Process feedback with a strainer, not a sponge | Shanita Williams | TEDxAmoskeagMillyard

[Applause] it was a long day at work and I had finally come to the final meeting of the day and this wasn't like a typical meeting you know those afternoon meetings where you usually are in a food coma and you're looking at your watch counting down the time to go home nah this wasn't one of those meetings this was a very exciting meeting we were talking about something that was exciting happening within the organization at that moment so everyone was engaged at the end of the meeting we came to a point where it was decision time where we actually had a moment to think about what are our next steps and how soon can we get it done well the leader of the meeting proposed a timeline and I'll tell you the room fell silent it felt like 10 minutes but it was like 5 seconds to be honest with you so everybody fell silent and then all of a sudden a voice emerged now when I was thinking about why they fell silent it was because the time line to be honest with you it was really really short so everyone was like how are we gonna do this but all of a sudden a voice emerged in all of the silence and that person was looking dead at me and they said based on she need a space I don't think she agrees with the timeline Oh wait a minute did that just happen yeah that that just happened in front of everybody yeah it happened and so I'm sitting there in my mind going woah what happened first of all fix your face so I went immediately from like because I had to get this you know I had to like stop the whole room was looking at me so I tried to fix my face but had so many things going through my mind why would this individual say this like out loud in front of everyone and trying to think about that individuals motive and what I found was there was something happening in that room that I really had to take a step back and think about now I'm a professional part of me wanted to you know defend myself and say hey guy this is my face so this is just what it is but part of me also wanted to leave out of the room there were individuals in that room that I hadn't met for the very first time and I'm worried about what they may be thinking about me because of that so I stepped back and I thought about what was really happening because in that room while I was feeling as though I showed up very pensive and thoughtful about the timeline he thought I look like this and that wasn't my intention so what was really happening I had actually just received feedback now I know you typically typically think about feedback as a private conversation between your supervisor and yourself behind closed doors but the reality is feedback is everywhere feedback is simply information and it can be presented to us about our performance it can be presented to us about our style it could be presented to us about our intellect our children our passions our purpose and yes even our face you see feedback is complicated it's something I think it's complicated because you have no control over who gives it to you when they give it to you how they give it to you and where they give it to you we just have to be prepared to handle it when it comes but you see that's where lies the problem I actually think we've been spending too much time focusing on one area of feedback and not flexing our muscles in another when it comes to feedback we've been primarily focused on our preparation around receiving feedback you know how do you remain calm cool and collected with someone's telling you that you're not meeting expectations and you're not meeting right their goal how do you do that so there's a lot of research and there's been a lot of books and studies and training workshops I've even facilitated some of them on how do you receive feedback so we've learned over time to not smile and say thank you for your feedback right say it with me thank you for your feedback we've all said it but were you really thankful for it right so we've done a really good job of doing that in the moment but there's a side of feedback that I fear has been overlooked have you really thought about what happens when you receive the feedback they leave and you're sitting there alone with just your thoughts and there's there's an experience that happens around feedback that we don't talk about what are you saying to yourself after that door closes are you saying to yourself I'm not good enough are you now saying to yourself I'm not valuable that's the part of feedback we need to focus on because receiving feedback is all about what they say to you but processing feedback is about what you say to yourself we cannot simply focus on the act of receiving feedback it's time that we talk about processing it effectively I actually conducted a study a survey put a survey out and seventy percent of the respondents said that they they had either felt sad or had cried as they were after they had received feedback and I think we can all relate to that if you think about your life has there been a moment where you receive something and it hurt and you thought about it and you've thought about it over and over again in the moment you might have told them our classic thank you for the feedback but when that door shut you were questioning your abilities and maybe even your purpose a psychologist by the name of Robert Firestone calls it the inner voice the inner voice the thoughts that we say to ourselves it is pretty tough on us sometimes we've heard the adage you know where our worst critic well that inner voice can sabotage our successes negatively impact our relationships and prevent us from living the life that we were destined to live if we allow them to stay with us and I took a moment and step back and thought about this I said wait let me examine feedback when I thought about the pain that I experienced with feedback it was only 20 percent of what they said to me but was 80 percent of what I said to myself so it made me really think about feedback in a completely different way our