Feedback is the only way to get better – 3 ways in which I learnt to cherish feedback.

1.      Have a desire to keep improving

The first question to ask yourself is – do you want to get better? If the answer to this question is yes, then it is important to accept current reality. As I turn 40 this year, one of my goals is to lose 10kg. So, on 1st January I weighed myself. Even though I didn’t like the number that came back (97kg by the way!), in order to get to where I want to be, I needed to know where I am at right now. I feel it is also important to accept this feedback without judgement, however hard this may be. It is what it is – feedback about where you are right now, so that you can do something about it.

We can apply this philosophy to every part of our life that we want to get better at. As a leader in a business I believe one of my essential purposes is to positively impact those around me. So, if I want to measure whether this is happening or not, I have to seek constant feedback from my team. In my experience, people aren’t conditioned to offer feedback openly, so I have to constantly ask for it. I did find it slightly strange asking my 9 and 6 year old for feedback, but as I want to become a better Dad then the only way to get better…………

2.      Recognise your defensiveness

I am not sure I have met a single person who doesn’t have a defensive response to tough feedback. Who wants to be told they aren’t where they thought they were, or as good as they perceived themselves to be? Recognising our defensiveness is an important part of receiving feedback and will allow us to deal with it for what it is.

One of the reasons I believe we are defensive about feedback is to do with cognitive dissonance – or simply put – we create a reality for ourselves in our head which is in conflict to what is actually going on.

There is a Chinese proverb which describes this well: ‘There are three truths. There is my truth, your truth and then THE truth’.

I don’t know about you, but I often find myself looking at life through my own lens – using my own experiences to create a version of the truth to me. This then makes me defensive when I get feedback because the first thought that enters my head is: ‘that can’t be true because this is what is going on’. I wonder what reality we are creating that might not be true?

Without another perspective I often find myself with blind spots and have missed things because they aren’t in my version of reality. I encourage you to take a step back, think what the feedback is really telling you and then decide whether its worth taking action on, as hard as this may be.

3.      What is it you want to learn about yourself, who are you going to learn it from, and how do you ask for it?

There is a perception that to get feedback you need to open your front door and ask everyone on the street for their opinion. This doesn’t have to be the case. Get clear on what it is you want to learn about yourself, who is the right person (or people) to give you this information and then how you are going to ask for it. It is also really important to note that you don’t have to react, act on, or respond to feedback. It is another data point, opinion or point of reference that allows us to make more informed and better decisions. I have also found that when I have been given feedback it can sometimes strengthen my view on something rather than meaning I have to immediately change my mind. In sport we were given constant feedback by our coaches. I would often then go and watch some video footage and consider why they would see things that way and could I see the same thing. It meant I could make a far better and more informed decision on whether I needed to make the change or not.

So I encourage all of us to go out there and seek feedback, no matter how hard it may be. This way, I believe, we all get to be better at what we are doing and get to our goals quicker. Two things I can definitely buy into.