Module 32 - The Importance of Constructive Feedback

Leadership & Personal Development Series

How many times in your professional career or in school have you received constructive feedback from one of your peers, professors, or business leaders?

Based on my personal experience I have received direct constructive feedback many times, too many to count. Constructive feedback/criticism is usually given to help the person who is receiving the feedback to improve or change a specific behavior or practice, realize own opportunity areas and address them. If you are not receiving regular feedback from your business leader about your performance and personal development regularly, then you should reach out for feedback. You as a leader should own your own development versus waiting until someone comes to you.

Why is constructive feedback important for personal and professional development?

Feedback helps uncover opportunity areas and enables you to focus on addressing those opportunity areas in order to continue developing and growing as a leader. We often tend to overlook or sometimes even ignore our own opportunity areas, partially because of our own ego, and partially because we hope that our opportunity areas will somehow take care of themselves. Well, the truth is, it does not work this way. In order to overcome your opportunity areas or leadership struggles, you need to uncover them first, and then create a plan of action to address them. That is why receiving and being open to a constructive feedback/criticism is extremely important in order to grow personally and professionally.
Sometimes you have to overcome your own ego before you can be open to constructive feedback/criticism shared with you by other people. We often feel that we know and see everything, however, it is far from being true. Yes, we know a lot if not all about our own personality, our goals, and our strengths, but we often fail to understand how some of our actions, words that we use, or our emotions effect other people around us. Therefore, it is very important to ask for constructive feedback/criticism from your peers, business leaders, teachers, and family members regularly.

Some of the steps that you may take to receive constructive feedback that you need on the regular basis are:

• If you have someone who you report to in the company that you work for, such as your business leaders, see if you can set up regular feedback session with your leader. This feedback session could be weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly, and can take anywhere from 15 mins to 1 hour. The length of the session will depend on your leader’s availability in their busy schedule. These sessions should be utilized to ask and encourage constructive feedback/criticism from your business leader about your performance, perception, and your professional development. Remember, in order for these sessions to be effective, you need to be open to receiving constructive feedback/criticism, which sometimes may be direct and may test your true willingness to learn and grow.
  
• When regularly scheduled feedback sessions are not an option, you may do a quick check in with your business leader when he or she have few minutes available (5-10 mins.), and ask for constructive feedback during those quick check-ins.
  
• In addition to the options already listed, you may also reach out for feedback to your peers in your business. It is equally important to know and understand feedback received from your peers. Being open to their feedback will help you to establish positive and productive working relationships with them, which should help you in your career in the long run.

What is the one critical part of constructive feedback process?

Of course, it is feedback implementation into action. Simply receiving feedback and being open to it is not going to address your performance or help you in overcoming your opportunity areas. It is feedback implementation and use is what should help to drive your personal and professional growth. An example of this would be learning about many different healthy eating habits and fitness exercises, and then continuing to follow unhealthy eating habits and do not exercise. Therefore, it is very important to follow through on the feedback provided to you in order to see the expected results.

Remember, your goal is to be awesome every day, not some day. You are awesome!
 
Best wishes,
 
Alex