[LLVMdev] Emotional responses to feedback

[kr512]

Earlier this year I was lucky enough to have the chance to 
speak with a very successful businessman at the top of his 
niche, and I asked him, "Clearly you have a formula for 
success, what is it?"

He told me his secret.  He said that every month they pull a 
name out of a bucket, and that person must then prepare a 20 
minute presentation explaining why one of their COMPETITOR'S 
products is superior to their own, and how bad and defective 
their own product is.  The person is forced to criticise and 
trash-talk the company's own product.

And then after the presentation, the people at the meeting 
prepare an action plan to solve all the 
deficiencies/problems that the person mentioned.  And then 
over the course of the month they do it!

Furthermore, for each deficiency that the person finds and 
the group votes as being significant, the person receives a 
$100 bonus!

Another curious successful businessman I once met had a PA 
(personal assistant) who seemed to be frequently criticizing 
him and saying negative things about him -- to his face!  I 
asked him, why don't you fire her?

He said, "That's part of her JOB.  If she DOESN'T criticise 
me, then I will fire her!"  Yes he actually had it written 
in her job contract that she must criticise him regularly.

When I had asked him, "Why don't you fire her?", that was 
shortly after she had delivered a fairly devastating 
criticism that shocked me a little bit.  She said it, I was 
somewhat shocked, but he wasn't shocked at all, wasn't 
annoyed at her in the slightest bit, wasn't angry, didn't go 
crazy, didn't deny it, instead he just said "Well she's 
kinda half right, it would be better if I did something 
about that".

A month or so ago someone harshly criticized me about 
something.  I didn't want to admit that his criticism was 
true.  But I did admit to myself that it was true, and that 
made me a little bit depressed.  Then I thought, "How can I 
fix this?"

And I pondered it, and then I worked on it for a while, and 
recently I solved it after less time than I had anticipated. 
And succeeding in solving it felt AWESOME, really awesome, a 
great feeling.

Whereas if I had deluded myself into thinking that his 
criticism was stupid, I would never have worked on fixing 
it, and that defect would have remained, I would have missed 
an opportunity to improve, and I would have also missed the 
awesome feeling of conquering the problem.

Clearly some people here feel very passionate, fanatical, 
and emotional about this project, and are consequently 
unable to read any constructive criticism and feedback about 
it without taking it personally and going bonkers-bananas.

But just remember, although I may say some negative things 
about this project at times, I AM ON YOUR SIDE.

I am not saying negative things to try to hurt the project, 
on the contrary I am saying negative things because I want 
to HELP the project improve.

And how do you make a project better and more successful? 
By being brave and confronting the negative things, and 
acknowledging them and SOLVING THEM instead of denying them.

There are dragons out there, working against you, limiting 
and damaging your success.  Don't pretend they don't exist. 
Don't deny them.  Don't say they don't matter.  Don't run 
away from them.

Be BRAVE and acknowledge their existence, and then run up to 
them and SLAY THEM WITH ALL YOUR STRENGTH!!!

That is how the most successful people become successful. 
They confirm the existence of their dragons, and they 
confirm that they are harmful, and then they deliver 
crushing blows until the dragons are defeated.

Whereas a weak or insecure person is scared and runs away 
from the dragons, and then tries to save face by claiming 
that the dragons don't exist or don't matter, despite the 
fact that the presence of the dragons is blatantly obvious 
to most of the people in other villages.