Receiving feedback is hard

I am very insecure when it comes to receiving feedback. I have known for years that I am the type of person that wants to be loved by everyone and I tend to associate a person’s feedback with what they think of me. I have trouble dissociating myself from the work I do, mostly because I usually do things my way and my personality and values end up being part of my work. If you criticize my work, you criticize my way of doing things.

No feedback at all received and I will start questioning my team’s involvement (do they care?) and I will end up paralyzed, not knowing what to do next. Should I go ahead? Should I insist for feedback? Sometimes no feedback is good feedback, but in this case I think a little thumbs up can go a long way.

A ton of feedback and I will start questioning my work. Was it so bad that my latest work get feedbacks that took longer to make that the actual work? Or did people missed the context?

Giving feedback is really hard as well. When people asks for it, what are they really asking? Do they want a detailed feedback? Do they want suggestions on how to go further? Do they want an overall approval and get it over with?

Before giving feedback, it is important to understand the context. Are we going for quality over quantity? Or the other way around? How long did the person spend on it? Was there any time pressure or did they have time to improve their craft?

Developers of the same team tend to know where to stand between accepting anything and providing tons of feedback. But that requires to spend time with your teammate and understand the context. But for example when the designer on your team asks for a feedback on their latest sketch, without any context, it is very hard to give useful feedback.

Think about asking for context before giving feedbacks if you don’t want to do more harm than good. And when submitting a work proposal, think about providing some context!