One of the hardest things is to get honest feedback. In today’s post, I want to pick up that topic and share my own opinion and experience on why I love negative feedback. A few explanations before we start with the topic: When talking about negative feedback I mean constructive feedback and mostly in a business area. Never care about people that don’t have arguments when criticizing.
The starting point of the following topic is a situation many of you might be familiar with. A situation where you ask a friend for feedback about an idea, project, or situation. Many of you might also know the people that just blindly agree with you and push you towards doing whatever you have in your head. What first of all sounds great and supportive is really not what you want to have. In the following paragraphs, I will try to explain why you want to receive negative feedback.
Inhaltsverzeichnis
My personal story
I, first of all, want to give you all a short introduction on why I’m even thinking and writing about that topic. It’s a situation I’m very familiar with and that played a big part in my personal development over the last years. I started my own journalistic medium around two years ago and worked endless hours per day, mostly during the whole evening/night time as I was in university during the day. What I really missed in the first year of my journey is someone that tells me that I’m heading in the wrong direction, the completely wrong direction. That statement is not a reproach towards anyone in my surrounding, they probably also didn’t know better back then.
My original idea on what articles I wanted to publish was simply not working and I didn’t have the foresight to notice that back then. A single person explaining me why it doesn’t work would have changed the outcome drastically and also saved me months of (useless) work. That all sounds a bit like as if I would try to search for someone to blame for that but it really isn’t. It shall be a reminder to give honest, well through thought feedback when someone asks you for it.
Mind shift
Someone that gives you negative feedback is often seen as as a person who doesn’t support you or doesn’t want to support you. I would say one of my biggest personal developments over the last years is the ability to enjoy getting negative feedback. Every single time someone has good arguments about why my project is not as good as it could be and argues why some things are poorly executed, my interest in what he says increases every second I listen to him.
Even though he/she might not be correct, the moment you get well through thought negative feedback you have an outside perspective on where you could potentially improve your product. There’s little more important than exactly that. The outside perspective. I also love to just ask for feedback when seeing people that have close to no idea what I’m doing or what the project is all about. I want to hear their thoughts on a product they don’t understand and never used before.
Positive Feedback
Constructive, honest feedback and improvement suggestions can save you years of making your own experiences and bring you as a person and also the project you’re working for ahead enormously. People that always support you and tell you how great you’re doing, often don’t really care about you or what you’re doing. That might be okay as it’s just not their field of interest, but I personally would prefer an „I don’t care“ instead of a „You’re doing great, continue“ nowadays. That statement is meant in a situation where you actively ask someone for feedback regarding a certain thought or idea, not when it comes to general positive feedback, which is appreciated like little else.
Positive feedback and encouragement always feels good, but in the end, just doesn’t bring you the new perspectives that you’re hoping for on a business level. It’s important that everything that I’m writing here is thought from a business standpoint, not a personal one. Some things might be the same for both, but some surely are not in your personal relationships. The goal of every, or at least most, business owners it to deliver the best possible product. When it comes to my projects my ego takes a step back and I would always admit that I’m on the wrong path if I can help the product with it.
Output, my current thoughts
My current thought process when looking for feedback and also when establishing the feedback culture within the teams I work with, is to always try to make clear that it’s okay to criticize. It’s okay to bring up problems or things that can be done better, preferably with arguments and first solutions. Nobody in any team is perfect. Often team members are the best to identify and see problems when working on their own specific topics. Encourage everyone around you to give open and honest feedback.
Positive feedback from the outside is something that is always heartwarming and beautiful if it comes from people that enjoy your product. But at least for me, I will never ask anyone actively for feedback if I would just want to get a „well done“ and positive motivation. I want your biggest critique points and all negative thoughts that you got towards the project. Those are the thoughts that will enable me to see different perspectives and make the product a better one.
Closing words
I would love to hear your thoughts in the comments down below. The blog post is opinion based and gives a short insight to my thought process when it comes to feedback and could surely be extended by many different and other perspectives. Looking forward to reading yours.
