Feedbacks, otherness and compassionate listening
How to turn garbage feedback into a growth opportunity
One of the characteristics of content freelance work is the fast cycle between one client and another. A bad side of this is that it is very difficult to form relationships with these customers; the bright side, however, is that it exposes you to many different profiles of people and customers.
I have always received very positive feedbacks to my writing, since I was a little kid. So much so that my Portuguese language teachers were convinced that I would become a Journalist or Writer. On the one hand, it encouraged me to continue writing. On the other hand, it may have created a certain resistance to criticism — the famous ego.
However, I ended up chosing Engineering as my Bachelor’s degree. Not that it made much difference: I kept writing a lot. Still, in University, I heard a lot about a myth that engineering professionals don’t really need to know how to communicate. That is, Engineers don’t need to know how to write well and the concern about the user experience with your product or service, or even readability of your reports are “accessory”. Time has been showing consistently that this vision, at the very least, does not guarantee good business. It certainly does not ensure good relationships. So I kept writing, just because I thought it made no sense at all the separation between “Human Sciences” and “Exact Sciences”. In other words, I kept training communication skills.
So, I graduated in Engineering. Discontent with work perspectives, I ended up creating a career as a technical writer and content producer. To me back then was a way of keeping in touch with my field of formation while maintaining some level of freedom and mobility. And, perhaps a bit surprisingly to me, there has never been a day without some work. That led me to the conclusion that it is always necessary to know how to communicate, no matter the field or endeavor, but not many professionals seem to train that. Also, nothing in this world was built unilaterally. There were always teams, collectives and groups. If you can’t get your message across, you won’t even be able to buy or sell bread on the corner.
On the other hand, the way I built my career means that I am sometimes in the Communication / Creativity market, sometimes in the Engineering / Technical / Technology market. And, with that and the high cycling of freelance clients, I feel very confident to say — a bit surprisingly for me — that the communication problem also occurs in the Communication sector.
In this specific point, I refer mainly to feedbacks. This term, originated from Physics, describes mechanisms of regulation in organisms. The chemical industry uses this concept in Process Engineering. Similarly, Software Engineering uses these mechanisms to build better interactions with users. Essentially, feedback aims to change the performance of some interaction, whether machine-machine, machine-user or between living organisms. That is, feedback may not improve, but make things worse.
But in short, this view has within it a lot of the idea of a mechanistic world, based on more or less predictable inputs and outputs, with a more or less clear cause and effect relationship.
As a result, the management of a mechanistic way of thinking and acting will also be based on this vision. Thus arose the behaviorist or behavioral theories (those of Pavlov’s experiment) and the notion of feedback in the corporate and work world. In other words, much of what is understood as feedback today is based on the understanding that, given a certain stimulus, the result will be predictable behavior. But anyone who has had to give or receive feedback knows very well that this is not always the case.
In fact, the very belief that feedback is essential is the subject of heated debates. Some scholars, like the authors of the article “The Feedback Fallacy” say that most feedbacks do not result in improvements at all in performance.
As for me, I consider all the feedback I ever received fundamental. If one works as a writer of any kind, one knows that this craft is mostly learned through writing and being criticized by other writers. In fact, many great writers learned and honed their skills by working as a copywriter or a journalist in a newsrooms. That is, on the basis of feedback.
It has been like that for me too. I didn’t work as a writer in a newspaper or magazine (yet), but even online, if it weren’t for the skillful considerations of some more experienced writers, I wouldn’t have improved much (I looked like Mr. Spock producing content). The means change, the methodologies not so much, because even in the digital world, feedback is crucial.
It should be noted that many of such feedbacks were negative. In the sense of saying that my content was bad or out of scope. It didn’t feel good to receive those, but it was a case of negative feedback. How else would I know where I was doing wrong?
But here is where the danger lies: the useful feedback was very timely on specific aspects, and included context, not exactly suggestions for how I should write. This mosaic I had to assemble myself. This I consider “negative feedback focused on growth” — not on positivity. Growing up sometimes hurts, especially in the ego.
But there is negative feedback that goes nowhere and sometimes can even result in resentment and or losses in performance, jobs, etc. This is the worst case scenario, and it happens a lot. In times of crisis such as pandemic, these feedbacks can happen even more. Part of the problems generated by poorly given feedback comes from the lack of focus and assertiveness in communication.
As a writer, I need to know, first of all, where I want to go with my content and structure the text in line with this objective. If this is not done, the text will probably not communicate effectively and I will miss the opportunity to build rapport with my audience. That is, I will not achieve my goal and waste resources (your attention and my time).
But, as often happens, even in adversity it is possible to learn. At first, these poorly given feedbacks generated great discomfort and an abstract feeling of guilt. It was difficult to filter if I did not understand correctly or if the communication was not well structured or clear. Other times I was angry, a reaction typical of a wounded ego. Since the life of a copywriter is basically giving and receiving feedback and I had a lot of clients at the same time, you can imagine the roller coaster of emotions that I lived… in this tangle of emotions, I started to exercise otherness or alterity.
Alterity, in short, is the practice of putting yourself in the other’s place, understanding their anguish and suffering. It also refers to recognizing that there are different cultures, lifestyles, worldviews and problems that are just as legitimate as ours.
From alterity, compassionate listening derives naturally. If you’ve never heard of it, a good place to start is in this interview by Zen master Thich Nhaht Hahn with Oprah Winfrey about compassionate listening and deep listening. In short, deep listening is the type of listening that can help to ease another person’s suffering.
Not that I became a Zen master because I heard bad feedbacks. Far from it. Sometimes the conditioned response of anger hits me in the face. But having this reference point of otherness and compassion when listening — even if something unreasonable — is an antidote to the suffering that would arise from anger and helped me to grow even with adversity. It has been a way of turning negative-only feedback into negative feedback focused on growth. The focus of growth stems naturally from otherness.
Thus, my work as a writer exposes me to many different styles of communication and different understandings of what feedback is and how it should be given. Regardless, having a mindset trained to grow with whatever happens, negative feedback can be transformed. Also, an instant antidote to the suffering that arises from these problematic interactions is to exercise otherness and compassion.
Have you also had any incredible feedback that helped you grow or left you on the ground? I want to know! Let’s exercise otherness here =)
