Feedback is a gift... but we don't always like our gifts.

My family and I have very different interpretations of gift-giving. My mum and my sister love shopping and buying gifts. Great, huh?  At Christmas time, there are hundreds of gifts under the tree. They love the joy of opening presents and seeing others open the weird and wonderful trinkets they have purchased.

But that's not what I like. I like receiving ONE thoughtful, valuable, useful, beautiful gift, like a shiny toaster... a massage voucher... or, you know, an Audi.

So, every year, I would get hundreds of little gifts—things like a cat fridge magnet with a hilarious saying. To be fair, very occasionally, there would be something useful that I hadn't known I needed, like that super helpful jar opener. And every year, they got ONE substantial thing from me. And really, neither of us was happy. They only had ONE THING to open. And I ended up with a pile of stuff I will take to Goodwill as soon as I get home.

Now, it's not like I haven't tried to tell them my preference—I have done so repeatedly—but it's the same deal each year.

Because I understand that they like to open lots of little things, I now need to go out and buy stupid, useless, polluting nick-nacks. But because I like to give something lovely, I buy that, too. It's all getting difficult, expensive, and time-consuming. But they are getting what they want, and that's what giving is all about. And, okay, I get the joy of... who am I kidding, I still get a pile of #*%@.

But it turns out that lately, they are getting better at taking instruction. I make sure I tell them well in advance what useful thing I really want, and that has been more successful. So, I am currently priming them for a birthday coffee maker in a few months.I find that when we rely on people to give us their gift of feedback, they can be unfocused and not give us what we need. And I don't mean that we only want to hear praise. I mean giving us a thoughtful, valuable, useful, beautiful gift.

That is why, rather than simply focusing on giving and receiving feedback, seek the feedback we need. Ask someone to watch how you handle something or to review a piece of work for a specific quality you are trying to develop.

Giving and receiving feedback is great. You need someone to highlight some blindspots—like buying you something you might not have known would be handy. But don't forget that seeking the gift of feedback can be very rewarding.