How dislexia is a creative superpower, tackling the alarming rise in youth mental health and how to get better feedback
4 minute read
Friday Thoughts & Learnings
This week I've been focusing on how to unlock creative ideas to problems and I found dyslexia is a superpower when it comes to creative thinking. I've listened to a McKinsey podcast on the alarming global rise of mental health challenges for our youth and how social media plays a role in this. And I'm learning how to be better at receiving feedback and found the insights and ideas of Sheila Keen to be really helpful. Enjoy.
How dislexia is a creative superpower
Dyslexia can be a superpower for problem solving.
Q: What do Whoopi Goldberg, Richard Branson, and Albert Einstein have in common?
A: They’re all smart people with dyslexia.
Dyslexia is a genetic difference in someone’s ability to process information. This means a person with dyslexia may think and learn differently than a neurotypical person.
One in five people globally have dyslexia and most hide it from their employers out of fear of prejudice.
People with dyslexia are big thinkers. Their brains are wired to solve big problems and see patterns that others sometimes cannot — and that is incredibly valuable.
If you're working on solving a big problem and need some big picture thinking to make a breakthrough, ask around for someone with dyslexia and let them use their superpowers to help.
The alarming rise in youth mental health
Getting to the bottom of the teen mental health crisis
One of my children struggles with their mental health. It's something I'm highly invested in learning about and finding ways to help.
Worldwide at least 200 million children and teenagers struggle with a mental health disorder. In particular, mental health in young women is a significant issue.
A study by the US Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported almost 60% of US teen girls said they persistently felt sad.
Social media's role in the rise of mental health challenges for our youth is only just beginning to be understood.
This McKinsey Podcast Getting to the bottom of the teen mental health crisis provides an insightful look into recent studies and data on social media and online use pre and post the pandemic and how it has risen and its impact on youth mental health.
The more time young people spend online the less quality sleep they get, the less they exercise and have quality physical connections with others which are all important for a younger persons brain development.
How to get better feedback
It’s as much the responsibility of the receiver as it is the giver.
I’m working on getting better at receiving feedback. I know it super important to help you grow. Particularly when you’re in the early stages of doing something new and challenging, which is where I am right now with publishing my thoughts and creating learning experiences that unlock people and teams’ potential.
I came across the work of Sheila Keen, co-author of the New York Times best-selling book Thanks for the Feedback: The Science and Art of Receiving Feedback Well this week and it helped reframe my thinking on how to approach feedback.
What I learned from Sheila is there are three kinds of feedback.
Appreciation feedback – where someone is giving you encouragement. To keep doing what you’re doing. Like a pep talk.
Coaching feedback – where someone gives feedback to help you do something better or improve something you made. Like when a basketball coach tells you to move another way to be better at blocking a shot.
Evaluation feedback – where someone gives you feedback whether what you did or made meets a standard. Like getting a grade at school. This helps you know if what you’re doing is meeting a certain standard and where your gaps are to be better.
As the receiver of feedback, it’s your responsibility to know what kind of feedback you are seeking and ask for it. Or if feedback is given without your request, to distinguish it so you can process and learn from it.
The second thing I learned is to process feedback and get the most value from it you need to manage the triggers that shape how you feel about it when you receive it.
Our feelings about the feedback we receive are the primary filter we use judge the value of it and hence our ability to learn from it.
The three key triggers people have when receiving feedback are:
Truth triggers – where the content of the feedback is jarring and seems unfair unhelpful, or simply untrue. Where you feel this, you tend to ignore feedback that could be valuable.
Relationship triggers – where the person giving the feedback makes you devalue it. They may not have the credibility you think is needed or a previous interaction is colouring how you assess the merit of it, where if it came from another person, you might accept it.
Identity triggers – where the feedback conflicts with how you see yourself, it can cause you to become overwhelmed and defensive. What we tend to do when this trigger is set off is dismiss the feedback regardless of whether it has merit or not.
In her Harvard Business Review article Find the Coaching in Criticism, Sheila provides six steps to improve how you receive and get value from feedback.
Know your tendencies
Disentangle the “what” from the “who”
Sort toward coaching
Unpack the feedback
Ask for just one thing
Engage in small experiments
I’ll be using these strategies to help me improve my feedback receiving skills.
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