The Importance of Feedback for Personal and Professional Growth

The majority of my career growth has come from the fact that I have listened to feedback. I always set process foundations and expectations for my team on how important feedback is for everyone’s growth and that I rely on it.

The feedback provided by your leadership and the team is for you to incorporate and do better. Considering you work under outstanding supervision by listening (and actioning) to feedback from different parts of the organization, you’ll see your career trajectory take off. And it’s not that top-down (coming from leadership) feedback is more critical; bottom-up (coming from your team) is equally essential.

The feedback is a gift. I often see, and even did it myself, that people ignore the feedback and don’t take it seriously. The person providing the feedback is trying to help you to be successful. If you ignore the feedback one, two, or three times, you either are not listening or do not care; both are terrible, and you will likely have a grown-up conversation next. Furthermore, you become stagnant in advancing your career and influence.

Feedback is essential for personal and professional growth. As a leader, use feedback to improve teams’ focus and results. Let’s talk about the foremost of the feedback:

• Positive feedback is easy to give and is a form of praise.
• Constructive feedback is often avoided and should be pattern-matched first.
• Feedback should always be bidirectional.

Positive feedback (praise)

Do this often and on a regular cadence. Make praise and appreciation a daily habit to build your praise and appreciation muscle. It takes 5 minutes to write an email to praise a friend or co‐worker for any progress they’ve recently made on a personal or professional goal. Make it individual and specific; tell them what impresses you most.

I always use the Kudos exercise during the weekly Dev Hour meeting. We go across the room, and every person gives Kudos (praise) to another team member for anything they did that week.

One should not underestimate frequent praise-giving; it’s one of the two most important habits when influencing people, as per “How to win friends and influence people” by Dale Carnegie book.

Constructive feedback

Most young leaders, and to be fair, a good share of seasoned managers, are reluctant to give constructive feedback. It might feel like a challenging conversation, but it’s just two adults discussing ways to better themselves. One should welcome constructive feedback, which should be timely and delivered well.

If you give constructive feedback prematurely, you might send the wrong signal to the person and the team. Try pattern matching instead. Let’s say you observe a behaviour you would like to improve. One time does not necessarily need feedback; however, if the behaviour is consistent, you can verify it with other team members, that likely needs course-correcting feedback.

People talk and talk often; there’s a lot of noise regarding opinions. External factors can influence beliefs, and they tend to change frequently at a team level. Ensure you get to the crux of the most important stuff for your team. Be very thoughtful when you give constructive feedback. The result is a corrected course; ensure it’s the right direction for the person or the group.

Feedback is bidirectional

Often managers presume that they are the ones who should be giving feedback; hence they tend to provide feedback in a single direction and are not open to receiving a feedback back from the team. Along with the benefits of generating trust and helping you grow as a leader, it also makes constructive feedback sessions easier.

Try opening the session by asking for feedback: “Hey, Steve do you have any specific feedback for me?”. Likely the person you are talking to will turn around and say: “Hey Mike, do you have any feedback for me?” which is your cue to deliver, hopefully, prepared well-thought-out, pattern-matched constructive feedback.