“Would you like to turn on tracking to allow us to gather personal information to improve the experience?” After downloading a new operating system, app, or device, we have all pondered this question. This question often creates antipathy or anger, curiosity at best. But it is an important question. Direct, honest, raw feedback is needed to improve the system.
But often, feedback can feel gross, not just in that moment but also in our lives, especially at work. Feedback has been weaponized, delivered incorrectly or at the wrong time, unfairly personalized, or filled with bias. Many of us have trauma from feedback that went awry. It has gone so bad that a new concept, “feed-forward,” has been introduced to mitigate negative impact.
Yet, feedback is essential to improvement. We can’t grow personally or professionally without it. Many organizations say they want to be data-driven, learning organizations, but the feedback process is broken, ineffective, or non-existent. We must have, process, and apply feedback to grow. With that in mind, here are three urgent ideas to help you with giving, getting, and using feedback.
Receive feedback as information only. This is often hard to do. It is easy to take feedback personally since it concerns you, your business, or your habits. Depersonalize. Look at feedback as an observer looking in instead of a deficient individual. Remember your inherent value. Where you currently stand is a testimony to your hard work, tenacity, resiliency, and effort. Ground yourself in your value first to make the feedback useful, taking what you need and removing the rest.
Be intentional with how you give feedback. We all have a story of receiving feedback at the wrong time, in the wrong place, or in the wrong direction. Plan for how you want to give feedback, considering the environment, relationships, and timing. Make the feedback constructive, eliminating deeply personal elements and using real-life examples with weight and depth. Get to know your biases (you have some, I promise) to help you filter for these before you accidentally force them on someone else.
Use the data. People and organizations often collect feedback data like libraries but do nothing about it. Take it off the shelf and put it into practice. The reason organizations get weary of assessment tools or individuals ignore requests for surveys is because people feel that the data is not used wisely. Personality assessments, performance reviews, and survey results have no value if stored and not applied. Create personal or organizational processes to filter through this data and use it for its intended purpose.
You can trust you. Say yes to feedback and use it wisely. Your future needs it to improve your experience.
Does your team:
– Overwhelm the audience with too much detail?
– Make things too complicated?
– Fail to ask for what they want or need?
Does your organization:
– Waste time because of poor internal communication?
– Take too long to make decisions?
– Struggle to clarify and frame discussions?
Do your leaders:
– Exhibit poor executive presence?
– Lean on incomplete communication skills?
– Fail to align the organization?
We transform teams and individuals with repeatable toolsets for persuasive communication. Explore training, coaching, and consulting services from The Latimer Group.
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