IW 132: InterpreTips: Give and Take - Feedback Debriefed

Oh YEAH?! I know you are, but what am I?

Feedback can be hard to take and even harder to give. Today let's talk about how, what, and when we should give feedback to our colleagues in our sign language interpreting teams.

What is feedback? What do we do with it? Why? All this in today's episode with me, Tim Curry.

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Transcript

IW 132: InterpreTips: Give and Take - Feedback Debriefed

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[ROCK INTRO MUSIC STARTS]

00:00:02 Tim [ONLY TIM SPEAKS IN THIS EPISODE]

Good morning, good evening, good afternoon. Wherever you are, this is the Interpreter's Workshop podcast. I'm Tim Curry, your host. Here we talk everything sign language interpreting the ins, the outs, the ups, the downs, the sideways of interpreting. If you're a student, a new interpreter, experienced interpreter, this is the place for you. If you want to know more, go to interpretersworkshop.com.

00:00:28 

Let's start talking... interpreting.

[ROCK INTRO MUSIC ENDS]

00:00:34

And now the quote of the day by J.R.R. Tolkien from the Lord of the Rings books.

00:00:42

“All we have to decide is what to do with the time that's given to us.”

00:00:49

As sign language interpreters, there are those best of times and worst of times.

00:00:55

When we are teaming with a colleague, usually we have a wonderful time, but sometimes that wonderful time I've said time way too much. Now again, sometimes…

00:01:08

Those wonderful times when we debrief, after the gig is over, we talk about it. We give and ask for feedback. Sometimes we get feedback when it's not asked for or we get the wrong kind of feedback.

00:01:26

What is feedback? How do we give it? How do we accept it?

00:01:31

And what do we do with it? We all need to be fed. But what we put in and what we get out may be two different things.

00:01:41

Let's talk about that today. Debriefing with a team.

00:01:45

Let's get started.

[SHORT TRANSITION MUSIC]

00:01:52

Ultimately, we have to decide how we're going to use our time before, during and after a gig. After a gig is usually a time for a team to debrief, to discuss everything that happened in the assignment. What went well, what did not.

00:02:10

So what is feedback? Feedback is information given to help improve performance.

00:02:18

But I think it's more than that. I think it's also to create a connection between the team members, between the colleagues, to have that understanding that not only are we giving advice or giving our opinions or giving evidence to help improve skills or overall performance, but we're also Helping to create confidence in each other and as a team. But how does this start?

00:02:46

It has to start first at the beginning when you became a team for this assignment. For this gig you had to develop trust. You had to trust each other enough to be able to talk about some sensitive topics and the actual performance that you are both doing.

00:03:07

Trust is the main thing. Being able to talk about anything, telling each other what you need in a teaming situation, what strengths and weaknesses you have, what you may be working on in your skill set.

00:03:21

And then at the end of the gig, if you have decided to make time for a debriefing, you need to think, how much time do we have? Are either of us going to another gig? Are we both so exhausted that we need to have it short now and schedule a time later to discuss it?

00:03:39

The best debriefings, I feel are right after a gig, even if the debrief is brief.

00:03:48

How do you do that? What do you discuss? Well, you have to have the trust and the understanding that you will debrief. And what that debrief session will look like. How much detail do you want to go into? And it has to be mutual. So, know what to ask.

00:04:04

And ask them what they want you to give some of the major things that every debrief needs to have is one: Were the goals of this assignment met? The overall goal, the intentions for this gig were they met?

00:04:23

And then you can ask, why do you say they were met?

00:04:27

And look at the details that accomplished that goal. How did you meet the intentions of the speakers or the moment of that discussion? What were the causes that allowed you to achieve that goal? What were the bumps? What were the things that weren't quite how you expected them to be?

00:04:48

And then of course, why? Why did those undesirable results happen? Did you resolve them during that moment? How did you resolve them? Was that the best way to resolve it?

00:05:01

How could you avoid some of these bumps in the future? What did you need? What resources did you need? What controls were there available to you, and how was the teamwork? How did you work well together? Was it that connection between the two of you that you had set up prior to the gig?

00:05:22

Did that help resolve any of these issues or help actually achieve the goal? What made the interpretation smooth and clear?

00:05:33

So, ask in the beginning when you get together for a gig, ask them if they will have time for a debrief. What kind of feedback do they wish for? What kind of feedback do you want? So that's debriefing how the team worked and the overall performance for this gig.

00:05:53

Was the goal achieved?

