Asking for feedback

Hello, welcome to this latest episode of the complete interpreter. The podcast from me, Sophie Luel and Smith, otherwise known as the interpreting coach. This is a podcast where I bring you all things, interpreting skills, mindset, some thoughts about language and perhaps one day marketing as well. And why have I called it the complete interpreter? Well, because I think there's more to you than just being an interpreting machine or a translation machine. And that's why I try to produce what I like to think of as holistic CPD. Right, what's on the menu today? Well, I have a table somewhere on my computer where I have a list of suggestions that people have made for the website, for the website, for the podcast. And today I want to address a suggestion made by Ivelina. Ivelina says it would be great to hear tips on ways to ask for feedback. I thought that was an interesting one that I could probably find something to say about feedback. So today I am going to talk about asking for feedback and then receiving that feedback. I'm not going to talk about giving constructive feedback, although that is definitely something that could be addressed in a whole podcast or probably several. Because there are ways and ways of giving feedback as I'm sure you know if you've received feedback ever in your life. I'm sure you've had the kind of feedback that you considered constructive and the kind of feedback that you considered frankly not particularly helpful or unpleasant. I think sometimes we forget actually what the point is of feedback and we dread receiving feedback or we see it as an opportunity to fail or as a criticism. And it's not supposed to be that. So why might you ask for feedback, even if for example if you're an interpreting student you might be getting feedback on your performance every single day. So why would you go and ask for more? Well sometimes feedback is an opportunity to get an outside perspective. Perhaps if you're always receiving feedback from the same people on your interpreting course, from the same tutor or from the same classmates, it can be good to have an outside perspective. Sometimes it's a way to check where you stand so that you can see how much ground you've covered and how much remains to be done. Feedback can be a good way to get a better understanding of the expectations at your interpreting school for example or your employers expectations or your clients expectations depending how you're looking at things. For example if you're an interpreting student you might want to ask for some feedback on your performance with as a benchmark the exam standard so that you can understand whether you're on the right track to pass that exam or not and what you need to change. Feedback can be a way to help you follow the style and the standards of the interpreting course that you're on or of your workplace. And of course it's a way it's an opportunity to improve. Feedback is an opportunity for professional development and that I think we know in the back of our minds but as I said we sometimes forget because because we dread the feedback or we think the feedback is unfair or it's negative or we filter it through our own negative perceptions of our performance. So feedback is a very useful thing and you might go looking for feedback at particular times in your professional development. I think a classic time to go looking for feedback is when you're a novice at something and I don't just mean you're a beginner at interpreting you're at interpreting school but for example even when you're a graduate when you have been interpreting for several years perhaps you might seek feedback when you've added a new language for example or when you're working in a new setting or for a new client to see if you're meeting expectations. You may go looking for feedback if you've actually just received some feedback that you perceive as negative and a bit like going to the doctors to get a second opinion at that point maybe you want to go and ask several other people for some feedback so that you can try to understand what's going on and whether you really need to do something about it you might ask for feedback if you feel a bit stuck if you think you've reached a plateau you don't quite know where to go next with your development what you should do to continue progressing or whether you should move in a different direction and you might ask for feedback if you have an exam coming up for example and you want to know exactly what you can do to maximize your chances of getting a good grade or if you have an assignment coming up and you want to know if there are specific areas of your work of your performance that you should be focusing on. So there are lots of circumstances in which I can imagine deliberately asking for feedback and maybe you have never done that and deliberately asked for feedback. I have I'm going to I'm going to give you two examples one of them is very recent and one of them is from the more dim and distant past. Back in the days when I used to do quite a lot more interpreting for the European institutions they had a system and I'm sure they still do of quality control where your staff colleagues would write reports on you and they had to write a certain number of reports on you every couple of years I can't remember the exact frequency but you had to have 3U reports every whatever it was every year every two years. This is something that a lot of the freelance interpreters dreaded because it was an extra layer of stress and you felt as if suddenly the relaxed atmosphere that you normally enjoyed in the booth with your colleagues was completely shot