Feedback Is Simply Information…

We had a situation this weekend, not unlike any other weekend, where there was some “feedback” provided on an interaction that occurred at the club.  In this event, it was a person presenting their point of view and their judgements on that situation.

My first reaction was that of frustration, defensiveness, and anger.  This caused me to “take a step back” and recognize how easily I had traded my current state of focus and happiness for a completely unproductive state of anger and frustration based on something that wasn’t “real.”  What I recognized was that there are internal triggers that come from feedback, and taking it personally was not allowing me to receive it for what it was.  Let me explain…

“Feedback” can come in many different forms: compliments, complaining, judgements, advise, suggestions, etc.  I will have you consider that feedback is simply information…someone else’s observation of a situation.  Subjective feedback is not good or bad, true or false.  But, keep in mind that just because the feedback is not true doesn’t mean that it’s false.  It’s that person’s interpretation of a situation, and there’s always some kind of lesson to be learned.  Can we use this information as leverage?  Can we use this information to improve our systems?  Sometimes, yes.  Sometimes, my experience is, the information is just useless minutia.  One of the greatest disciplines of life is learning to interpret feedback for what it is.

There are several ways to deal with feedback:

• We can reject it (“Forget them!”)
• We can deflect it (“Because of this, that happened…not my fault)
• We can distort it (“This person is just an angry person and nothing is ever good enough”)
• We can receive it (“Thank you for your feedback”)

We are in an industry where we are bombarded by feedback, and we have to be careful about how we deal with it.  It can distract us from executing our objectives.  We must “receive” the feedback from our clients (Members), but can we stop the emotional reaction that comes from judgement or criticism by simply receiving it as input?  At the end of the day, we have to be committed enough to our results that we can use input constructively moving forward, or quickly dismiss it and get back to work.