[SHORT TRANSITION MUSIC]

00:05:58

Now let's look a little bit at the individual questions that you should ask each other would be first ask direct questions. Was the interpreter’s look pleasant or easy to watch? Was it hard to watch when they were signing or their facial expressions just too much? Something about the way they were moving was bothering. Or was it a nice smooth rendition, an easy way to watch?

00:06:27

Just like a spoken language interpreter or a speaker, sometimes they have a pleasant voice, a pleasant manner, how they discuss how they attach points to each other, all of that is an easy way to listen to them. As an interpreter, were you also meeting those pleasant points.

00:06:46

And of course, overall was your interpretation clear? Did it have pauses according to what the speaker was doing?

00:06:55

Did it match what the speaker was intending? Did you adjust for those moments when the interpretation was difficult, and yet you still managed to give a clear interpretation with that same meaning and intention?

00:07:11

And before you give feedback to the other, ask them what they are looking for. How much feedback do they want? Maybe they only want a little bit, just the overall they want to know if they were clear, and the interpretation was as close to equivalency as possible.

00:07:31

This is what builds confidence.

00:07:34

But you can offer more if you have more feedback. That is a little more detailed or a little bit more exact, even down to a sign that they were using. Or perhaps the way they were expressing something. Or maybe they gave too much of the intention and made it a little different than what the speaker intended.

00:07:55

How much more do they want? So, ask that. Say what you noticed about the interpretation, ask why they did a certain thing.

00:08:04

If something didn't feel right to you or you notice something that was different than what you would have done, ask them why they did that, what they were thinking at that time. ‘Cause then it will become clearer for you and for them what was really going on during that moment. And maybe your perception will change and understand what it was like to be in that moment as the interpreter.

00:08:28

Talk about the causes, the responses, the reasons behind different parts of the interpretation. We can also look at how the team worked professionally with those soft skills when they're interacting with the participants, the speakers, all of the people in the room.

00:08:48

Did we fit the situation professionally and as part of the group? Did we make people comfortable with us being there or were we a part of the tension and why?

00:09:00

How did we make others comfortable with us being there? What was it about our demeanor, our manner, our introductions, our explanations, our interactions, all of those things together… What did we do that was good? It's all about performance versus expectations. Performance in the interpretation process, performance as the professional using soft skills versus the expectations of the participants, the speaker, the audience, the other professionals in the room.

00:09:33

And the feedback can be given based on opinions or judgments or based on evidence of what was seen. We need to give clear evidence or make it clear that this is my opinion. This is how I feel because blah blah blah. This is the way I was taught. This is the way I was told by a participant.

00:09:55

Those opinions or evidence needs to be shown in a way with the why with the cause. What's behind those opinions? What's behind the evidence? How does it really connect?

[ROCK TRANSITION MUSIC STARTS]

00:10:12

What's the why of this podcast? Well, of course it's sharing the passion of our profession, and behind that is your support. Click on the links in the show notes to Buy Me A Coffee to keep the podcast going. Thank you. Now let's go back.

[ROCK TRANSITION MUSIC ENDS]

00:10:28

In reality when we're giving feedback, the more experienced we are with our teammate, the less debriefing we tend to do. Sometimes we wrap it up. So yeah, that was good. No, I have no complaints. That was really good. Because we know overall the interpretation was clear. The intentions were met. Then there's nothing to be said.

00:10:49

But maybe there is, maybe we can go deeper. Maybe we should go deeper and talk about why was it so good? Why were the intentions met? Why was the interpretation clear?

00:11:03

And point out the things that we are doing as they are doing and as a team, what we are doing. And reinforce those points so that we know these are important to remember, to be able to teach the next generation.

00:11:18

This is what works for me, for others that I've worked with.

00:11:21

Because if we can't explain what it is that was good, then we might forget and not realize that we are doing them because we've done them so often. It's just automatic. But once we go back and see that we can do these things.

00:11:41

It builds our confidence and we realize we really do do a lot.

[SHORT TRANSITION MUSIC]

00:11:51

In the beginning, as interpreters, when we're first teaming with someone or first starting out our journey as an interpreter, we tend to look at the signs that we used correctly or incorrectly, or we made them incorrectly. We moved them incorrectly; we gave the wrong facial expression.

00:12:11

And we look at those details of the language rather than the interpretation, and sometimes that can be good and useful in the moment. But for me that's very superficial. It's just the drop of feedback in a large pond of what we can actually analyze.

00:12:29

If there is a sign being used that's incorrect and we have to talk about it afterwards, that means we didn't work as a team during the assignment to correct such small mistakes that should have been given during the interpreting assignment, we need to expand and develop as an interpreter. As someone who can support a colleague from the surface level to the deeper levels and analyze the interpretation.