to pieces because you were nervous knowing that somebody was listening to you and then reporting on you and what if you missed a word or what if you mangled the German so it tended to be very stressful and to compound that I wasn't working very much at the time so I wasn't in Brussels 15 days out of every 20. I would travel there every I don't know every couple of months and sometimes I had longer breaks because my children were very young so I might have a break of four months or six months typically what would happen is I would then turn up and on day one of my contracts somebody would be writing a report on me even though I hadn't done simultaneous for six months that was enormously stressful and what I took to doing to to reduce my own stress levels to get it over with and to control the narrative a little bit I suppose you could say is that when I was working with a colleague who had a compatible language combination to mine I would actually ask them for some feedback and I would ask if they'd be willing to write a report and that way I didn't feel like I was being hijacked it meant that I guess I was being proactive and I preferred that but there you are I'm a control freak so that was one of the ways in which I asked for feedback from colleagues but another request for feedback that I made is much more recent it was just a few weeks ago when I was on an assignment and I worked with the same colleague for several days working a little bit into my A language but also quite a lot into my B language and I asked her for feedback because she is a native speaker of my B language a B language that I don't use very often and I thought it would be good thing to get some advice see where she thought I could make improvements and that was that was quite nice actually it has to be said I got on with her very well and I found her very supportive and helpful colleague and I hope that I was the same but there you go two two examples of deliberately soliciting feedback if you're going to ask for feedback you have to be clear on what you hope to gain from it and you have to understand that you might like what you hear it might be very flattering and you might get lots of positive comments about your performance you might also not like what you hear maybe you'll hear something unexpected about your performance or your behavior at work maybe you think you're doing pretty well in some areas and and you hear something that runs counter to that so you have to be clear about whether you're looking for reassurance or validation or whether you're looking for productive feedback and don't get me wrong I think we all of us sometimes look for that reassurance or validation how many times have you been in the booth and heard your colleague say oh did I get that right was that okay I found that really difficult was it okay and maybe you've done it yourself and I certainly have said something like oh wow I thought that speaker was really difficult really fast and deep down or not very deep down when we say that kind of thing I think we're really hoping that our colleague will go oh no you did fine or it was fine or I would have struggled just as much as you so basically we're looking for some reassurance then which is not the same as productive objective feedback be clear then on what you hope to gain and if you really are looking for productive feedback again you might be looking for different things you might be looking for an analysis of your performance as a sort of benchmarking exercise to see where you stand or you might be looking for advice something more akin to coaching where someone can give you some tips about what kind of exercises you could do to improve let's say your salami technique or your public speaking skills or what have you be clear then about what you hope to get out of this feedback if you can ask the right person now you can't always choose who you're going to ask for feedback because maybe there aren't many people many colleagues listening to you interpret that you could ask for feedback or maybe you're an interpreting student and you only have three tutors and you want feedback specifically from a tutor and there aren't that many that you can ask for feedback but if you do have a choice have a little think about who you want to ask for feedback again are you just looking for an ego boost or are you going to ask someone who's likely to just say I thought it was really good in a vague sort of way which is not particularly helpful pick the right person I think this is a bit like sharing a problem with a friend sometimes you have to choose the friend that you talk to very carefully because I'm sure in your friend group you have people who react in very different ways if you share a problem with them some of them will be problem solvers and so they'll want to give you advice and I'll go have you tried this have you thought of this have you thought of that that could be very helpful or it could not be helpful if what you really want to do is just vent and have someone give you some sympathy and go wow I totally understand how you feel wow that must have been really hard so in the same way as you have to pick which friend to go and talk to about a problem sometimes it's a really good idea to think carefully about who you want to ask for feedback when I was an interpreting student I tried to ask for feedback from people whose whose performance or attitude I respected or admired because then I was hoping to learn from them let's be honest here and so if I respected and admired their performance their attitude their work ethic or whatever it was the way they organized their time then