LEARN
Something Worth SharingNo Feedback is Feedback Do you remember as a young child producing a drawing of something? Perhaps you might have drawn a few stick people, there could have been a square house with a triangular roof, the sky might have been a blue line at the top of the page and the grass would have been a green line at the bottom of the page. Once you’d completed your masterpiece, you would have naturally looked to someone for feedback - to let you know that what you’d created was ‘good enough’, meaning YOU are good enough. What we were taught about feedback as a child stays with us throughout our lives. If we receive over-the-top positive feedback, it can cause us to not trust in it. If we receive encouragement and balanced feedback with kind suggestions, we can improve and build. If we receive only negative feedback it can undermine us and set us back. But, there is also another type of feedback - no feedback at all. Last week I wrote about how humans need to make sense of information, and when there are gaps in this, we guess. Feedback is just the same. It is an information loop that needs closing - no matter who we are or what we’re doing. When we do something or create something, we need balanced feedback. When it is missing, we guess - and just with any other missing information, we guess negatively. I recall not receiving much praise or feedback from my grandmother, while my cousin always seemed to get lots of encouragement and feedback. I decided to ask my dad about this, and he tried to explain it as being because I always did well while my cousin needed her confidence building. The missing feedback was feedback to me - that my hard work and efforts were worthless. It’s not for us to assess who needs feedback or not - everyone needs feedback, simple. Even the most accomplished and confident people need feedback. Oh, and leaders need just as much feedback as those that work for them!
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