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.