I was hoping to learn from them then you have to ask the right questions sometimes a yes or no question can work if you're looking for a quick sort of check-in of where do I stand am I in the right place so a quick yes or no of do you think that that would meet the standard for the exam I'm taking in four weeks or can you see any improvement in my public speaking skills or whatever it might be can work but a lot of the time open-ended questions are more useful they enlist it more information and that's what you're going to be asking if you're looking for a kind of coaching relationship if you're looking for tips and advice when you have received your feedback have a think about how you want to record that feedback are you just going to try and remember it if it's pretty short or if it's something more detailed are you going to write it down somewhere or even I actually often suggest to interpreting students that they literally record the feedback I mean on their mobile phone or with a digital recording device or something like that because if you're getting detailed feedback about your performance then it can be difficult sometimes to see the wood for the trees when you're hearing that feedback it can be difficult to see whether there's a big picture there an overall vision of what you should do to improve whether you need to change your strategy what the most important thing is for you to do and sometimes I think when you're listening to feedback off the cuff like that and it's very detailed it can be difficult not to filter it through your own perceptions your own feelings and emotions about yourself for example if you're a perfectionist type you're quite likely to hear all the negatives in the feedback and not necessarily hear or pay attention to the positives so you can get a really unbalanced picture of how well you're doing compared to whatever standard it is you're trying to reach for example your tutor if you're a student might be giving you detailed feedback but on some quite minor points and you may think that this is a big deal and you perform really badly whereas in fact you interpreted very successfully but there are just some small points that you need to fine tune and sometimes recording the feedback can help you see the wood for the trees I even have coaching clients who ask me to hit record on Zoom so that they can go back and listen not just to their own performance but also to the feedback and then then you need to make a plan for what to do with this feedback it might be that what you do with it is just go okay that was all very positive sounds like I'm doing fine and that's it her up go out and have a beer and a pizza celebrate and come back the next day and do some more practice or some more interpreting but if you've heard feedback that suggests that there are areas that you could improve on then you need to give some kind of follow up to the feedback otherwise what's the point and that follow up may be that you ask for more clarification that you need more feedback or more information from the same person or from someone else or it could mean that you make your little action plan for how to address the points that have come up that action plan might simply be that you're going to redo that particular practice speech incorporating the suggestions for improvements or it might be something much bigger it might be that you need to work on your technique or improve a sea language which would involve going on a language course or what have you so obviously that will depend entirely on what you've been receiving the feedback on and whether it was a small thing like one practice speech or a bigger thing right would you believe that was just the that was just the pre-amble for asking for feedback because I want to be really specific for a minute now and I also want to share my experience as someone who's been an interpreter trainer for 20 years now when I give feedback to students there are some some things that they do or say that make it much easier and more pleasant for me and probably for them as well and that put me in the right kind of mood and frame of mind and then there are some things that people do when they receive feedback that I find irritating I'm being really honest here and if I get irritated then that probably isn't going to help me give the best feedback that I can by best feedback I don't mean all positive feedback I just mean the most productive the most constructive feedback so this is just advice from me take it or leave it but I think that you are more likely to get useful feedback and you're more likely to have a positive atmosphere and for the whole thing to be a pleasant experience if you follow these tips the first tip I would give you particularly if you're an interpreting student is not to start by complaining what I mean is this I can remember a year when I was teaching at Leeds University and one day one of the students put a hand up and she said how are we supposed to practice outside of class we have an exam coming up and we don't know what we're supposed to be doing to work on particular skills or how to work for the exams she further irritated me by saying when I was at Cambridge University last year and we handled in essays the tutors would give us detailed guidance on how we could improve our mark so that if they'd given us a two one oh you have to understand the British University marking system to understand that so the top mark would be a first the next down would be a two one and then a two two and then a third so she said if we got the equivalent of a two one on this essay they would then give us detailed guidance on what