Mom: “That’s not good….you fell off your bike and got hurt. You’re not supposed to do that.”
Dad: “You didn’t even make it to the trees. You failed at your first family bike ride.”
It doesn’t seem right, does it? That’s because parents are supposed to help, guide, teach, and encourage. They’re supposed to help you learn how to do your best. And most of us, when we think about the best teachers we’ve had, remember people who also helped, guided, taught, and encouraged us.
Judging is the opposite of that.
What we’re really talking about, in other words, is evaluation and assessment. The two terms are often conflated, especially within education. We’d like to suggest (as we’ve been doing for 25 years or so) that there is a meaningful difference between the two and that understanding that difference opens a world of possibilities:
While evaluation is used to judge the quality of a current performance against a set standard, the main purpose of assessment is to provide feedback that helps a person improve the quality of a future performance.
The first take was evaluation. Let’s try assessment:
Mom: “Wow…that was quite a spill. It looked like your foot slipped off the pedal when you tried to stop. Are you OK?”
Dad: “It’s easy to let your feet slip off the pedals when you’re just coasting, but that can make it hard to put your feet back on them to stop. Would you like me to jog beside you while you practice coasting then stopping?”
Notice that there’s no empty praise here…and no hint of condescension. What there is, though, is empathy, understanding, a suggestion for how to improve, and an offer to help the improvement happen. If we want to see improvement, whether in others or ourselves, we’ve got to decide to help instead of judge.
In this spirit, we’re happy to offer a FREE tool for assessing performance (including, but not limited to, riding a bike). The form contains all the information needed for even a complete novice to begin discovering and benefiting from using assessment to help improve performance.
Assessment-based feedback is the kind that helps the most…even when we’re all grown up.
