Feedback --Just Another Label?
If you read my postings, then you might have picked up on my fairly consistent concern about using labels. Labels in general and how I witness them being used in most cases, aren’t particularly helpful when it comes to weaving more understanding into relationships. Instead, they hold someone else or a situation locked into an assessment of behaviors, ultimately giving them all the power in a situation, and relieving the label user of their own power.
A current example of this is: Narcissist. I hear this one used on the regular. It seems quite popular and well accepted as a description or even observation (which it isn’t—it’s a judgement of someone). I understand that it is quite tempting to just name someone and move on, yet using it leaves little room for understanding and sinking into the needs of the person you describe, relieving you of considering that knowing their needs invites seeing their humanity, and the possibility that you can see them as human rather than simply a beast of sorts. I’m guessing this happens because we confuse empathy (dropping into a needs-based focus) and insists that we in some way agree with what another person is saying or doing when this isn’t true. Empathy is simply about knowing the needs they are hoping to meet without requiring any commitment to understanding of or agreeing with their actions or conclusions. If there is any possibility of resolving conflict or building trust, this is the way to go. Otherwise, there is no invitation to true dialogue, let alone reconciliation, if that is even possible and a goal of the conversation.
Narcissist is a label in the current cultural narrative that might be too much to navigate for this writing. Here are some others: Sagittarius, child, hoarder, slob, undependable, hothead, lazy, unhealthy, manipulative or even wonderful.
Of course, labels are not all bad. When used as a starting point in helping us understand someone more fully, then have at it! Examples could be the very same ones I just listed above, Aries as an example might help me understand why someone tends to talk more than others, or somehow find themselves in a leadership role more often than others. Knowing this might help me drop into a more human approach to the needs they track on most, even if unconsciously. Hoarder may allow me to deepen into my compassion for someone who sees necessary items on the floor, when I see trash. Instead of me being upset over and over, I might shift my perspective of what’s possible in terms of navigating common space with a hoarder, without the blaming them for the distress I am in. If I hire an artist to take care of my accounting, I might be able to track on the fact that they are less able to move in straight lines or stay focused on numbers when their minds just go to the creative. Anticipating that a child will enjoy a sound bath healing, laying in silence for an hour and a half might not serve either of us, because they have a limited capacity to sit quietly. In these cases, labels are used to help me connect to the needs, rather than relieve me from having to consider needs at all.
Maybe this is too long of an introduction to the today’s topic: Feedback used as a label to describe simple communication. I participate in a number of learning groups where people get to practice their teaching skills and included in the process is the idea of feedback. I wonder what it means to those who are using it. Isn’t feedback simply asking someone to share their thoughts/feelings and experiences in relationship to what was just said or done? I haven’t yet asked anyone. I must have some sort of fear that my question will invite more distress than curiosity so I just leave it alone. Perhaps my writing about it here will help me find the clarity I am hoping for when considering a discussion.
In the context I described above, where someone is teaching something, or reading their writing, or sharing their art, and then asking for feedback –to me there is a bit of space, even a slight power over situation offering the feedback giver some wisdom or power over the receiver. Has more distance (rather than connection) been created in the narrative of I am not just telling you how I feel about something, I have some wisdom and my sharing now holds some sort of universal truth? Does a slight power differential now exist in the conversation? Typically, when in a ‘feedback’ situation, the offerer of the feedback is given a space to talk freely, without much response anticipated or even allowed from the listener.
On the flip side, perhaps falling into the category of feedback allows people enough space to say something when they normally wouldn’t contribute in that way. It could be that when they are asked for feedback they feel invited to speak and share their thoughts when if left to them to just speak up, they wouldn’t. The context or container of feedback might give folks more confidence that what they have to say will be valued. They might feel more confident that they aren’t engaging in dialogue and be required to defend their position because feedback seems to indicate just a one-way communication. In this way the label feedback might prove be a benefit toward more connection and shared reality, rather than the opposite.
Labels, including the word feedback can be used to create connection and understanding and used for just the opposite.