exactly to do and what exactly to improve so that we could get a first next time around so this was how she began her request for help basically and tips and I found this irritating for many reasons many reasons but I'll stick to just one which is that this set of students had been given tons of advice on how they could prepare for the exam they had marking criteria that they could look at at any time in their student handbook so they could see exactly what the the trainers were looking for we sometimes run mocks where the tutors would listen to a student's performance and then mark it according to the marking criteria and explain their reasoning and go well I gave you 56% for your presentation skills because such and such but I would have given you in the 60s for the content because you manage to convey all the main ideas blah blah blah so we sometimes had these mocks where the students could hear exactly what our expectations were but above all I was irritated by a suggestion that they hadn't had any advice on what exercises to do outside of class and how to practice their skills because every day in class they got feedback and every day hopefully depending on the tutor the feedback would not simply be that was good or that was bad but you would have been more successful in that speech if you had used more salami technique for example and one way that you can practice salami technique is to do XYZ so I felt that they had received heaps of advice and lots of suggestions on all sorts of different exercises that they could do outside of class to work on their sea language their mother tongue their the register vocabulary public speaking skills salami technique absolutely everything so she put me in a bad mood before before we even began by complaining about information that she felt she had not received and I felt that she did here I think discretion is the better the better I was going to say the better form of valor that can't be right discretion well there you go I'm having a senior moment and I can't remember the idiom discretion is the better part of valor and so my advice would be even if you are disappointed with the information you've received so far or you think it's unfair or you don't think you've had what you need maybe don't lead with that and just ask for what you need without complaining about what you haven't received it may be that the person that you're talking to is not responsible for that all that they disagree that you didn't receive the information or that they think you could have found the information out by yourself in the first place and if you complain about it they might if they're like me be less likely to and to be well disposed towards you or maybe that's just me and and I shouldn't I shouldn't make it so obvious that sometimes I'm petty minded so don't complain and secondly show that you're putting in the work show that you're putting in the work because I think no tutor wants to feel as if you're asking to be spoon fed they want to feel as if you are working hard and that you are being independent you've put some effort in already but maybe you just can't quite do everything that you need to do by yourself so if you can make it obvious that you're putting in the work for example you might say I was reading Andy Gilles' book about consecutive note-taking and he says to do this but I'm struggling with it so could you give me some exercises to improve note-taking links when I'm doing consecutive third point be specific in your question don't just say could you give me some feedback please remember that you you're hoping to gain something from this and that might be tips for how you can improve a particular aspect of your interpreting or it might be to better understand the expectations of the university so for example to better understand the marking criteria or what will be expected at the exam be specific therefore with your questions and my final tip in this section is you might want to ask for the feedback in advance by that I mean give your tutor and again I'm talking here really about an interpreter trainer an opportunity to listen to your performance while focusing on the point that you want feedback on because that way they can listen differently and instead of trying to listen to your performance as a whole and give you feedback on everything or however it is that they normally give you feedback they can focus specifically on the point that you are interested in for example you might say to them at the moment I am focusing on trying to avoid saying um could you let me know please if I was successful that was a very simple example but maybe you could say something like at the moment I'm focusing on making better eye contact and being more communicative and consecutive so I'd be really grateful if you could just give me feedback on that today or perhaps you might say I'm trying to improve my register in my B language could you focus on expression in the target language please when you give me feedback today and trainers should be open to that in fact you might find if you're an interpreting course that your trainers set a specific objective for each class and that's a good thing to do because then they can give you feedback on that objective as opposed to giving you feedback on everything at every class and then it becomes difficult to see whether you're making progress towards those objectives I think most trainers probably in the early days of either consecutive or simultaneous will set an objective for example in the early days of simultaneous that objective may be finish every sentence and make sense say things that are grammatically