The art of getting feedback from others

One of the easy ways to improve your life is to learn from others’ experiences and lessons. For that, you can just watch them and try your best replicating whatever you see, listen or understand. Or, you can let others say what they think.

As children, we learn from our mistakes. A lot: we raise and fall, and we learn we shouldn’t fall; we go and play with a dog that bites us, and we learn we shouldn’t pull its tail, or we arrive late for lunch and mommy gives us cold food, teaching us to arrive punctually. Of course, the love we receive and the unconditional forgiveness for every mistake compensates any bad situation.

As adults however things are not that simple: we often don’t learn from our falls, we keep on pulling another dog’s tail and our punctuality does not improve. It seems adults don’t learn at all, at least not as a child would do. We learn differently and there are many theories about that, but I would like to talk about feedback, which means others telling you what to do.

I consider an art to be able to get feedback from others. When there is an opportunity to improve – in other words, we did badly – what we hear is complaints or accusations; to turn those into a positive experience and help the self to improve is a hard work for the listener rather than the speaker.

It is useful to separate whatever others speak in categories. A typical example is when someone indicates about your lack of punctuality; put aside their anger or the fact they are upset by that. Then, focus on the need of the other person, ask yourself: How can I be more punctual?, and listen to their advice.

Second step is your own reflection on whether you implement that feedback. Maybe you simply can’t; if that is so, just talk and explain that to the other person. If you can, make a plan to turn it into reality. In case you need to talk to the other person, look for an agreement that makes them happy with your own situation.

The third step comes when you yourself ask for feedback, checking if everything is alright after making some experiments.

Feedback is a cyclic process… after the third step, go back to the first and start all over again, which guarantee you will have a very interesting and dynamic life.