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.

(more…)

Thankfully the majority of my clients have a pretty clear idea of what they’d like to do or in what area they’d like to improve personally or professionally.  There are, however, those who have come to me with a greater sense of dissatisfaction and a sense of lost hope about their future.  I may need to refer them to therapy or coach them in addition to therapeutic support.  They may be someone who “followed the leader” and learned a skill or trade that was handed down to them, but it was never really their dream.  They don’t dare dream, because they’ve lost a belief in their power to create it.  These individuals have a crisis of confidence.

Not only do they feel dissatisfied with their life, but they didn’t learn how to recognize their own ability to make changes.  They’ve become good at adapting to people and situations.  They get by, but they don’t thrive.

I’m reminded of a speech by President Jimmy Carter in 1979 when he talked about his view on the main problem threatening our American society.  He said, “The threat is nearly invisible in ordinary ways. It is a crisis of confidence. It is a crisis that strikes at the very heart and soul and spirit of our national will. We can see this crisis in the growing doubt about the meaning of our own lives and in the loss of a unity of purpose for our nation.”  He called it a symptom of our spirit and he said, “The erosion of our confidence in the future is threatening to destroy the social and the political fabric of America.”  He called on us to have faith.

(more…)