It’s not always easy to experience feedback as positive, especially when it’s all too accurate about the things we need to change about ourselves.  There are past times I’ve felt I was being interrogated and unfairly judged, but I’ve learned to approach business and personal feedback times with a more constructive outlook.  This openness to learning greatly helps to make my relationships with others and work itself go more smoothly. 

Here are five reasons to view feedback as a gift:

1. Let’s You See When You’re A Square Peg in a Round Hole  You may not be fitting in on a project or program, or with someone else’s style.  The worst part of this is you might not have a clue about it or have been too busy to notice.  Maybe you didn’t have the courage to ask about something that felt a little off and make the necessary adjustments.   Feedback stops the machinery, gives you and others time to reflect on what’s working or not and discuss how you can improve matters.

2. Grows Your Ability to Question Assumptions  Oftentimes you have a sense of how you are doing or how a project is going, but when others validate your assumptions as accurate, it grows your ability to question your own assumptions, make course corrections, get ahead of the curve with changes, and make sound decisions.  This is an important skill if you value both self-growth and professional growth. 

3.  Helps You Recognize Your Need for Others  Despite attempts by many who’ve tried to go it alone in life, human beings are born to interact and learn from each other.  Why would you want to make most changes if you were the only person who’d be impacted by those changes?  Trying to make changes in isolation doesn’t make sense.   You can and should avail yourself of the feedback of others to gain a fresh perspective, whether or not you think you know it all or can do it yourself.

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Years ago I took several workshops on relationships and communciation through Landmark Education Corporation.  I’ll never forget some of the very valuable techniques I learned, including an exercise using a tissue box.  But before I give that story to you, here’s some tips from my 3 C’s for Effective Living: Change, Creativity and Communication audio recordings.  This is from Communication and should help get you ready to deal with confrontations and be ready to use your imaginary tissue box: 

1.  Recognize What We All Want – when you recognize that all of us have a fundamental desire to be understood and appreciated, this makes your being positional about being “right” in situations where one or both of you are upset, silly.  It’s also definitely counterproductive to resolution.  Always seek the common ground and nurture relationships.

2. Check Your Timing and Theirs - untimely and unthought out communications usually result in outward anger, hurt or ignoring the messenger.  If someone approaches you and you are deep into something else, try saying to them, “Fred, I really want to hear what you have to say and I can see that you’re upset.  If you can just give me 10 minutes to complete this one task I’m right in the middle of, I’ll come to your office to discuss this.”  If you’re upset, then be calm enough to be sure your comment will be heard.  Tell someone, “I need a few minutes to tell you something important.  Is this a good time?”  What good will it do if they’re not present and able to digest what you have to say?

3.  Always Assess What Is Your Responsibility in the Matter – don’t assume that every upset someone has with you is their problem.   Take a deep breath and look inside yourself to ask yourself, “Is there something I could have done, said or communicated differently to have a better outcome than this?”  It’s not about fault-finding, but about learning how to make things work best.

4.  Asking for Feedback or Not – sometimes, especially as women, we just want to let an upset out or process something aloud.  We’re not always asking for any suggestions or for something to be changed or fixed.  In fact, when our partner or associate tries to offer suggestions before we’ve even got our upset off our chest, this can be annoying.  Truth is they’re trying to be helpful, so it’s your job to let them know if you’ll want input when you’re done or not.  You can try this out when you don’t want input, “I just need to tell you something and get it off my chest.  Would you mind just listening for 2 minutes?”  This prevents them from being unnecessarily the one you take out your frustrations on when their response doesn’t match your feelings.

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