Episode Transcript
So here’s a story that is roughly 2000 years old and somehow I think more relevant to modern workplaces than most of what gets published in business journals. A Greek painter named Apelles of Kos had a practice. He would display his paintings publicly while hiding behind them so he could hear honest reactions from passersby without being recognized or otherwise impacting what was said. As the Roman author Pliny the Elder recorded in the Natural History, one of his passersby was a shoemaker who commented that the footwear sandals depicted on one of the figures, basically had the wrong number of straps.
Apelles took that feedback seriously. He corrected the painting, made the straps more accurate. I think it was the next day then Apelles displayed the painting again. That same shoemaker returned, saw his feedback had been incorporated, which must have felt pretty amazing and feeling perhaps a little more confident now began commenting on how, for various reasons, the legs in the painting were also wrong.
At which point Apelles stepped out from behind the painting and said, in effect, stay in your lane, bro. Your feedback on the shoes was valuable. You know, shoes, you make them every single day, but legs, no. those are not your primary jam. This story is the origin of a Latin expression, ne supra crepidam, which I’m sure I just mispronounced terribly, but it translates roughly as not beyond the shoe.
Some 2000 years after that research professor Brene Brown said something with a similar vibe that has also stuck with me, and I think about this quote a lot. Quote, if you are not in the arena getting your ass kicked on occasion. I am not interested in or open to your feedback. There are a million cheap seats in the world today filled with people who will never be brave with their own lives, but will spend every ounce of energy they have hurling advice and judgment at those of us trying to dare greatly end quote.
Apelles and Brown are making similar points across 20 centuries. Feedback carries weight when it comes from someone who has been in the arena. Someone who knows the shoes because they’ve worn them or spent their life developing expertise on how to make them, or who knows the arena because they bled in it and feedback loses that weight sometimes entirely when it comes from someone offering opinions on territory they’ve never actually inhabited. And we know from the academic feedback literature that all of this is complex, right? Just because a person has been in the arena and maybe even succeeded there doesn’t mean all the feedback they give you on that topic is correct or worth adopting.
So here’s what all of this means practically. Most of us receive feedback from a wide range of people, some who have genuine expertise and lived experience in what they’re commenting on, and some who simply feel entitled. Often based on the power dynamics and systems they inhabit to comment as though they’re experts and some present as entitled ’cause it’s, it’s actually a way to mask over their deeper insecurities.
Anyway. The skill then is about calibration. Knowing whose feedback on which topic actually deserves your attention, your full consideration, your willingness to act on it, and equally important, which feedback to discard. So the next time you get feedback or advice from someone, it might be worth asking yourself, is this person offering me shoes or legs?
It’s kind of a weird way to think about it, but it might be a visual that helps you remember to separate a potential signal from the noise. You’ll hear from me next week.
Show Notes
Don't Just Keep Up.
Define the New Rules.
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