We are never objective, although we tend to think we are. Rather, we are always biased. One way to fight our bias is to get feedback from other people.
Feedback has the potential of providing points of view that we would otherwise miss, and that reveal our wrong thinking. Valuable feedback is hard to get because the person that provides it benefits nothing from it and the only party that does benefit is the receiver.
When you ask for feedback, remember that you are selfishly asking for a selfless act. Thus, you can only ask for it, but you should never demand it because you are not entitled to it. And when you get it, cherish it. You just received a beautiful present.
To be useful, feedback needs to be consumed. The problem is that it can cause digestion problems due to our ego and self-defense mechanisms of believing in our own correctness. To fight these here are some of the lessons I learnt from my own cases of indigestion:
Comments
In the following sentences I would like to: 1. Appreciate 2. Disagree 3. Add 4. Recommend
I appreciate the idea of "digesting" the feedback; I actually think it’s a creative title.
I partially disagree with the idea: "the only party that does benefit is the receiver". Yes, this is true when you ask from someone a feedback. See my situation when I asked my friends to give me feedback on my website and the only potential benefit for them would be some promised "donuts" made in Timisoara. No, because in my opinion if I give feedback to someone, in one way or another I can benefit as well. This can be underlined with a situation when I ask a friend to talk to me using less words/minute. It’s beneficial for the friend on short term as I understand better the issue she has and on long term as by doing that she can be better understood by the clients, meaning that she can sell more products as she is working in sales for an IT company. For me, this would be beneficial as I would pay more attention to her and I would be a happy friend and not have the feeling that I am wasting my time and her time too.
I would like to add to the lessons learned, 2 more bullets: one for "listen actively to what the other says", the second for "thank the person who took time and effort to give feedback".
And if the digestion is difficult, I recommend a "grappa" :)
Happy St. Patrick’s Day!
Thanks for the feedback. I am now digesting it :).