The Fear Of Feedback

We have invested heavily in a culture that fears ‘failure’. We do not embrace well the principle that ‘there is no such thing as failure, only feedback’. We are taught that if you do not do well in a standardised test, then you have failed…Read as ‘YOU ARE A FAILURE’, return to the back of the queue. We are not astute at learning it would seem. Babies and young children are fabulous learners; curious about the world, and encouraged in all their attempts they are confident they will not be ‘punished’ for the ‘failed’ attempts from crawling to walking. What they hear is ‘Try again’, ‘Well done’, ‘Nearly there’. Not so much compassion through adolescence though. Virtually non-existent in adulthood. We judge, and judge harshly. And so we learn to hide from failure, from feedback. We develop a tough shell. We fear the day of judgment; of not good enough.

Just suppose that for today we drop the judgment; that you are allowed, for today, to show up as yourself, where you are right now….good ENOUGH. If there are things for you to learn, may you be open enough to learn them, if there is wisdom to impart, may you impart it non-judgmentally. How might the learning environment change if we were to embrace this as a norm? To not fear the ‘judgment’ of others but welcome the opinion that we ALL have room to improve, to grow. ALL OF US TOGETHER…Just suppose??? There is a saying that if I’m wrong educate me, don’t belittle me. With this in mind we are then free to all be the student and all be the teacher.