Who you turn to for advice matters

Everyone has an opinion, and every day, we are inundated with points of view and expressions of others. Whether it is your personal journey or your professional journey or your entrepreneurial one, it pays to hear feedback and reflect on it. But, it also pays to know that one does not have to respond to all feedback. Some of it is just not worth responding to.

Here are a few ways I use to filter feedback that I receive:

• Know yourself

  • Know your own mission. Be clear on what you are trying to achieve and why this is important to you

  • Be ruthlessly honest with yourself. This is not to be needlessly self-critical or self-deprecating, but be able to judge when you are drinking your own Kool-Aid

  • Does the feedback motivate you or demotivate you, give you clarity, or come with presumption or judgement? You know which to ignore :-)

• Know the opinion giver

  • Do they know you? Do they understand your mission or know your story? Are they simply sharing what they would have done for themselves?

  • What is their impact? What have they done with their own lives? Do others respect them? What qualifies them to advice you?

  • Do you share similar values with them? Is how they do things or how they treat others how you would do things? Are they known to be selfless or self-serving?

• Always challenge back - nicely but firmly

  • Ask them WHY that advice versus something else. This will tell you a lot about them and their motives or assumptions…

• Have your regular go-to-people to test big decisions and feedback received

  • Who are the sounding boards that you trust without reservation – family or people who have directly helped you multiple times in the past?

Absolutely NEVER accept someone’s feedback just because they are wealthy, senior to you, glib with language, brash, or have big a megaphone or status etc. – not unless it/they check most of the other points above.

Bottomline, feedback is a gift, but one that should make you a better person. ALWAYS!