Spoiler alert: not everyone likes to give or receive feedback in the same way, so in order for our feedback to be effective, we have to be aware of and sensitive to other individuals’ preferences. No, really? Seriously, one would hope that an experienced educator would have already figured this out without having to muddle through haphazard smattering of sentence extenders like "nevertheless," "inarguably," and "it is important."I truly believe that what took the authors almost 200 pages to discuss could be done in about half that, once you remove all the “fancy” transition words or the need to re-explain the same concept three different times within one paragraph. As far as educational leadership is concerned, considering that there are so many high quality and well-written pieces of literature out there, this book deserves a hard pass.

Interesting read. Really resonated with me.