Gathering feedback

- Research shows emotional intelligence has the potential to positively impact performance, relationships and wellbeing. I'm Gemma Leigh Roberts, business psychologist and author. And I'm going to help you to build a plan to gather feedback and enhance your self-awareness which is one of the four components of emotional intelligence. We view events and interactions from one perspective, which is shaped by our experience and knowledge, but there are many ways that most interactions could be interpreted. At times we all have personal blind spots, making it difficult to assess our development areas and to appreciate how our actions are perceived by others. Gathering feedback from others is one of the most effective ways to unveil these blind spots. Asking for and providing feedback can both be tricky. My advice is to make the event of asking for feedback as informal and low key as possible so it makes the other person comfortable in sharing their thoughts. I would simply ask a variety of people that you trust the exact same thing. What can I do even better? This creates a safe space for others to provide developmental feedback where they're pointing out something that you could change. But the feedback also doesn't have to be delivered as a criticism. It could be that you're doing something really well, and you could tweak your approach slightly and do that exact same thing exceptionally well. Take some time to plan who you will ask for feedback. Ideally, you want this to be a list of people who you trust who have a variety of opinions and experience, and they've seen you in action at work enough to be able to provide valuable feedback. Good luck.