Have you ever felt the need to protect your fragile ego from feedback?
It’s not a bad thing.
Feedback can crush the overly sensitive and stop us (yes, that includes me, too) from moving forward.
Last week I wrote about my new podcast, She Talks Business and some of my learning. This week, I want to share two personal insecurities that I’ve uncovered related to handling feedback and how I deal with them.
Two Things I Have Learned About Myself And Feedback:
1. Feedback is great, but forward feedback is better.
Feedback is an important part of learning and growing, but make it forward-focused feedback.
Failure work is not where you want to spend your time. When you are constantly redoing the same thing to get it right, you’re doing failure work.
I’m working with a trusted client-turned-colleague of mine to help me map out all the details of my new podcast. When I recorded the first one, this is what I told her: “Don’t criticize what’s done. Tell me how I can make the next one better.”
This was done by design. Feedback to make something 1% better after you’ve put 120% effort into making it good, doesn’t move the needle. In fact, it can cause you to exert unnecessary energy and slow you down.
#Feedback to make something 1% better after you’ve put 120% effort into making it good, doesn’t move the needle. In fact, it can cause you to exert unnecessary energy and slow you down. Click To TweetInstead, focus on feedback you can carry into the next step so you don’t lose momentum. Remember, momentum loves speed.
2. Feedback can hurt and leave you feeling like you don’t want to keep going.
If you know this is you, protect yourself from unsolicited feedback until you’ve found your groove and feel confident in what you’re doing.
Courage breeds confidence. The step in the middle is competence. It takes courage to do something new, and do it imperfectly. You have to start from where you are and that requires courage. As you swing forward from courage into competence, you start to build confidence and that’s where the magic is.
It takes #courage to do something new, and do it imperfectly. As you swing forward from courage into competence, you start to build confidence and that’s where the magic is. Click To TweetConfident people can handle constructive feedback and use it to develop mastery.
Give yourself the grace of earning your confident wings before you subject yourself to serious improvement.
If I had listened to all the constructive feedback about my first two podcast episodes we’d still be waiting. Sometimes, good enough is good enough—you don’t have to be perfect when you start.
How do you handle feedback? Let me know in the comment section, below!
