All automated systems rely on feedback loops to sustain accuracy and repeatability. These loops compare results against system settings, and adjust variables to ensure alignment and expected performance.
Then, when change compels a system’s performance to improve, there’s a ready baseline of consistent data against which to measure and generate improved results. It’s a logical, unemotional process that delivers higher performance.
The performance of people is similarly subject to unrelenting change that disrupts their status quo. And because the workings of people are more complex than those of a system, progress depends on helping people discover how they are currently making a difference, and how their future impact can be magnified by reacting with agility to change.
Gathering feedback from others is an essential tool for exercising agility. It projects what others see and advises precisely what they want or need. Once the feedback is given, the choice is to accept or reject it.
Leveraging feedback to improve performance drives learning and growth. Reacting positively to it conveys respect for those who provided the feedback, converting vulnerability into credibility. And key relationships, the lifeblood of business and of life, are strengthened.
The outright rejection of feedback using argument or ingratitude typically results in no further feedback being given. It’s a lost discovery and improvement opportunity. And if the feedback is from a customer or prospect, then rejecting it likely means the decay of trust and the end of the relationship.
Feedback can improve performance and satisfaction; denying it risks decline and loss.
How has feedback guided your development?
