The thing about work is that we are all serving someone else. Your work really is what you do to bring value to the world.
What happens when you don’t get feedback? You really don’t know if what you are doing is delivering. You don’t know if the quality of your work is meeting expectations. Are people happy? You really are in the dark.
Without that knowledge, you can’t help but feel vulnerable, insecure, really unsure.
This is why feedback is a gift. For those of us who really care about our work, we crave honest feedback, so we can get better at what we do.
Giving and getting feedback is really an exercise in empathy. Giving useful feedback that helps someone do better, getting feedback so we can serve better.
So the ability to both ask for and give constructive negative feedback turns out to be a pretty valuable skill, one certainly worth cultivating.
