Feedback

Regardless of your profession, the hardest thing to learn is how to take feedback. Either good or bad (but especially bad), it is hard to always know exactly what to do when it comes time to unpack commentary from your colleagues.

Positive feedback feels great when you receive it, yet those feelings of accomplishment are short lived. Were the people asked simply not invested in the idea? Did they even care? What if nobody actually likes the product when I ship it? What does one do when the room simply nods in agreement? It can make you feel a bit lost.

Conversely, negative feedback makes us feel impostor syndrome more acutely than ever before. Clearly I don’t know what I’m doing. This work is terrible. I should probably just quit now and hand this work off to someone who knows what they’re doing.

Positive feedback can be unhelpful and negative feedback can be destructive, how then can we best help our teammates make something truly outstanding?

Be honest. Use both. Talk about both what works and what doesn’t. Context and reference will help any creator calibrate a response to your feedback.