Real Time

So things I've done since the Advanced Course. Step two of scuba diving before the end of the year with a month of September being debated amongst a bunch of people who always wanted to learn how to scuba dive but never have. Every rotten relationship I've had over the last year has turned a page. Every day I feel more and more powerful as I create results, creating my and other's reality. In the course of my day I am also attempting to breathe life into the environments around me. Just to share something I think everyone viewing this could agree upon.



I was just laying out an understanding that I have about our inherent nature to let others down and the complex means in which we will hide this "just is" fact about ourselves.

The crux of my statement was that we take great lengths to keep quiet (thanks for introducing me to the Abilene Paradox) in order to feel better about ourselves, whistling our way down a sinking ship.

For me it all comes down to how each one of us manages conflict. I liked how McShane & Von Glinow (p. 389) pointed out that constructive conflict's success is reliant on a team's members being able to relate to each other without interpreting exposure of their faults as a personal attack. We are truly programmed to see fault-finding as an attack rather than a means of support. How ironic that every one of our jobs is based on a need to expose faults in objects or processes in order to improve results. Our job description says "find fault" and our relationships say "don't find fault".

My contribution to this discussion is to explain how I see feedback in the hopes that this idea could cultivate and grow as it is exposed to others. Feedback is a gift period. We all get awfully caught up in the meaning we assign to the feedback we receive ("I don't like his tone", "She's one to talk", "Of course they saw it that way", "He doesn't like me", "I'm going to lose my job", "They think I'm stupid") without simply listening to the words. In other words, we do look a gift horse in the mouth.

Imagine if we accepted presents with the same complex levels of filtration: "What's in the box, why is it in a box, what's the box hiding, they gave me a box because they know I can't stand boxes, a box is so unoriginal, is this box bigger than the box I gave them?"

But we don't. We may keep our opinions about the unveiled gift to ourselves (and we'd be a rude bunch if we went around always sharing our true thoughts about everything), but in accepting the gift, there are typically no concerns about hidden agendas. A lot of the time we are even given an opportunity to quietly reject a gift when we find the presenter placed a "gift receipt" inside the box.

And how brave. How brave for someone to offer a gift despite the fact that the gift could be rejected. How many times have we said "I hope she likes it"? As many times as we've said "it's the thought that counts"?

It's the thought that counts. Feedback should be given as a gift and received as a gift. In fact, the best way to show appreciation for feedback is to reciprocate.

Naturally, any one out of practice are probably not very good at giving or receiving feedback. It's the practice that could improve things. And certainly, there needs to be a strong level of trust to be able to employ feedback successfully. Team results suffer when feedback is held back. Resentments grow, and new imaginative and silent meanings are applied to behavior and conversations. Honest feedback can help a person see what it is they can't see themselves, and lead to additional honest feedback sessions that eventually build the team's relatedness and effectiveness.