WOMEN Unlimited, Inc. featured in “The Victorious Woman Project”

Stop Sabotage #9: Feedback

Seek Constructive Feedback

It’s so easy to stay in the same comfortable place, even when that place isn’t really where you want to be. Moving forward takes courage – it’ a victory. Yet sometimes you can work and work and not get ahead. Why? You need to find someone who will tell you the truth, and then you need to face it and make changes.

Jean Otte is the fabulous woman who started the women’s leadership company, WOMEN Unlimited. When interviewed for Victorious Woman! Shaping Life’s Challenges into Personal Victories, Jean explained the role that constructive feedback had during her career – the kind that enabled her to break through a glass ceiling in one company and, later on, go on to start her own successful business.

During her spectacular career Jeanne received many hard critiques from her most-trusted mentor. Though Jean admits she never really wanted to hear the assessments and criticisms, she also understood about her mentor, “he cared enough to tell me things that got in my way, that held me back.” Looking back, when thinking about how she didn’t always like her mentor’s constructive feedback, it wasn’t always a surprise. Jeanne came to realize that, most of the time, when a trusted person tells you, deep down you already know it.

Unlike Self-Sabotage #7, Let Go Of Toxic People, the trusted person (a mentor, sponsor, coach, friend) doesn’t want to keep you in your place for his or her own self-serving reasons. Her/his feedback is constructive and gives suggestions for how to do better – to more easily get to your desired outcome or goal. Constructive feedback is solid, makes sense and, somewhere in your being, you know it’s true.

If you think you don’t want feedback, consider something else Jeanne said in Victorious Woman. Jean wants to know how, if nobody ever gives you feedback, do you get better? It’s a point well-taken. Sometimes you don’t know what you don’t know…until someone shines a light on that hidden space.

Find a person, or persons, who will respectfully give you the kind of feedback that will enable you to get better and move forward into your very best self. The person should be someone you like, someone you trust and someone who is already where you want to be.

You can read Jean Otte’s story in Victorious Woman! Shaping Life’s Challenges into Personal Victories. You can learn more about Jean’s company, WOMEN Unlimited