APPRECIATION DIALOGUE: Receiving Feedback after an Appreciation

LISTEN BELOW TO AN APPRECIATION DIALOGUE BY MICHAEL AND AMY SHERMAN, CO-FOUNDERS OF COURAGEOUS LOVING

What do you do after offering someone an appreciation? What’s the next step that makes this interchange complete? Certainly, you don’t want to make the appreciation sound self-serving, as if you were offering it simply to get something or to be noticed.  However, there is something you can say to create a deeper connection between you and this partner, whether they be someone from your personal or professional life.

Ask for feedback.  And receive it.

Now let me be more specific.  Ask them, “What touched you or impacted you about my appreciation?” Let yourself speak these words, or something like them.  This may not be what they expected to hear or what you expected to say, but think of it this way: you’ve opened a door with your appreciation – now along them to walk through it.

An appreciation, if fully received by your partner, is going to touch their heart. And this may stir memories within them, perhaps not always pleasant memories.  I know a story of a young woman who wrote a letter of appreciation to her mother, who happened to be an abusive parent.  When the mother received the letter, she ripped it up in front of the daughter.  She couldn’t receive the love. It touched a place within her that was filled with bitter, intolerable feelings – the same feelings that led her to act abusively in the first place. The appreciation shed light on those feelings.

This is obviously an extreme and unfortunate example, but the point is this – when we appreciate someone, it touches them in a human place, a vulnerable place, an honest place.  Even if this appreciation happens in a professional environment, the person receiving it will feel deep feelings, all kinds of feelings, if they allow themselves to fully receive the appreciation.  Let them have the opportunity to express themselves from this place and be received by you. Let them tell you what your appreciation stirred up for them.  It completes the exchange and allows for a presence of openness between the two of you.

“What touched you about my appreciation?  How did it impact you?”

They may simply say, “It felt good.”  Super.  That means it landed. That’s all they have to say. That’s all you need to hear.

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