correct but later on in the semester I think sometimes that approach of having one specific objective per class disappears or maybe your tutors have simply never done that but you can precipitate that by saying to a tutor at the beginning of the class this is what I am working on this week so please could you give me feedback on this and I think I would guess most trainers would be open to that okay um ways that you can ways that you can ask for feedback then well if you're a student you can do it in person or you might even want to write an email to a tutor it depends whether it's a specific point or something broader if it's something like how do you think I should prepare for the upcoming exam bearing in mind my strengths and weaknesses maybe you want to send them an email and then that gives them a chance to think about it and talk to you either in person or respond by email if you're looking for an analysis of your performance here as I said you could focus on a specific objective or you could ask a simple question like do you think that I meet the standard for this time of the year I would say a typical example of of this is the many students who said to me do you think this would pass the exam and unfortunately very often the answer would be er I'm not sure or it depends but sometimes it's very clear and I've been able to say to students yes I think that would pass or no I think that would not pass and again there you have to be very clear that if you're going to ask for feedback you have to be prepared to hear the answer if you're looking for advice from a trainer then you might say something like in your experience what exercises are most useful for working on split attention or can you suggest any exercises to help me improve my salami technique do you have any good exercises for practicing my digalash if you're in in the workplace I think you're more likely to be asking for feedback on the output and receiving feedback on the output whereas I think if you're an interpreting student you may also be asking questions about and getting feedback on technique you're interpreting technique personally I think you're probably less likely to get that from a colleague or a boss or a client in the workplace I think they're less likely to be talking to you about digalash or salami technique or anything like that unless you I don't know specifically ask them for that and they have experience as an interpreter trainer but I think that's less likely as I was saying earlier it's easiest probably to ask for feedback at work if you are new to something if it's the first time that you're working for that particular client or for that interpreter coordinator if you have just added new language if you're working in a new setting then I think it's relatively straightforward to say to your colleague in the booth or the person who's offered you the assignment if they're hearing you interpret this is the first time that I've done this kind of work or I'm not very experienced with this kind of work do you have any feedback or do you have any tips to give me obviously be careful who you ask because you also don't want to make people lose confidence in you or give the impression that you're not up to the task so I think that you know that there is a delicate balance here and you have to be careful who you ask for feedback and how you ask but certainly in my experience at the English unit for example at the European Commission in Brussels when I've worked with newcomers recent graduates sometimes they have said I've not been here very long I'm on the newcomer's scheme do you have any feedback for me and I think that's that's perfectly legitimate so if you're in that position why not ask a senior colleague or not senior just a colleague if they have any feedback or tips by saying I've not been working very long or I haven't been working for the institutions long I haven't been doing this type of assignment for very long do you have any tips do you have any feedback you can perhaps also ask them specifically how do you deal with it when a speaker does XYZ when the speakers are reading out their documents like that what do you find is the best way to XYZ is there anything in particular you think I should focus on so I think those are questions that you could legitimately ask and even if you're not a beginner you can ask for feedback I was telling you about my assignment recently with a with a colleague who was a native speaker of my B language this colleague was 20 years older than me and she said I asked her for feedback and she gave me some feedback and then she said by the way if you have any feedback for me I'd really love to hear it because there's always something to learn and we can always grow and improve as interpreters and I love that attitude with which I totally agree so you can certainly ask for advice in that way and finally if you were recruited for a particular assignment by a fellow interpreter why not when you send them your invoice or you write to them after the assignment to thank them for giving you the work why not say I hope that my work was to the client satisfaction if you have any feedback any pointers that you would like to share with me then I would welcome hearing them time is marching on so what I want to finish with is a section on how to receive feedback I think this is extremely important and I think it's probably not emphasised enough I've been on many courses I've taught at universities where the students are shown or told how to give constructive feedback to one another peer feedback or there's a whole session on it there's this brainstorming and a discussion about what