thoughts and only our thoughts have the ability to tear away at our self-esteem our self-worth and our self-confidence so it's important that we examine them because the average human being has about 60 to 70 thousand thoughts per day and if we don't think about them and be intentional about how we're processing them it can be dictating how we show up and manifest in the world so that's when I realized there are actually two ways to process feedback one that's healthy and one that's not I call them the sponge mentality and the strainer mentality the sponge mentality occurs when you have an unhealthy relationship with feedback when presented with feedback we tend to come out like it's an emergency soak it all in and hold on to it we try to absorb it all with the hopes of acting on it and erasing any mess that ever existed now I know firsthand what it's like to have a sponge mentality my interactions with my dad were the first experiences where I got to learn how I responded to feedback there was one time my father said chanita I expected more from you and I know it probably wasn't his intention but for me I internalized it as I'm never good enough now I carry that thought with me for quite some time I carried it with me through grammar school college the workplace now as a mother of three I wasn't good enough that's a really tough thought to hold on to four years would you agree but we all have that if you were to think about your life and if I were to actually open your mental closet oh yeah I'm sure I find a whole lot of thoughts that you've been holding on to for a long time some of us may have been holding on to some thoughts for five days ago maybe something happened to you five days ago and you're still thinking about it some of us it happened five months ago and we're still thinking about it and for some of us maybe even five 10 15 years ago and when you think about that and you hold on to those things it has the potential to derail you to hold you back from walking in your purpose and leaving of living a full life because it's so heavy on your mind so as a sponge you can only hold on to so much if you think about it until you become oversaturated have you ever felt oversaturated before where you just had so much feedback you felt really really heavy and at that point you become ineffective and as a result if you think about a sponge over time they begin to erode so I knew that being a sponge was not the way to go so thank goodness there's an alternative I've been thinking about the strainer after 30 years of being a sponge personally I knew I needed a healthier way to process feedback so I had to adopt what I called the strainer mentality which is a more intentional approach to feedback this quote really sums up the essence of the strainer mentality it says mistakes should be examined learn from and discarded not dwelled upon and stored so how have we been getting this wrong this whole time we've been holding on to them forcing ourselves to remember the mistakes we've made ah we should be learning from them examining them and discarding them now this is not about rejecting feedback that you don't like chanita said we could use the strainer so I'm gonna go ahead and reject that but no it's about an intentional approach and being really thoughtful in examining a strainer everything can go in but everything doesn't get to stay so one day I found my I found myself in a moment where I was really overwhelmed I have felt this this heaviness to the point where have your eyes ever started to well up where you feel like what is going on well when I thought about it it was because I had so many feedback sources I had my wonderful husband my beautiful three children my team members my peers my teachers my family my friends even strangers on the road you guys all probably got feedback this morning there's feedback everywhere and there was a point where I found myself holding on to so much that's when I realized it is time to strain this thing it is time to make space in my life for even the good feedback if I'm so full with all of the things I've done wrong how do I actually continue to manifest the great things that are working so well so I had to let go of the stories I created surrounding people's motive when they gave me feedback because we do that their motive I focused on I stopped focusing on their delivery style oh they could have said it a little nicer than that I had to stop focusing on their tone why did they say it like that they could have said it with smile I had to stop focusing on the timing like okay they said this later or could they have said this after the TEDx was over I had to stop fixating and I had to also give myself permission to hear the feedback but not always agree with the feedback once I did those things it became so much easier to evaluate learn from it and let it go it was almost like that song let it go let it go not a great singer singing it doesn't help you let it go you're saying but I I was at that place where my body was like let's do this so feedback is valuable and it is important to our growth but we cannot grow from it if we have a sponge mentality we have to do more than simply soak it all in and smile and stay calm we actually have to be more intentional with what we allow feedback to do in our lives the strainer mentality helps you focus on the feedback and it allows you to let go and letting go is a skill that I think we all need we have to teach our kids how to do this on the playground with their chip with their peers we have to teach our employees and our staff members to do it at work we have to teach our family members how to strain it and let it go - at home but more importantly we have to teach ourselves our lives and maybe even our faces depend on it thank you [Applause]

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 103,096

Keywords: TEDxTalks, English, Social Science, Communication, Self improvement, Self-help

Id: jRnsF_L9atU

Length: 14min 18sec (858 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 04 2018