Feedback has always been an effective form of communication used by humans. It has been defined as a response to a person’s behavior that influences whether that behavior will continue or stop. In other words, feedback is information given to us that tells us how we are doing – the good and the bad.
When we receive feedback, the results of that feedback help us to determine if what we are doing is actually helping us work towards a goal. Deliberate feedback is feedback that is used for a specific purpose has many important features.
First, feedback is descriptive in that it based on our observations of another. It is also emotionally revealing. Instead of describing behavior, it may describe the feedback sender’s emotional response. Feedback is also evaluative; it can judge our performance toward our goal. Similarly, feedback can also be used to guide someone toward achieving insight on a particular behavior – this makes it interpretive. Feedback is a necessary tool that is used for personal and professional growth in the translation and interpretation fields.
In sales, marketing, and fields that require gathering potential clients, communication is also highly important for success. More specifically, the importance of a salesperson listening for developing solid relationships that can lead to sales is often stressed. According to some leading researchers in the field of feedback, there are three components to listening in the process of gathering new clients for any business: sensing, evaluating and responding to communication.
Feedback plays a very important role throughout this process. Customers or clients of business people can judge if a we are actively sensing and will likely provide verbal or nonverbal feedback regarding their emotional standpoint here. We are then able to evaluate the incoming feedback. This feedback can be verbal, nonverbal, and can involve anything from the client’s communication skills to their personal style.
In turn, the client or customer will use feedback from the salesperson to determine if they are trustworthy. It is very beneficial for a business person to fine tune these listening skills in order to be deemed more trustworthy. This reciprocal feedback in a buyer/seller relationship will determine the likelihood of a sale being made or a client gained.
In the fields of interpretation and translation, gathering clients is important if you are working for yourself or your own business. As such, it is necessary for us to be both skilled at what we do in our fields AND skilled as business people, in order to gain new clients or new contracts. Using feedback in the process of marketing yourself is essential.
Feedback also helps us determine if the “product” we are producing or selling is in line with the client’s needs. Gathering the feedback of our clients, through sensing, evaluating, and responding can help us determine if we are on the right pathway towards the goal of producing a piece of written translation work or interpreting in the way that is required.
The feedback we give is equally as important, even in our personal relationships. Most of our communication is done through nonverbal language, and we can communicate a lot in this manner. Sometimes we give feedback to others that we don’t intent to give – through facial expressions, body posture, and our stance.
Being aware of our bodies and the feedback we give through them is important for communication, progress toward goals, gathering clients, having positive relationships, among many other things. Feedback is a bidirectional process that influences us personally, as well as directly contributes to our business of gathering clients for interpretation or translation needs.