Thanks for your time & enjoy the rest of your day!
I have no problem giving out some negative, constructive criticism but if there is nothing to criticize from my point of view, I don’t search for bad things. In your case, which is something I already said to you quite often which can be troublesome, is your high workload on multiple projects and you’re creating even more. If that’s the way you can enjoy your free time it’s alright, but I don’t think you can maintain this working times sustainably. But you’re the best one to decide that on your own.
I personally appreciate the work from esportsfire since I like the skin talks, same with the cstransfers as I get some updates that I would likely miss. These projects are not something where I can say „I don’t care“ as you said it in your post, but I’d rather say „keep going, continue“ because I genuinely profit from the information I get there. If that’s what you want to achieve, you’re good at it.
That is a good attitude and that’s also how it should be! The main focus point here really is about the situation where you want to launch something new or implement something and actively ask a friend for feedback. In that situation rarely everything is perfect as there are always aspects that can be improved.
For general feedback on projects from the outside perspective positive feedback is one of the most beautiful and motivating things ever!
Yeah my biggest struggle will be combining everything with my full-time university program. That’s a point you’re 100% right with and a challenge for me to find the things that I really want to keep my focus on. & Appreciate the positive feedback *Yellow Heart* – Alex
I think it’s often pretty difficult to give some „on-point“ feedback when someone’s starting out on a project. The one who initiates the project has more insight, has higher interest in the topic, knows more about it and what it takes to create the project itself. For outside people, this can can be like a hurdle to even give criticism since they don’t know about the details, so their criticism that they can give is just very superficial and tame, from which you couldn’t get much insight on.
My point: you’ll might need people who are really interested in the topic of your project and in yourself to give feedback that’s useful for you, just like the team members you mentioned to move forward. Many people also don’t know if you’re heading in a wrong direction with a project, so they are not even able to tell if they can provide positive or negative feedback.
I hope this makes sense to you.
Yeah, I 100% agree with that. But often that’s also the key. As every new customer will also see the page and project for the first time and needs to like and understand it. People that have no idea what’s going on within the project often are the ones that can deliver the most valuable feedback by giving an outside perspective.
It’s not about the fact that everyone should give you „the perfect feedback“ but honest thoughts if they got some. If they don’t that’s also fine. Problematic are the people that don’t make thoughts and just answer with „It’s good“ without even really caring about it. That leads you in the wrong direction as the one who leads the project. In that case, I prefer an „I don’t care“ from that person.
Negatives bzw. konstruktives Feedback ist das Beste was einem persönlich passieren kann. Wir dir permanent Honig um den Mund geschmiert wird einem das kurzfristig gefallen, langfristig aber nur einschränken.
Leider ist es mittlerweile aber so, dass viele negative Kritik direkt als „Angriff“, Hate abstempeln bzw. noch schlimmer der Content Creator entsprechendes Feedback erhält und ihm die Community dann eben diese Leute vergrault, auch das ist mir schon häufiger aufgefallen. Genau deshalb traut sich so mancher sich gar nicht mehr kritisch zu äußern, weil du direkt in Spektren einsortiert wirst, womit du überhaupt nichts zu tun hast.
BTT: Ich finde es gut, dass du der Kritik offen gegenüber bist, denn nur so kann eine gesunde Entwicklung des Contents vorangetrieben werden. Du bist da auf jeden Fall auf einem guten Weg.
Danke für die Ansichten! Teile sie sehr, finde es ist bei Social Media immer ein wenig ein „Problem“ öffentlich Kritik zu äußern weil da der Mensch automatisch gerne in eine Abwehrposition geht, privat eine Nachricht mit begründeter Kritik ist aber eine der besten Sachen die einem passieren können. Formulierung ist hier im öffentlichen Raum key imo. Grüße & einen schönen restlichen Tag – Alex