Close Close
Popular Financial Topics Discover relevant content from across the suite of ALM legal publications From the Industry More content from ThinkAdvisor and select sponsors Investment Advisor Issue Gallery Read digital editions of Investment Advisor Magazine Tax Facts Get clear, current, and reliable answers to pressing tax questions
Luminaries Awards
ThinkAdvisor

Life Health > Life Insurance

Make the Most of Client Feedback

X
Your article was successfully shared with the contacts you provided.

Once you begin to take action on a project or a goal, you’ll start getting feedback about whether you’re doing the right thing. You’ll get data, advice, help, suggestions, direction and even criticism, which will help you constantly adjust and move forward, while continually enhancing your knowledge, abilities, attitudes and relationships. But asking for feedback is really only the first part of the equation. Once you receive feedback you have to be willing to embrace it and respond to it.

Two types of feedback. There are two kinds of feedback you might encounter, negative and positive. We tend to prefer the positive: results, money, praise, promotion, raises, awards, happiness, inner peace, etc. It feels better. It tells us we are on course and doing the right thing. We tend not to like negative feedback: lack of results, little or no money, criticism, poor evaluations, complaints, unhappiness, inner conflict, pain, etc.

However, there is as much useful data in negative feedback as there is in positive feedback. It tells us that we are off course, headed in the wrong direction or doing the wrong thing. This is priceless information.

How most people handle the negative. Three of the most common—and unproductive—responses to negative criticism are:

  1. Caving in or quitting. How many times have you or someone you know hit an obstacle and given up the goal because it was too hard or “not meant to be”? This is a poor way to respond to criticism, because all it does it keep you stuck in the same place.
  2. Getting mad at the source of the feedback. How many times have you responded with anger, hostility or resentment when someone has given you negative feedback? This serves only to push away the messenger and the feedback, when the message may be exactly what you need to move closer to your goal.
  3. Ignoring the feedback. We all know people who tune out everyone’s point of view but their own. The sad thing is that the feedback they are blocking could significantly change their lives, if only they would listen.

If you fall into any of these traps, try to remember that feedback is not criticism. It is simply information—corrective guidance that’s meant to help to get you back on course to achieve your goal. I like to refer to negative feedback as information for “improvement opportunities.”

Sign up for The Lead and get a new tip in your inbox every day! More tips:

Jack Canfield, America’s success coach, is the founder and co-creator of the billion-dollar book brand “Chicken Soup for the Soul” and a leading authority on peak performance. If you’re ready to jump start your life, make more money and have more fun and joy in all that you do, get your free success tips from Canfield now at: www.FreeSuccessStrategies.com.


NOT FOR REPRINT

© 2024 ALM Global, LLC, All Rights Reserved. Request academic re-use from www.copyright.com. All other uses, submit a request to [email protected]. For more information visit Asset & Logo Licensing.