Don’t care about feedback unless…

Feedback is important, but you shouldn’t care about it before doing two important things

Feedback is important. And while it is quite helpful, sometimes, it can be emotionally challenging or maybe totally unhelpful. But regardless, you shouldn’t care about it unless you categorise it first.

One of the problems with common advice on feedback is that it often talks about how to respond to the feedback. But not all feedback comes equally. And therefore, we struggle to figure out when to respond, when not to, and if at all we do, then how to? How to part comes a bit later. But first, how can we even reckon it to see if it is worth responding to.

How to part comes a bit later.

We can see the feedback from four different perspectives. The first one is when someone at random wants to say something about our work. Most likely, we didn’t ask for it. And it is also likely that the person is not an expert in that field.

But sometimes, despite being unsolicited, that person may know a thing or two. They might be slightly better than us at that particular thing.

The third situation is when we ask for feedback from someone whose opinion we respect. They are not experts but people we respect, like friends or family members.

And finally, the fourth situation is when we have explicitly asked for feedback from an expert. Someone who knows about that stuff.

Now, if we plot these four types of feedback in a two-by-two matrix, it might be clearer and easier to remember. So, on the horizontal axis, we will have the expertise level of the person who is giving us their feedback. And on the vertical axis, we plot whether we asked for it or not.

We can use this two-by-two to decide when to respond to feedback, when not to, and if we do, then how to. If the feedback comes from a non-expert and we didn’t ask for it, we can simply ignore it.

But if that was coming from an expert, we should consider it. We may or may not act on it but consider it. The fact that it is coming from an expert carries some weight.

If we asked a non-expert for their feedback, then take it as one data point. It means we must look at the bigger picture before doing anything about it.

And finally, when we ask an expert for their feedback, I think it is important that we act on it. It’s a piece of valuable advice, and we need to do something about it.

Categorise the feedback before you decide what to do with it.

Now here is one critical thing. When we get any feedback, whether we asked for it or not, let…it…rest for some time before it rules your decisions. For many years, I was rather too quick to act on any feedback. If someone told me something wasn’t right, I would quickly change things — without even thinking about why I did that in the first place. And I think part of the problem was that I didn’t categorise the feedback in the first place.

But even if I had done that, it is rarely a good idea to act swiftly in such cases. When something is a work in progress, and we get feedback, we must let it rest for some time. Then we clear the mind, evaluate the usefulness of that feedback, and finally, act on it.

Let the feedback rest for some time before doing anything about it.

Feedback is a powerful mechanism…for getting better and getting smarter. Just that one needs to know how to categorise it first.

Now…you know it!