ABSTRACT
At its most basic level, feedback is crucial to any kind of improvement, and writing is no exception. While positive feedback is nice-we all love a compliment-it is usually the negative feedback that helps us the most. Despite people saying, “I always welcome your feedback,” most of us need to work to overcome the “feedback hurts” mentality. Of course, it isn’t always pleasant to hear negative comments about what we are doing. Sometimes these comments hurt our feelings or wound our ego. Sometimes the feedback strikes us as, well, stupid. That said, let’s consider a shift in our perspective. Try this: think about feedback as a form of coaching. When we work with a coach, he or she is constantly giving us negative feedback-and we appreciate it. A golf coach, for example, will correct the way you hold or swing the club, and you are delighted to get the negative feedback. Career coaches point out behaviors that are detrimental to our success and we appreciate it. In fact, you pay for all these “criticisms.”
