The Gift of Receiving Feedback: Finding Growth Through Evaluation

How can we receive evaluation as an opportunity for personal growth? Kelly Aalseth considers ways we can invite God to use feedback to refine our own creative processes.

For the past seven years, I’ve been passionate about taking leadership training for young ministry leaders to a new level of excellence. I asked the best leadership trainer I know: How do I become an exceptional trainer? His advice to me was to ask for evaluation every time I train and to work on implementing the feedback from those I lead. His advice seems simple enough, but following it requires a high level of vulnerability. Letting my creative work — whether it be a training, a teaching, or a piece of writing — be critiqued or edited by others often means exposing my flaws and changing what I’ve already worked so hard to create.

Receiving evaluation also requires a certain level of self-awareness to be able to discern what to do with the internal feelings that feedback produces. I once was crafting a sermon and I felt so insecure about it that I asked for feedback from six different seasoned preachers. I had so many comments on my work that I was tempted to decline the speaking engagement altogether. It was too hard to sift through all that feedback and to find my own voice.

So if receiving evaluation is one of the things that makes our creative work excellent, how do we seek it out and receive it well without it overwhelming us and preventing us from doing what we are called to do? How do we engage with our own inner-critic while vulnerably exposing ourselves to the critique of others? How do we become confident enough to be willing to have our material be edited?

I’d like to offer a few reflections as I have been navigating these tensions.

It’s been helpful for me to remember that God is adaptive and vulnerable in his creative process. It can be theologically confusing to imagine God “editing” his own work — if God needs to change his work, does that mean his first attempt at creating was not good? I was helped by a conversation with my mentor, Jon Ball. He explained that this line of thinking is much more Greek than Hebrew. Plato saw the world in opposite absolutes. This binary view of thinking says a good God would never need to change, as that would imply improvement. But God of the Hebrew Bible is constant in his character, consistently loving and just, and responsive and agile. Like a mother with her infant, he reads our cues and changes accordingly. An example of this is in Numbers 36:1-9. The leaders of the families come to Moses and say there is a problem with the inheritance laws that God gave them. God responds by adjusting the law and provides a way to make sure the tribes keep the land they inherit. God continues to respond to Moses and adjusts his actions pretty drastically as he converses with Moses (Ex. 32:14).

I can be tempted to carry the Platonic/ binary view of thinking into my own creative work. If anyone suggests a change in my creative efforts, I can assume that means there is something wrong with me. I can tell myself that I am not qualified for the position or not worthy of being the beloved of God. That is quite the leap in thought given we follow God who is himself adaptive and quick to respond to feedback.

Instead of spiraling to these conclusions, I’m learning to exhale and remember that God, in his adaptivity, is vulnerable as an artist, because he is relational. Our creative work needs adapting not always because it’s bad or we are bad, but because we do our creative work in community. By choosing to be relational with others and to do our work for the benefit of others, it means we are vulnerable to exposure and to feedback.

As I consider these truths about God, I’m attempting to practice a few things as I seek out feedback that I also offer to you.

First, I celebrate my agility. If the feedback asks me to move, whether that means making some small adjustments or moving onto a different project entirely, that can be very healthy. It means I’m learning to be responsive and flexible and this is a good thing. I want to celebrate the movement.

Second, I’m inviting Jesus to speak tenderly to those vulnerable places. When I feel overwhelmed by the feedback, unworthy of the position, or just tired of constant refining, I let him come close to me and remind me that he understands the vulnerability of artistry and of putting himself in relationship with others.

Third, I’m trying not to let the vulnerable parts move too fast. I want to give myself space to create without judgment. When my internal critic wants to jump in too quickly, I tell it to wait. It will have its turn. It will help me move, eventually. But I want to make sure I get to create just for the sake of creating before I have to perform. I might need to wait an extra day before editing or submitting my paper. I can let the joy of getting to create simmer awhile before exposing myself to the world. I can take time to let the Creator express his delight over me and to relate to me in that creative space.

What has helped you to seek out and to receive feedback well in your creative process? How have you experienced God to be close to you in those vulnerable places?