How many times have you had that piece of feedback on that work you did or the way your wrote that particular e-mail? How often do you get feedback, and that feedback takes over your thoughts and drowns out your own?

We are making many decisions, hundreds if not thousands of times a day. We are writing e-mails, completing projects or just simply ordering something off the Internet. When it comes to work especially, receiving feedback can be valuable. We are doing so much at such a rate, we are bound to miss something or just didn’t have the experience in that particular task. Feedback allows us to gain insight from another view point, alter the way we do something next time and ultimately the feedback will help us do something that little better next time.

The thing about feedback, is that it more or less an opinion, a viewpoint shared by one person. Depending on the way it is delivered or the way it is received, it can greatly impact us and our self worth.

The most challenging piece of feedback I’ve received is when someone says “I could have done more, I’ve let them down or I have upset them”. With feedback like this, I quickly let their feedback drown out my own thoughts and wonder what will I ever do.

Decompress

As above, we generally take feedback especially from someone we trust very much to heart and accept it. Seeking to really understand it and what can be done next time. The problem with this is that it can just sit there. Weighing on your thoughts, making you question quite a number of things.

Decompressing is the first step, decompress can be speaking to someone, someone who will truly listen and not judge or offer opinion. Just get it all out and don’t hold it internally. In this way, it allows you to distance yourself from the feedback, make it external rather than all internal and worrying yourself about it.

Another method is just talking to yourself. Yes it’s perfectly sane to do it and in fact most adults do it quite often. One of the benefits is it allows you to clarify your thoughts and remove that emotion out of the subject. OK, so got it out of your system? Now let’s get some perspective.

Get Perspective

A number of methods can be employed, many more than what is here, but this is what comes to mind when perspective is needed on a subject close to the heart.

Facts Or story

How much of the feedback is routed in facts, information that is undeniable. Such as “we had a low number of respondents on that project” and you actually have the data to back it up. Compared to how much is a story, “you could upset that person”. Well have you spoken to that person? Are they upset? Can you find out to turn story into facts?

Coach Yourself

Now you could have your active listener partner from above do this, but sometimes we don’t want help. So why not try coaching yourself. Imagine you were helping someone out with this situation. What advice would you give them? How would you advise them to approach it? Is it different from how your handling it now? I suspect it is.

What’s The Worst That Could Happen

The great line is fantastic when looking at feedback. Let’s say you sent that mail and potentially it was wrong or didn’t land correctly. What is the absolute worst thing that could happen? Chances are it really is not so bad. It is easily forgotten or easily correctable and really is not worth losing sleep over.

Move Forward

You’ve decompressed, you’ve analysed the feedback and coached yourself through it. The final step is the most important.

Simply move forward.

Now the act of moving forward in itself is not easy but it is essential. You’ve spent a lot of energy over this feedback, played our various scenarios in your head and probably gone round the proverbial tree chasing your own tail for a while. So chalk it up to experience and move forward. When you come to another situation, then use that feedback or simply take note and carry on.

• Decompress
• Get Perspective
• Move Forward

Feedback is an essential part of growth, understand the feedback and truly try to understand the other viewpoint. It really could help you perform you role much better and that is something you should definitely listen to and understand. After you have done this, make your own decision off of that. Listen to that inner voice and then go forward, constantly improving yourself.