YOU GOT A FEEDBACK AND NOW YOUR DAY IS RUINED.
Read time- 4 minutes
DO YOU SAY THANKS WHEN YOU GET FEEDBACK?
Or do you get offended and sulk? Often, we find ourselves hurt on receiving feedback. Thanks to the litany of social media platforms, anybody and everybody feels entitled to give feedback to you or to your business.
At work, at home, or at get-togethers, opinions are shared, discussions start from these opinions, and somebody ends up throwing some light on your behavior pattern and decides to comment or give feedback to you.
You may get appalled at that moment. You may even dismiss the person from your social media calendar for the whole year!
But what if there was a minute chance that there be some truth in their perception or feedback for you?
After all, they did spend the time to say something about you, be it positive or negative. That means they observed a behavioral trait that you could modify to become better.
If you need to learn how to learn the art of receiving or giving feedback, get the book Thanks for the feedback by Douglas Adams and Sheila Stone.
BUT HOW DARE THEY GIVE ME FEEDBACK?!
If this thought is ever so pervasive in your mind, then a change in outlook is required. We need to be saying thanks to all who give feedback to us.
Especially, if you think the person who gave you feedback didn’t deserve to give it to you in the first place.
If you do not have a good relationship between you and the person who gave you those inputs, then you stand to get offended by their negative feedback.
Change the way you think about feedbacks.
To overcome this, you need to learn the techniques mentioned in the book thanks for the feedback and rediscover your relationship with that person, figure out the merits from the demerits in your mind and grow as a professional and a person.
Even if the person giving you the feedback was frustrated, angry, out of line, disrespectful, nasty, or simply out of mind when giving you input on your work, the best thing about such feedback is that they are unfiltered.
These feedbacks carry a level of honesty that you wouldn’t otherwise get from anywhere else.
SO, HOW DO YOU HANDLE THIS REGURGITATION OF WORDS?
Look at things from the larger scheme of life. Fifty years from now, will the concerns that are in your mind (and in your mind alone mostly!) matter then. In your last moments of life, will these worries matter?
This is one such technique mentioned in thanks for the feedback.
Loaded with many more that you may find less cliched and more practical, these techniques will help not only keep your ego in check but evolve you as a person.
You don’t need to be scared or filled with animosity for the person who gives you feedback.
You can harness a relationship free of charge with the most aggressive person in the workplace and get feedback from them.
In hindsight, you would have to pay a coach hundreds of dollars a month for the same service!
Research has shown that seeking feedback at the workplace is the best way to manage growth and move up the organizational hierarchy.
BUT IT FEELS PERSONAL, EVEN THOUGH IT'S NOT SUPPOSED TO.
Anyone would tend to feel personal about the feedback they get. After all, it’s about their work, something that they had worked hard on from ideation to concept.
It’s bound to feel personal. And, you are not alone if you think like this.
Another research shows that the amount of time taken to recover from positive or negative feedback can be 3000% among individuals.
Thanks for the feedback mentions of ways in which you can contain this excitement from negative or positive feedback.
The way to not take it personally is to apply a 50-40-10 formula for happiness. (Read the book to know more about this.) It will help you develop a strong internal metric as well.
Another point to note is that most people are way too focused on their lives than they are on you.
So, if someone has given their two cents worth of opinion, chances are they would have forgotten about it very soon. But in that time, you would have built an entire self-defeating storyline in your mind about that feedback!
DOES THE BOOK just PREACH OR IT TEACHES ABOUT FEEDBACK MECHANISMS?
It teaches, not preaches. The book thanks for the feedback mentions of three techniques you can immediately apply while reading the book to forever change your outlook on negative feedback.
It will also help you understand through various practical scenarios how not taking negative feedback the right way can hamper your personal and professional life.
It has scenarios on issues related to personal life as well.
The way you respond to your better half when you get feedback also is a good measure of your happiness index. Your personal life can change for the better if you listen to your spouse in a better way.
GROWTH MINDSET VS FIXED MINDSET
The other highlight of the book thanks for the feedback is on growth and fixed mindset. The explanation in this book is perhaps one of the most spot-on explanations that will motivate you to apply the techniques that are mentioned within.
This book will help you to understand your mind first and then also the place from which a person gives you feedback. This makes a more mature professional and a better person.
Even from feedback given, if 90% of it was not on point, don’t miss out on the chance that there might be 10% truth in their observation of you.
And you should thank them, not just for their feedback, but for spending the time to think about you to give you these observations.
It will help you make your internal identity stronger and develop you as a person who calmly processes any feedback, be it negative or positive, and say a genuine thanks to all those who cared enough to give it to you.
Click on Book Reviews for more such books.
Click on Amazon to get the book.