Sunday, September 2, 2018

Dealing with Feedback as an Intern





By: Chong Sheau Ching

Producing an output for an office means that it is for publishing for all to see online or for a specific audience or reader, therefore, eHomemakers must continuously keep document quality (online or as direct document to send), at a high standard for supporters, sponsors, potential interns/volunteers/staff as they too evaluate eHomemakers through the document they see to decide if they will partner or join us.

Remember, every knowledge worker who cares about career growth and any partner organization who is involved with impact work wants to be with an organization with quality performance as its culture. So, when you are involved in quality work, the ‘karma’ comes back to you -- your name is either listed as a contributor/ writer, or the urls of the work done are listed in the performance evaluation for anyone requesting to know if you have done any quality work.

Although interns are used to owning up to the quality of university document or project (for example, ‘if I get 50/100 for this paper, it is my responsibility, I don’t care what happens after I receive my grade, this paper is just going to sit in my computer and no one else will read it!’), the work output in eHomemakers is ‘cared’ by others, so taking in feedback to make amendments is very important.

Receiving feedback also means that one has to amend an output till it is correct, presentable, professional and with intended impact. In the last round of any editing, it is usually the final presentation format that could lead to several polishing rounds if an intern makes the same mistakes over and over again such as inconsistency of punctuations, capital letter for first alphabet of a word in ‘title’, spacing, font type and size for titles and subtitles, numberings, etc.

Below are some pointers on what you can do to manage feedback to improve on content and presentation of any document:

i.         Understand truly the concept of self-improvement: One of the first step to be a knowledge worker is to cultivate willingness to learn.  Learning means improving on mistakes made, what more when your internship supervisor is willing to act as your coach, your ardent supporter. Take away the ego, stop defending your mistakes and insist that you are right while the office or supervisor is wrong. Be open to others’ points of view, so you can improve your skills, learn productive procedures and techniques and meet the expectations of those that manage you. Then you can avoid making the same mistakes again. Your greatest stride towards excellence is to overcome deficiencies and improve your intellectual ability.

ii.       Be patient: It is the norm in any office for a document to go around several times during editing between a team and the supervisor until it is deemed ‘perfect’ for publishing or for sending to the intended recipients especially videos or Prezi.


A common feeling towards ‘waiting’ time for supervisor’s feedback is that ‘why can’t people just reply today so I finish with this task’.  Remember, you are not doing assignments to hand in to professor, you are producing output for an office. The office is hectic with constant deadlines, the supervisor/s can be involved in meetings and other planned activities when your finished output arrives at her Inbox. Or she may be editing someone’s else work and so need the undivided attention. Besides, most of eHomemakers staff are teleworkers and may be doing so from other countries with time zone differences or that they have to meet their own deadlines, your waiting for their feedback can take several days. So learn to multi-task, work on a new task or amend another one which now has received all the feedback.
  1. Be professional in work attitude: Take a positive approach when receiving advice and view it as a learning experience.Do not get offended when ask to amend several rounds. Your time in the office is counted for your internship duration, so why be upset? You are involved in an international standard work!

Often new ideas surface after one reads a document or watch a video more than once. Also, small formatting mistakes maybe caught only after a supervisor or yourself see the document or video more than twice! Besides, due to computer settings like using different browsers in own laptops, the presentation format from you could look differently on a different computer, resulting in other viewers or readers seeing a less than professional presentation. So there has to be team work to discover why and make the adjustment.    

For videos, prezi and online presentations, accept the fact that there will be several rounds of feedback from team, supervisor/s, to other teleworkers in the project. In addition, every creative modification such as a new image or a new animation, or a slight storyline amendment from you may change the overall impact or the flow of the storyline and how the messages come across. After all, you are still learning how best to improve, so your willingness to accept feedback and change is part of an office work process.

Refrain from lashing out angrily, shouting or crying when given feedback on work output or office behaviors. Or simply accusing the supervisor or teammates of being rude to you when it is not true.

iv.      Give a reasonable deadline to those who are supposed to give you feedback: Write a polite email explaining the type of feedback required and a timeline to those who are supposed to give you feedback. Check with your supervisor about a reasonable time line.

v.        Organize the feedback you receive: Open a google doc with open access for people to jot their comments. Or move all the email feedback into a folder in email Inbox, so you can access all the feedback email from every one efficiently. This way, you can make a ‘summary document’ on ‘what to amend’ from all the feedback you receive – the pros, the cons of every amendment, and the justifications for the amendment. Discuss your ‘summary document’ with your supervisor before you make the amendment. When it comes time to edit, you can do it once and not feel overwhelmed by pieces of information coming your way at different time, leading to more confusion. This is especially true for video editing as rendering is involved.

vi.      Multi-task: Work on another task, clean your inbox or manage the work information you receive with proper filing, while waiting for a feedback round to complete its loop, learn to enjoy team work as you are no longer operating on your own as a student.

vii.    Believe in the ‘power of now’: If you do not understand a task or do not believe in doing it the way you are asked to, ask for clarification and present your stand logically and clearly to your supervisor. If it is still against your will, ask for another assignment. Clarify, enquire and justify to yourself why you are doing a particular task as soon as it is assigned to you, do not do it grudgingly, half-heartedly or unwillingly.


Training interns who have never worked before in an office to take constructive feedback has been one of the most difficult performance traits to groom for internship.
Impove yourself with these tips: