How Do You Respond To Feedback?

Have you ever played a game as a child where you
had to find something and all the other
participants would call out whether you were hot
or cold? If you were hot then you were getting
closer and with cold you were searching further
away from what you wanted to find. This was
particularly great fun over Easter when looking
for the last chocolate bunnies.

Feedback is exactly the same. You get clues that
tell you whether you are hot or cold. These clues
may be presented by a person or by a thing. In
either case the feedback is giving you advice as
to whether you are hot or cold in your quest
towards your goal.

One of the worst ways to respond to feedback is
to cave in and quit. When you were a child, and
wanted that last chocolate Easter bunny, you
weren’t about to give in until that bunny was
found, preferably by yourself.

You didn’t give up because you really wanted
that chocolate. As we get older we become more
reluctant to listen to that hot and cold
feedback. We give up before you find that
chocolate treat. We quit when the search gets
too hard or we have far too many ‘cold’ calls.

Our perception of the feedback changed. When
we were kids the calls for hot and cold were
fun, part of a game. We didn’t mind if we got
a cold call. It was just information which we
used to try and steer ourselves closer to our
chocolate.

As we get older we think of these calls as
being criticism. When somebody tells us that
we are going in the wrong direction we imply
that they are telling us that we are bad,
incompetent, useless, stupid, or one of the
many other destroyers of self-confidence. We
take the feedback personally rather than
constructively.

Yet it is just information that we are
receiving. We are being told that we are
going the wrong way. We are not being told
that we are stupid. Yet if we take it as that,
we miss the opportunity to for course
correction. If we reject the information and
consider it as a negative attack all we
accomplish is further damage to our self worth.

Getting angry at the person giving the feedback
is also counterproductive. Stop taking feedback
personally and rather consider it to be
information designed to help you adjust your
path and find the right way forward.

What would help you reach your goal more
quickly? To get mad at the person who is trying
to teach you or to listen to him or her and try
to improve your game? One would think that this
is a no brainer of a question. Yet how often do
we get mad at people who give us feedback?

When receiving feedback, don’t take it personally;
take the feedback as information meant to help you
along your way. Also don’t get angry at the person
providing you with feedback. Rather take it under
consideration and be thankful for the directions
you are receiving.