Peer Feedback

After the end of last quarter, I had asked my fellow class-mates for my 'Peer Feedback'. This is a fairly new system at Kellogg where students are encouraged to constructively critique each other on how they could improve on their leadership qualities. Unfortunately, it has not been taken as widely as it should. And I can see why. All our life we work on building our reputation. Now asking the world to find out what we lack goes against what we have been hardwired to do.

And I wish I could say that after getting the feedback, you feel much better. Far from it. You feel cheated! You wish your classmates had told you earlier that this is what bothered them. You feel you were misunderstood.... you feel humbled.

And yet, I feel this exercise is absolutely necessary. Better to know how you are perceived now rather than when you get out of school and in the workforce. If you are already in the workforce, better to know yourself now rather than after many years when you miss out on promotions because no one told you that you could have improved way back when you were up for promotions.

Another argument against getting feedback is that you are fine with getting feedback from only certain people. Getting feedback from just about everyone you work/study with will not be fair because these people don't really know the real you. If you ask me, it is the people who don't know you whose feedback you should be really getting. Even if you feel you are surrounded by morons, the fact is that these 'morons' are the ones you will be interacting with on a daily basis. Knowing how they perceive you is just as important as knowing that that perception is wrong.

So suck it up. Ask for that feedback. And once you get it, work on it. For if not now, then when?