Taking Feedback

SHUT UP AND WRITE IT DOWN…

If we are honest with ourselves, we don’t really want feedback – we say we do, we may even convince ourselves that brutal feedback would help us — but what we really want is praise.

Don’t get me wrong, I know we all want to improve but praise would skip the awkward process of feedback.

When feedback is given, we tend to have an emotional reaction – THE BITE – and it makes us defensive.

We feel under attack — or why would we BITE, why would we get defensive, if we didn’t feel like we’re being attacked?

When you are given feedback – just write it down. One of my former teachers, renowned Scottish playwright Ann Marie di Mambro used to say ‘Shut up and write it down.’ 

Just write it down.

Then come back to it when your emotional reaction has diminished.

Now you can look at the notes and see what you make of the feedback –  now the urge to BITE is no longer present. Some may be valuable, some may be practicably useless, but you will find more value with a cool head.

In receiving feedback, do as Brian Tracy insists:

“Never complain, never explain. Resist the temptation to defend yourself or to make excuses.” 

He’s dead right. Whoever is offering you feedback is giving you their opinion on what you did, explaining doesn’t change the feedback, it just demonstrates your resistance to it.  

They will not suddenly say ‘Oh well, I thought that moment of your performance was fake and unnecessary, but now you’ve explain WHY you did it like that, I’ve changed my mind completely…” – isn’t going to happen.

If you manage to hold your BITE in, you might ask for clarification on certain notes, but only if you can do so without BITING.

Do this, and feedback time will be shorter and far less awkward, and a lot more beneficial.