Seeking feedback
Sometimes a man stands up
Sometimes a man stands up during supper
and walks outdoors, and keeps on walking,
because of a church that stands somewhere in the East.
And his children say blessings on him as if he were dead.
And another man, who remains inside his own house,
dies there, inside the dishes and in the glasses,
so that his children have to go far out into the world
toward that same church, which he forgot.
Rainer Maria Rilke
Seeking Feedback involves asking for feedback on behaviour and being open to learning.
“Rather than relying on a feedback hierarchy, we should consider a partnership model that distributes power and increases two-way conversation with their employees. It’s a humbler approach called “window gazing” and “mirror holding to managing people that focuses on asking questions, not giving orders.
“Window gazing” is a process of see-and-tell. Ask two people gazing out the same window to describe what they see, and you’re likely to get a pair of perspectives that are substantively different but remain equally valid. Not so in the context of work, where the imbalance of power allows only one view — the leader’s — to prevail. That changes with “mirror holding,” a dramatic shift in the tone and trajectory of feedback conversations. Instead of telling others what to see, leaders guide them where to look. They engage employees in thoughtful conversation about their current strengths, future goals, and how to bring those elements closer in line.”
Our self awareness provides us with the capacity for Seeking Feedback.
The agility with which leaders carry out tasks associated with seeking feedback depends on their self-awareness - the accuracy and completeness of self-knowledge, including how well leaders understand both, their strengths and their limitations. This capacity comes from an awareness of the way leaders build capacity to contain and interpret difficult ideas and experiences. As leaders develop, they become increasingly conscious of their habitual behaviours, feelings and assumptions that escaped attention earlier and that, in turn, makes them feel defensive and discourages true self-knowledge.
Awareness of our tendencies toward learning and change and toward protecting and safeguarding, aids in expanding self awareness.
The self encompasses two contradictory behavioural tendencies - one toward learning and change and the other to protect oneself against the risk of change as a result of learning, making containment and interpretation necessary. Containment occurs when the context absorbs, filters or manages difficult or threatening emotions or ideas, so that they can be worked with. Interpretation refers to ideas that provide connections, meanings, or a way of comprehending previously unrelated experiences. By reducing disturbing effects and facilitating holding on to sense-making, environments can offer both.
Working with the tensions between affirmation of our identity and changing it, enables us to create spaces that can serve as identity workspaces.
Through creating space – collective arrangements such as that provided by a colleague in a moment of distress, a group where people examine their dreams, an organisational structure, a work method, or a prevalent discourse – organisations can serve as identity workspaces. Holding environments geared either toward identity affirmation or change by helping organise experiences in a way that they are tolerable and legitimised. Thus the quality of a holding environment directly facilitates the development of awareness of self.
