Does any one like to be told they were wrong?

I was sitting on the headland the other day with a mate. We were discussing our parents. I happen to know my mate’s folks pretty well and I asked him if he had ever told either of his parents about their most frustrating personal traits. He hadn’t. I had to admit that I had never done so myself. Feedback rarely comes spontaneously. When It does, we often tend to react with knee jerk defensiveness, excuses and alibis. No wonder, we rarely go looking for feedback. It caves our confidence. I don’t know about you, but I rarely respond to surveys and feedback requests, unless, they were so bad I have to complain or they were so good, I am compelled to unleash a praise party popper. We often don’t hear about the middle ground, an area with quite a bit of room for improvement. I get the feeling that Mailchimp, SurveyMonkey and Feedback Orangotang* are going to be of limited use to most people. I’m already suffocating in emails, junk and spam emails. I’m thinking that unless I can come up with a creative way ensuring people enjoy providing me with feedback, I’m going to try to build it into my everyday conversation with people I meet. I am going to ask people, “How are we doing? Is there anything that we could be doing better?”

Where do you get your best feedback from?

*not a real service.