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I pay my respects and acknowledge all Traditional Custodians of Country and on whose land I live and work. I recognise their continuing connection to land, waters and culture. I pay my respects to their Elders past and present.

Hey reader

I hope your week's going well. These last few weeks the world feels like it's a bit of a mess. At times like this it's more helpful to give your gratitude to those deserving of it, instead of finding those to scorn. Reminding ourselves to focus on the things we can control, the things we can influence and support the beautiful humans working generously for others. Do take the time to also make space for yourself, for self care, away from encircling bin fires.

“Spend as little time as possible talking about how other people are wrong.”

Tyler Cowen - economist

Last week's useletter drew upon on other people's words to inform our own work. It concentrated on feedback to inform how we might understand our strengths and how we might talk about what we do. This useletter I thought I might continue down that path. Seeking feedback for improvement. It's something I think we can do more.

I got you

Michael

PS: I'm very much on a mission this year to seek out feedback to understand how I can do my work better as well as serve you better. Please send your feedback through. I welcome it all, positive, negative, insightful, coachly, etc.

why feedback?

Firstly, I acknowledge that receiving feedback can be hard. Negative feedback is hard to hear. Many of us, myself included, also feel uncomfortable when receiving positive feedback. Half the battle is practicing receiving it. By not listening to feedback, you don't learn. By listening to it all, you might also not learn. The trick is to determine what is useful and constructive feedback. Feedback is the gift you can choose to receive, or reject if it's not for you - not because it's negative but because it's not relevant to you.

Negative feedback is useful. You learn something from it. You can identify something that's not working and consider how you might do it differently. If the feedback comes from someone that wasn't the intended recipient of your work, it's probably not useful, so ignore it. If your structural engineer tells you your planning is "poorly thought through" for example, it's not useful as they're not the recipient and across everything. If the same feedback comes from a client, that's an entirely different matter. On the other hand if your engineer is regularly telling you that your designs are structurally "heroic", that might be something to seek further feedback on.

The best feedback is constructive, generous and clear. Seek feedback to get better, to identify the right change, to gain further understanding, or to fix something that's not working as well as it could. Genuine, useful and insightful feedback is a gift. If you're not receiving the feedback you require, seek it out, be specific, ask questions and importantly make it feel safe for people to be honest and constructive - receive feedback with gratitude, grace and without rancour. If feedback is unclear or ambiguous, don't be afraid to ask questions and seek more feedback. Be curious.

Feedback isn't a topic that's covered in a few paragraphs. My intention here was to reframe how you might see feedback and to help you embrace it more. I'm concluding by quoting Brené Brown, with a more personal take than I have covered above. It's one for the courageous embrace,

“A lot of cheap seats in the arena are filled with people who never venture onto the floor. They just hurl mean-spirited criticisms and put-downs from a safe distance. The problem is, when we stop caring what people think and stop feeling hurt by cruelty, we lose our ability to connect. But when we’re defined by what people think, we lose the courage to be vulnerable. Therefore, we need to be selective about the feedback we let into our lives. For me, if you’re not in the arena also getting your ass kicked, I’m not interested in your feedback.”

You got this.