Your relationship with feedback
And why we suck at giving & receiving it
Before we get started with today’s piece, quick update on the newsletter journey:
Sent out the first email on August 2nd
This is the 38th email I’m sending out
Currently at 1.199 subscribers at the time of writing (waiting for lucky #1200)
Still enjoying writing these
Now back to business.
A couple enters a grand ballroom only to find the occupants are dead. There had been no crime committed. The couple is not concerned by what they have found.
How is this possible?
Answer, as usual, at the end.
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Don’t take this the wrong way, but…
You never know a person until you see them giving or receiving feedback.
It’s interesting how vulnerable we are in that context. Instead of judging the feedback, we usually judge:
The person giving the feedback (who are you to be giving me feedback?)
The content of the feedback (do we think it’s true or wrong?)
The effect on that feedback on our self-view (does it affect a core belief?)
Because of this, we rarely learn valuable lessons from feedback unless we learn to manage it better.
As a great book says:
When we give feedback, we notice the receiver isn’t very good at receiving it.
When we receive feedback, we notice the giver isn’t very good at giving it.
Usually, you’ll notice that insecure people will judge the form in which a feedback is given and deflect to external sources rather than address the content of the feedback itself.
Most of the time, it’s subconscious.
Receiving feedback is a very personal and intimate experience and not everyone is comfortable with it.
However, once you get better at it, you realize it’s one of the fastest ways to grow.
Funny enough, the older (& more experienced) you get, the more you suck at receiving feedback.
For people just starting off, remember that it’s much cheaper to learn from someone else’s mistakes than from your own.
Answer: the couple was enjoying a diving experience in sunken ship. Once they entered the grand ballroom, they saw the skeletons of the people who drowned when the ship sank.