23 Oct Are You Willing To Give Feedback?
I received an amazing gift after last week’s blog. I shared that following our Straight Talk For Leaders event, I pretty much skipped the celebrating and went straight into analyzing what to change. Later that day I received a gift from one of our readers, Melissa Tompkins. Following is what she sent.
Barb,
I just read your blog and wanted to share an additional point of view that I started implementing about a year ago. Even when I told myself “celebrate more and stop focusing on what you want to change”, it didn’t help me change my mind set. Then I read about The Law of Appreciative Inquiry. In a nutshell this law says that if you can get your team together and talk about what went well (celebrate) and then ask WHY it went well, focusing on WHY it went well creates more dialogue for areas to apply these same things that went well. All of a sudden out of that becomes conversations such as “oh we could do that same thing with process X, Y, Z….” then before you know it you’ve addressed things that would have probably ended up on your “do differently list” AND there is a whole different vibe and approach to changing those things that feels more about replicating things that went well instead of “improvements”.
Just wanted to share….big hugs!
Melissa
That is a High5 and a Hell Yeah! Going that extra step of asking WHY it went well is the perfect follow-up question to keep us focused on moving toward what we want instead of focusing on what we don’t want.
Thank you, Melissa, for this gift! We’ve already implemented it on our team.
It would have been easy for Melissa to have the thought and then keep it to herself. She could have created a story that I wouldn’t appreciate it or that it wasn’t worth sharing or even that she didn’t have time to send it.
Feedback is just that – feedback. Or, as Melissa said, it’s an additional point of view. It’s up to the receiver to decide if it’s valuable or not. If we don’t share though, there’s not even that opportunity for value to be given and received. The gift stops with you.
Reflect today on whether or not you are willing to give feedback and share your gifts with others? GIVERS GAIN!
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