{"id":63703,"date":"2014-03-07T08:00:02","date_gmt":"2014-03-07T13:00:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/?p=63703"},"modified":"2014-03-07T09:29:01","modified_gmt":"2014-03-07T14:29:01","slug":"accepting-and-maybe-even-seeking-out-honest-feedback","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/?p=63703","title":{"rendered":"Accepting (And Maybe Even Seeking Out) Honest Feedback"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Ryan Nitz, Head Editor,\u00a0INALJ Alaska<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Accepting (And Maybe Even Seeking Out) Honest Feedback<\/span><\/h3>\n

\"ryan.nitz\"<\/a>In my last blog post, “Job Hunter, Know Thyself<\/a>,” I wrote about the MBTI personality inventory and how understanding your\u00a0own personality a little better could be valuable in helping to identify opportunities that may\u00a0represent a more natural fit than others. Well, there\u2019s another very valuable tool for learning\u00a0about yourself and identifying your strengths and areas in which you could improve: soliciting\u00a0and\/or accepting honest feedback.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Before moving on, it\u2019s important to note that we\u2019re not just talking about any feedback at all,\u00a0but honest feedback<\/strong>. Feedback that only praises and ignores shortcomings or problems, or\u00a0feedback that is mean-spirited or deliberately only negative, is generally useless. In order to\u00a0help identify issues on which we can work to facilitate real, positive change, we need real,\u00a0honest information.<\/p>\n

I recently participated in a panel discussion as part of some leadership training. The main topic\u00a0of that panel discussion was work performance and performance management. One of the\u00a0questions asked of the panelists was something along the lines of, What was one of the most\u00a0valuable and motivating experiences you\u2019ve had during your career? Without exception, each of\u00a0the panelists described a situation in which they either sought out or simply chose to hear and\u00a0accept honest feedback from someone who could offer a perspective that differed from their\u00a0own.<\/strong> Digesting that feedback and applying the lessons learned from it to a particular situation or\u00a0their work in general resulted in improvements that the panelists hadn\u2019t previously imagined or\u00a0anticipated.<\/p>\n

We all have people in our work or personal (or, more likely, work AND personal) lives who\u00a0are perfectly willing (maybe even anxious?) to provide us with honest feedback on practically\u00a0anything, any time. It probably wouldn\u2019t take a whole lot of prodding to get the perspective of\u00a0one or more of these willing participants. You may even end up getting more information than\u00a0you asked for, but knowing who these free-flowing founts of feedback are and having the ability\u00a0to check in with them periodically is an asset, so it\u2019s likely an investment worth making.<\/p>\n

If you don\u2019t feel like poking one of the feedback bears discussed above, another option is to\u00a0identify someone whose ideas or perspective you respect and regularly find valuable, and\u00a0approach that individual with a solicitation for feedback. It may be that this person understands\u00a0the value of honest feedback, and goes through the process of seeking it out themselves from\u00a0time to time.<\/p>\n

One of the great things about perspective is that everybody has one.<\/strong> This means that you don\u2019t\u00a0need to worry too much about soliciting feedback only from, say, supervisors, or people older or\u00a0with more experience than you. Honest feedback from anywhere has value.<\/p>\n

The process of hearing other peoples\u2019 perspectives on you or the situations you find yourself\u00a0in, and then digesting that information and applying the lessons learned, will almost certainly be\u00a0beneficial. It may not be comfortable or necessarily enjoyable, but it will net you valuable insight\u00a0that can help you step up your game at work or in many areas of the job-hunting process (I\u2019m\u00a0thinking of interviewing and composing cover letters, especially).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Ryan Nitz, Head Editor,\u00a0INALJ Alaska Accepting (And Maybe Even Seeking Out) Honest Feedback In my last blog post, “Job Hunter, Know Thyself,” I wrote about the MBTI personality inventory and how understanding your\u00a0own personality a little better could be valuable in helping to identify opportunities that may\u00a0represent a more natural fit than others. Well,…<\/p>\n

Read more \u2192<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":57653,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[145],"tags":[69,3592,4761,6022,3628,3954,6021],"class_list":["post-63703","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-articles","tag-article","tag-blog","tag-feedback","tag-honest-feedback","tag-inalj-alaska","tag-ryan-nitz","tag-seeking-out-feedback"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/ryan.nitz_1.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1WoMK-gzt","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63703","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=63703"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63703\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/57653"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=63703"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=63703"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=63703"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}