Making Feedback Pay Off

Feedback frightens me. It probably frightens you, too. When we pour intense energy into a project, we don't want blunt opinions of our (supposedly) finished work. We crave pure praise from bosses, colleagues or customers. Even minor criticisms can be hard to take. Harsher responses feel like a kick in the gut.

So how can we sidestep those anxieties? How can we embrace what's valuable in other people's comments while still keeping our self-esteem intact? In the first decade of my career, I didn't have a clue. The breakthrough came in my mid-30s, when several dozen people helped me repair a book draft that once seemed unprintable -- and ultimately became "Merchants of Debt," a much-praised bestseller. Those interactions left me with a whole new approach toward soliciting and using feedback.

The key insight: stop thinking of feedback as a grim, red-ink report card on completed work that you can't change. Instead, reposition your interactions with others so that feedback arrives earlier and more informally. That way, you'll be getting take-it-or-leave-it suggestions that can help you reach the finish line faster and more effectively.

For me, a lot of the stress vanished when I began seeking feedback voluntarily, and then dividing people's comments into three buckets, as follows:

• One third of outsiders' input proves instantly useful. Their remarks are so smart and obvious that all we can do is say "Thanks!" and put those ideas into action.
• Many other comments are directionally helpful but shouldn't be regarded as the last word. Such critics draw attention to areas where our work isn't as good as it could be. That said, they may not have a solution, or their suggested remedy might be worse than the problem. In such cases, we needn't battle over areas of disagreement. It's enough to thank people for drawing attention to an issue that we may end up fixing in an entirely different way.
• As for the final scraps of feedback: So what! Let common sense prevail here. We're allowed to filter other people's input,discarding nudges that are just plain wrong. This is the right bucket, too, for situations where others push their own agendas so hard that they can't see different paths of getting to a good outcome.

With this three-bucket sorting system, feedback becomes much less stressful. There's no need to dodge outsiders' opinions until the unavoidable rituals of an annual performance review. There's a lot to be learned earlier in some surprisingly informal settings. Consider the signals in a routine meeting, when someone either yawns or perks up. Even social-media shares and retweets can yield good clues about what's working or not. Ditto for ad hoc marketing tests while chatting with unfamiliar seatmates on an airplane flight.

These days. I'm letting more people comment on work in progress, instead of waiting until everything seems perfect before sharing it. The payoff: shorter development times, higher output and greater public support for the finished results.

It's a lot easier to do good work when other people pitch in. That way, feedback becomes an everyday source of strength, rather than an occasional torment.

(Photo: Mark Hillary via Flickr/Creative Commons)