Feedback

Well, this is going to be fun! This week our topic is giving feedback. To put it a couple of other ways, offering criticism, and telling it like it is. It can be sooooo tricky saying what we mean to people; for starters, there are all sorts of reasons why we don't wish to offend people. We have concerns that they might be unpleasant to us, or fire us, or spread rumours about us. Basically, telling others our honest, warts-and-all opinion is a place where our insecurities can have a field day. So instead we end up being tactful, evasive, or downright silent. Sound familiar?

Most of us do this with at least one or two people, some of us do it with nearly everyone. But even if there's just one - your boss maybe, or your father - that's enough to undermine you and make you feel compromised in the honesty department. It might not even just be about negative feedback either - for example, in Britain we're notoriously bad at handing out compliments and acknowledging each other. And while we're on the subject, we're not much good at receiving compliments either.

Why is any of this worth doing anything about? Only for the sake of having clarity and honesty in the communications you're involved in in your life!

One last thought. I think many of us fight shy of opening up and saying what we mean because we've got used to thinking that the alternative is confrontation - one extreme or the other. So in this week's Life Clubs, we're going to be exploring ways of giving feedback that enable us to get across the positive, constructive messages we really want to convey.

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