1. Not all feedback is equal.

8 June

Not all feedback is equal.

If you open yourself up to every opinion, you can end up listening to the wrong things.

Personal

Get the right feedback.

Early in my career I’d finish games and look for feedback from everywhere. Like a lot of athletes I was searching for validation.

The problem was that one negative comment could stay with me for days, while the positive comments barely registered.

Over time I realised I was giving too much weight to people who didn’t have enough context to help me improve. Their opinion might have been loud in my head but it wasn’t necessarily useful.

A really helpful shift came when I became more deliberate about where my feedback came from. Certain coaches, teammates and people who understood what success looked like for me became far more valuable than the noise.

The goal isn’t to avoid feedback.

It’s to get it from the right people.

Team

Feedback works a bit differently in a team.

Individually you filter feedback to protect your focus.

As a team you structure feedback to keep alignment.

The key is this: feedback has to be tied to what success looks like for the team. If it isn’t, it becomes a distraction.

The best teams, players and coaches don’t react to every opinion. They agree on what matters, measure themselves against it and use feedback to move closer to the goals they’ve set.