Positive feedback propels you and your ideas forward. It is affirming. It feels good. We all crave positive feedback.
Not so fast my friend. It's important not to disregard negative feedback. Don't just embrace it. Don't simply grit your teeth and get through it: "They just don't understand. They have been around here long enough. The last supervisor/boss/CEO let us do it that way."
Nay: seek it out. Attach yourself to it and go to work against it. (Not against it like futile resistance--against it, but rather like generating positive results in tension with it.)
A friend who is old enough to remember watching a farmer plow a field with a horse (mule maybe?). Compares the process to plowing with a horse or mule.
The horse provides positive feedback. As long as you keep the horse feed and healthy it'll pull all day in what ever direction you want it to go.
The plow, on the other hand, seems to hold things back. It's a pain and literally a "stick in the mud."
But without it; no ground gets broken, no crops get planted, and no food gets eaten.
The person on the board or the team who never seems to like your ideas is really helping you break ground and produce crops.
And if you ever hear a member of your organization complain that if you ever want to kill an idea, give it to the staff just tell him:
"Hey, haven't you ever seen a farmer plow with a horse?"
2 comments:
Each of us needs a worthy adversary. The tension it creates, propels us creatively, logically and physically.
In my brief exploits at tennis, my instructor always told me to spend time playing against people who were better than me. That's how I would become better.
When it comes to plowing, we need to make sure we have a fit horse. And a worthy plow.
We might shortchange ourselves by working with a faulty plow (trying to satisfy the critics)
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