Every day we face difficult situations where a good communication is required. Mutual understanding and a high respect of the other person is not always easy, especially when emotions and personal problems arrive. A big requirement of calmness, fairness and an exact formulation of the problem is even more in demand, if people are coming from different backgrounds. It is difficult enough to sort out problems with people who have a similar way of acting and also the ability to talk in the same language.
These days multiculturalism is not anymore a borrowed word, it is a outlook on live. In times of globalization, exchanges and the possibility to study or work abroad, causes naturally new difficulties. It is necessary never to loose control of oneself, to keep the respect and to act in a fair way. Also it is a question of humanity that there is no connection to the background, age, education or origin.
But apart from that, it is hard to react in a heated situations, in a respectful and correct way. To find the right time of giving a feedback is as important as well as difficult. If the situation is heated and people stop keeping to the point, it´s maybe more productive to seek for a conversation another time in more calm circumstances.
Also its not always clear, what the right way of response to a problem is. Important is not to loose the skill to listen to the other person, and even if one completely disagrees with his/her opinion. To think calm about one´s opinion is necessary, also to accept that people have a variety of ideas. Furthermore it is helpful to show a lot of empathy in order to show the other person, that one tries to understand the other way of thinking. After listening to him/her, probably it is time to point one´s own standpoint or to give critics.
Criticism motivates, gives reason to discuss, forces to find arguments and also its more interesting for everybody as if we always agree with each other. Significant is “the way” how someone is giving a feedback. In highschool I had a subject called “communication and group dynamics”. In this seminars we learned one formal way of giving constructive criticism to be prepared for our future profession. Of course there are different ways of how to give constructive feedback, but one of them was the so called “sandwich principle”. Basically it says that you should give a negative feedback as well as positive feedback stucked like in a sandwich: 
This way of telling something negative, avoids the feeling of the criticized person, that his work was bad, and allows to think of him/herself in a self reflecting way. Probably a better way to give feedback is the one on the second picture. In that case one doesn´t has to find frantic a positive statement, as one wants to tell the negative points, but to allow the opposite to give his/her opinion to the suggested and described situation in the view of the criticizer. If both sides are acting in a professional way, it will lead to an interesting conversation and to an exchange of possibilities and statements. So in that sense:
Elisabeth Weissitsch.