00:12:56

And analyze the overall goals, analyze the overall performance as a team and as soft skilled professionals to get to the meat of the matter. To look at all angles and aspects of what we should do as an interpreter. It will make us think more about these details, and realize that we are better than we think we are and realize that we need to do better than we are doing. But let's point out the obvious. We should not be so critical of our colleagues that we're putting them off…

00:13:31

…which means we're insulting them. We're putting them down, being condescending, telling them that they're wrong, that this is the better way, and you must do it this way. We need to be more professional and use our soft skills in a way that promotes teamwork, promotes camaraderie and professional friendship.

00:13:53

Respect for each other’s skills, no matter where we are, respect for the fact that each of us have bad days. That's why we're in a team to support one another.

00:14:04

Again, trust has to be there to be able to give feedback in a way that matches what you've already talked about before the gig to give the feedback that was actually asked not to throw out feedback that's based on your perspective only, that doesn't connect with what your team asked you to give them.

00:14:25

If you do have something extra to add, you can say there is something I would like to discuss, but it doesn't truly affect our performance today, but it's something I think we should look at. It may be something just to improve both of your skills on a higher level, or maybe a linguistic level that you hadn't thought of before or that your team hasn't thought of before. But usually such a deep analysis is not needed or intended to be pursued at the end of a gig.

00:14:57

At the end of the gig, you need to focus only on the gig itself. Remember, we have to decide together as a team how you're going to work and how you're going to use the time that you have.

[SHORT TRANSITION MUSIC]

00:15:14

Now, how do you decide how to use the time that you have? After the gig you've debriefed with your team; you have to have time for yourself to analyze this feedback. How do you take it? Well, during your debriefing try to keep an open mind and understand that you've asked for this, and they've asked for this.

00:15:36

And you're trying to help each other support each other. Hopefully it's being given to you with the intention of helping both of you develop. Feedback is not necessarily a criticism. Saying that you are a bad interpreter. It's saying there are things that we need to look at to improve the overall profession and the individual professionals.

00:15:59

With that said, take the feedback with you, analyze it later, make sure you have some recorded form of this feedback. Write it down on paper, record it, but go past the surface level of the feedback.

00:16:14

And whether or not your team asked you why you do this or why you didn't do this, how you thought of doing this, what you were thinking when you were doing this, if they didn't ask you, you need to ask yourself, what was it that caused me to do this? What decision did I make or what resources did I use to handle this dilemma or this moment in the interpretation?

00:16:41

Look at it in that way. What's behind what you did? How did you get this wonderful performance? Did you bring something from your experiences interpreting or from your plethora of schemata that you have from your life? Was it from a workshop? All of those details will help you remember why you did it.

00:17:02

And it will help you then think of how you can use it more often or use it in new ways. Think about the difficulties you had. Why was it difficult? What resource were you lacking? What controls did you need for that demand?

00:17:19

And did you need something else from the team? Did you forget to prepare for something? All of those things will help you improve for the next gig.

00:17:29

The best question to ask yourself is why?

00:17:33

And also, the best question to ask your teammate. What caused that chain of decisions to get you to that point?

00:17:41

And both of you can then learn from that. Maybe they needed you to feed them something. Maybe they didn't realize they needed something to be given to them to help them with that demand, but overall realize that feedback is a way for us to come back, to grow and to improve not just ourselves, but the next person that we are teaming with.

[SHORT TRANSITION MUSIC]

[ROCK EXIT MUSIC STARTS]

00:18:11

Well, if you have any feedback on my feedback episode, send me a voicemail and e-mail. Let me know what the feedback is. So let's look back on feedback. How to give it, how to accept it, and what you do with it. Remember, feedback is about performance versus expectations.

00:18:33

What do we expect as a team will happen during the assignment?

00:18:39

What are the goals of this assignment? What are the goals of each individual participating in this discourse? Feedback can be given as your opinion or based on evidence that you see, and the feedback should be given with why ask rather than tell.

00:18:58

Share what you noticed about the interpretation or the performance of the team and ask why this happened. What was it that made this good?

00:19:07

How did we fix those little hiccups? Those bumps? What would we do differently? But overall, remember, you must trust each other. You must be able to open up and give honest and direct communication with each other, because we're all there.

00:19:27

We're all responsible for the same thing. The goals of that situation. So, until next time, make sure you decide how you're going to use the time that you're given and keep calm. Keep interpreting the feedback. I'll see you next week. Take care now.

[ROCK EXIT MUSIC ENDS AT 00:20:22]