One of the hardest lessons I’ve learnt on my personal and professional development journey is that feedback can only take you as far as you will let it.
While it’s not always easy to hear and can often seem like a negative critique, especially if delivered incorrectly, if you can embrace it, allowing others to collaborate with you on your growth as a person and leader it can lead to far greater achievement than trying to go it alone. These are the three lessons I found out the hard way.
Don’t take feedback on face value
If you receive feedback or seek it out for your own development, ensure you really understand the premise on why it was provided. Sometimes you may need to reflect on what was delivered and revisit it, but always ensure you deep dive into feedback obtained where appropriate.
Why it is being fed back, what behaviour or actions triggered this and what impact is being observed for example. The opportunity is what you make it and the more honest dialogue you can open up; the better the take away is likely to be.
Commit to growth
Whilst it’s not always easy to find time to focus on your own development, if you are given the gift of feedback, it’s important to commit to using it to your advantage and to grow from it. Even if it is slow and steady.
If you don’t do this, and instead waste the opportunity — or take the mindset that the perception is wrong or no action is required on your behalf — you’re not only doing yourself a disfavour but you might also find that people are no longer willing to give you feedback. Ignorance is definitely not bliss where perception is concerned unfortunately.
Seek feedforward
[tweet_quote hashtags=”#humanresources” ]One of my favourite leadership concepts is ‘feedforward’. [/tweet_quote] Rather than giving feedback focusing on past events and the areas for improvement, it is far more positive and beneficial to provide advice and guidance on future opportunities for success because you want to support someone’s development journey.
If you seek out feedforward on yourself rather than waiting for feedback to occur, you are welcoming dialogue and creating growth opportunities for yourself. You also don’t need to wait to experience something for yourself and a personal critique to pursue advice on how you could achieve the results you are seeking.