kind of feedback is useful and what kind of feedback is less useful I think that's a really good thing to do and I've done it with my students myself but if I run a session on giving constructive feedback I always always include something about how to receive feedback because feedback is a two-way process it's not it doesn't just flow in one direction actually I didn't express that well at all it does flow in one direction I guess one person gives the feedback but the other person also receives the feedback and the way that you receive the feedback can make the whole experience helpful pleasant or not in the same way that the way that someone gives the feedback can make it productive pleasant useful memorable or traumatic so I think it's really important to learn how to receive feedback and that can take a while it is a journey to learn how to take feedback without I guess being hurt by it or offended by it or finding that it's unfair or taking it personally remember what the purpose of feedback is generally speaking the feedback is supposed to help you improve it's an opportunity for professional development for you and the person giving you the feedback especially if you've asked for it is one has to assume also giving you that feedback to help you improve that being the case here are a few tips for receiving feedback in a constructive way first of all try not to be defensive this is something I get a lot from interpreting students sometimes I'll give some feedback and after virtually every sentence the student comes back and goes oh well I did that because this I did that because this oh that's because I didn't understand that or I didn't sleep well last night or I'm tired or the dog at my homework and you see what I mean there's an excuse for everything now I understand that there can be reasons explaining poor performance or things that went wrong when you're interpreting of course there are reasons but the feedback that you're getting is a legitimate evaluation of your work from someone let's call them the client in the sense the person who was listening to you interpret regardless of the reasons why you said what you said that opinion that evaluation from the client is legitimate it is their opinion you're not going to change it by giving all your reasons or excuses so give them a chance to tell you what their impression was and what their perception was afterwards you can have a conversation about the reasons but in the first instance just listen for a minute with an open mind to what their impression of your work was try to set your ego aside for a minute and don't see it as a failure if they say things that you consider to be negative or if they don't say wholly positive things it's not about passing or failing it's an opportunity to learn feedback as a gift because that's how you learn what people think of your performance and that's how you learn how you can improve your performance so just for a minute try not to be defensive or argumentative and just listen to what the person is saying assume good intentions on their part even if they're expressing it in a way that you don't particularly like or that you think is unfair or mean hopefully that will never happen to you but even if that's the case try and remember that the form the way that they're expressing this feedback is one thing but the content is another and if you can set aside the form if you don't like the form and listen to the content see if you can gain some useful insights from what they're saying and don't don't argue initially afterwards you may or may not be able to have a conversation with that person it depends if that person is your boss or your peer or your tutor or your student it depends who they are and what kind of relationship you have with them along the same lines make sure that you separate your performance from your identity what you are receiving or what you should be receiving is feedback on your performance it's a snapshot of what happened perhaps that day or in those five minutes where you gave a consecutive speech or that week if you spent a week on an assignment with one person it's a snapshot but it's not you as a person it doesn't say anything about your identity whether you're a good person a bad person it doesn't even say whether you're a good interpreter or a bad interpreter the feedback is about your performance it tells you whether you performed well according to a certain benchmark and you need to understand what that benchmark is or whether your performance did not meet the standard on this occasion it's really important to differentiate between those two things because performance is something that you can work on improve but identity is is you and if you take things personally they can be very hurtful whereas if you view this as an opportunity to learn and to improve your performance that can give you a very different feeling about the feedback and you'll see from some of the words that I'm using the time advising a growth mindset when it comes to receiving feedback instead of viewing feedback as an opportunity to be criticised to fail instead of thinking when you receive negative feedback in inverted commas instead of thinking that this is so hard I can't do it I'm doing badly I'm bad at figures I'm a bad interpreter instead think to yourselves what strategies can I implement you may even want to ask the person giving you feedback what strategies can you implement what can you do differently you may be saying to yourself okay this is going to take time and effort to improve but I will get the help that I need maybe I need extra help maybe I need to do more practice in