How often do you ask for feedback, and what is your intention in receiving it?

While it’s useful to receive feedback, you don’t need feedback to feel good about yourself.

Choose to be the best you can in your position at work because you want to, not because you need to, to feel good about yourself.

Three Top Tips about your intention in asking for Feedback:

1. Ask for Acknowledgement Feedback if your intention is to stay motivated.

2. Ask for Evaluation Feedback to find out how you are going according to expectations.

3. Ask for Guidance Feedback to improve your performance in the future.

Don’t ask for feedback for validation as a human, or to feel good about yourself.

Trying to gain a sense of value as a person through feedback from others based on your behaviours and performance is risky and disempowering. It doesn’t work (I’ve tried it!). It puts your own sense of worth into someone else’s hands, and even if you do get ‘Acknowledgment Feedback’, your sense of worth as a person will only last until the next task presents itself. This means every task is a threat to your worth as a person - exhausting! Get off that esteem roller coaster!

A challenge for you this week:

Ask someone whose opinion you value for feedback with the intention to strive for excellence in a healthy, continuous improvement kind of way. Don’t rely on ‘positive’ feedback to feel good about yourself or allow ‘negative’ feedback to ‘make you feel bad about yourself.’ This is disempowered thinking, and you deserve better than that.