Sometimes I come across an article that I wish everyone managing/evaluating others would read.
What has bothered me about feedback is the self-centered quality of the act of giving, no matter how well-meaning the giver: the assumption that someone with their own history, biases, and preoccupations owns the truth, knows better, and once feedback is given, the recipient will absorb the “objective truth”, and will be closer to approximating the ideal.
As a parent of two teenagers, I am guilty of doling out well-meant feedback, and I have been recognizing how the feedback I give is often more about me than them (as they are quick to point out). I am becoming aware that my “feedback” is just my personal reaction, which they can consider as one voice out of many. I love how the authors reframe feedback as a personal reaction as opposed to a gift that you have to take and be grateful for and provide some really handy examples (to be printed out and put on my wall).