a group maybe I need to do some reading of interpreting theory books maybe I need to apply a different strategy when the speaker is really fast and dense and that's a growth mindset remember to record the feedback in some form write it down or actually record it using your mobile phone or whatever that might be and the reason why we record it is so that we can reflect on it have a think about what your plan is or maybe use it as an opportunity to see how much progress you're making for example if you keep a record of the feedback after every speech that you do in class if you're a student then you can look back over that feedback and see whether you're making improvements maybe at the beginning of the semester all your feedback is you don't make enough eye contact there are too many arms and ears a lot of stuff about public speaking skills and maybe four weeks later none of your feedback is about that why because you've improved and my last tip and I think this is a really important one about receiving feedback is that at the end of the day you're an adult it's up to you to decide whether to take that feedback on board or not you give the person who is giving feedback the courtesy of listening to them and to their impressions to what they have to say but you might disagree with that feedback in the end and that's your prerogative you don't have to take it on board you can go away after your interpreting class or whatever it was and think to yourself you know what I totally disagree with that feedback I think on this occasion the trainer got it wrong and so I'm not going to accept that feedback I'm not going to take it on board and I am not going to follow up on it or do anything about it because I disagree and that's 100% your prerogative to decide whether you want to accept the feedback or reject it as being whatever it is irrelevant biased unfair short-sighted I don't know hopefully you won't get feedback like that but it does happen it even happens when the person giving the feedback has the best of intentions maybe I should have made up a word for person giving feedback because it's become quite long-winded the feedback giver the feedbacker that can't be right okay I've spoken for long enough and I will wrap up by saying once more feedback is a gift I'll tell you something interesting at least university at the end of the year students are given a form to fill in where they get a chance to give their feedback on the course and actually I wish they filled it in earlier in the year as opposed to right at the end because then it isn't possible to put things right sometimes it's too late or sometimes I've had feedback where I thought wow that's totally unfair or they've totally misunderstood what I was trying to do and I have no way of then discussing it with them or and trying to fix things or explain things but what I was trying to say was that in these feedback forms a lot of the time when asked what would you have liked to have more of the students will say we I would have liked to have more feedback and I'm always amazed by that because they get feedback at every single interpreting class every class they will stand up interpret something and get feedback from the tutors and probably also from their peers and yet so on an interpreting course the students are getting vastly more feedback than on a translation course or any other course if they were studying history or maths or whatever they get feedback all the time and yet they want more more more more more feedback I find that really interesting and so good feedback is gold it's so useful but you can absolutely amplify how useful the feedback is in the way that you ask for it and what you do with it afterwards and a last thing that I want to say is that I work with a lot of coaching clients and the ones that I really enjoy working with are the ones who will ask me very specific questions they will say things like so let me just summarise you're telling me that the the main things I need to work on are salami technique and my expression or they'll say what do you think the biggest thing that I need to work on is or they'll say do you have any good exercises for working on such and such and sometimes I don't but I can go and look for them and that's really stimulating for me as a trainer as well it helps me up my game it means that sometimes we can come up with solutions together it gives me an opportunity to draw on my experience and I find that a really good really good relationship between trainer and I'm going to call it student for one of a better word but really I don't consider my coaching clients to be students you know what I mean it's a collaborative relationship I think and so on that note I will say if you haven't yet read my blog post about how you can get the most out of your trainers then please do go and read that blog post I'll put the link in the show notes and that's it for today I wonder what your thoughts are about asking for feedback and receiving feedback I'd be interested to hear you can email me at info at theinterpretingcoach.com and you can also fill in the little form that's in the show notes that says what would you like me to talk about next time as you can see from the fact that this podcast was recorded in response to evilina I read all your suggestions I can't I can't address all of them immediately and some of them are probably beyond my skill set but occasionally I see something where I think oh I've got something to say about that and I really like hearing from you okay hope to catch up with you soon one way or the other on the ether in person at a webinar in a blog post who knows take care