From Feedback to Action

You’ve made it through the conversation. Now it’s time to act on it. After you’ve experienced a difficult conversation, it’s important to make the best out of the situation, otherwise it’s all been for nothing. In life, we learn the most when the going gets tough, but it’s how we use this knowledge that allows us to become a better version of ourselves.

The main mistake that people make when they’ve received some negative feedback through a difficult conversation, is they push it away. They don’t listen to what’s being said, and they deny the other persons perspective. It can be easy to do this given that it’s not pleasant to both face negative feedback and have to self-critique, but it’s vital if you want to improve in the future. By reflecting on the conversation, you can sometimes very easily spot exactly what the mistakes you made were. You can realise how to improve straight away, and if not, it still puts you on the right track that you’ll need to be on, in order to learn. If you don’t listen, there’s a good chance that progression is what’s going to be hit the hardest. If you keep making the same mistakes, and falling at the same hurdles, even after being told improvement is needed or the way you’re doing something is wrong, then you won’t progress. Constant ignorance is not a good trait to possess. It leads to toxic relationships, bitterness, and a lack of productivity. 

Retracing the steps you made is a great way of reflecting on issue. But it’s in this reflection that you can begin to plan. By looking at what you did in the past, you can potentially pinpoint areas that were weak, so that they can be stronger in the future. From this point, you can plan a different way of going about it. It could be anything. It could be the effort you put in to work, the approach you made to a relationship, whatever it is, if you’ve gone through a difficult conversation, then there’s clearly an issue, so finding, and planning a way to overcome that issue is the next step you’ll need to take. The only thing to do after that – is to do it. You can reflect all you want, make mountains of plans and find out exactly where you’re going wrong, but if you don’t act on it, then nothing is going to change.

Difficult conversations aren’t pleasant, but they are necessary. We all have to go through them at some point, so understanding how to approach, deal and conclude one, could be vital in making sure you learn from it, and become the best version of yourself possible.