Feedback is a gift

My last employer believed strongly in the fact that feedback is a gift. I did not need much convincing to believe in the philosophy. I have wondered what would have happened in Hans Christian Anderson’s “The Emperor’s New Clothes” had the little boy said, “The Emperor is stupid and not fit for his position”, or "The Emperor is fat", or "The Emperor is short" or "The Emperor has piercings" or “The Emperor has no clothes on”, etc.

Feedback is one of the most difficult things to write not because it has to be worded right and it needs to be constructive but because it takes a knack to write a comprehensive feedback!

For the longest time I thought the most important part of the story was the fact that the little boy dared to voice what he noticed… but only recently I heard an excerpt and realized that the more important thing was the fact that the boy noticed the lack of clothes. That’s the job of a non-biased agent to notice aberrations and suggest solutions.

One of the first things most organizations need is train people to notice aberrations and rebroadcast episodes into a 'feedback'. We learn to read and write very early in school but it may be helpful if we are taught the art of reflecting on actions and writing feedback to those actions.