It took me way too long in my career to understand this, but in case there is someone starting out that, much like me, took feedback or questions as some type of affront to my knowledge and expertise, I hope this helps.

Feedback equals buy-in

I have been apathetic at times in my career. In those cases, it was easy to stay silent, and say nothing, even if I disagreed with what was going on. At other times, I might have strongly disagreed and it was painful to stay silent, but I did so for any number of reasons. In both cases, I would convince myself that speaking up wouldn’t make a difference anyway, or something similar. Whether or not I was right is impossible to know. In a few cases I spoke up anyway and was perhaps shot down, or ultimately ignored, and in others I was pleasantly surprised when someone listened to me and my feedback, whether or not it was implemented. 

When someone gives you constructive feedback (and sometimes even less-than-constructive feedback) at work, they are showing you that they care. 

When I use the term “care” I mean giving a sh*t about the task at hand. It matters little whether they care about you or not (it’s business not friends, folks), but if you can know that they are aligned with you in your work, and they truly care about what they’re doing, they will have opinions, ideas, and even objections. 

Learn to embrace these. That doesn’t mean you need to implement some or any of them, but you need to listen, and make sure that these individuals know you are actually listening. In fact, you need to listen with as much interest as you want these employees to pay to their work. Don’t fake it. 

Questions mean interest

We sometimes see strong leaders portrayed as those who are simply not even challenged by their employees or those who report to them. In reality, however, the best leaders encourage questions.  These leaders understand that providing the reasons why decisions are made, as well as being open to new ideas and opposition make their good ideas greater. 

I’ll give the caveat that there have sometimes been colleagues that have less than stellar attitudes, and sometimes their feedback and questions have been passive aggressive rather than constructive. I’m not talking about those people here. They should either be avoided or taught to respect the process described above.

Don’t let this caveat dissuade you, however. You will find that by opening yourself up to feedback and questions, you will have a team that is more motivated and will want to participate more actively, as opposed to simply take commands. 

After all, the value of a team is what the team is able to create together. While that certainly requires a great leader, that individual won’t have all the answers, nor should they expect to have them. A strong team that is able to talk openly and say what they think will give a great leader the best type of support possible. 

While it may be easy to bristle at feedback and questions as a challenge to your knowledge or authority, I hope you instead look at them as a way to make your ideas better and to build greater consensus with your team.