Tall Poppy or atychiphobia?

I don’t take negative or positive comments well. I go red in the face, and I tend to hide. I hate farewells at work, and I hate annual reporting time.

This year my boss chastised me for downplaying my role in something. I don't know if it is years of the tall poppy syndrome or a career of being told I am not equal to my peers.

Being a "special service officer" means we start from a different foundation. We haven't weathered the hard yards of a long abintio training regime.

Our appraisal system has also used rankings and scaling for a long time allowing leaders to explicitly list who are their preferred team members.

So, when I get feedback on my latest masters subject, I cringe inside and feel sick. The fear of someone giving feedback to me is real. I have this unease about standing out in a group. However, their greatest fear is my ideas are considered wrong.

The feedback was in 2 audio files, 8 minutes long. As it is downloading, all I could think was how could someone talk about my assignments for 8 minutes??

However, the feedback was different to my career of feedback. It didn't talk about me, it talked about the feelings and the results of my words, and how he felt from reading this blog. The feedback was informal - conversation like - even though one way. My lecturer talked about his emotions and the journey I took him on through my own growth path. I even shared the feedback with my husband.

I guess that led me to reflect on my own thoughts of feedback. I realised the one big thing that has contributed to my inability to tolerate feedback Is maybe the lack of praise from informal feedback. Too often we don’t say job well done or acknowledge our peers.

Maybe, if feedback became a natural informal experience regularly without the hype or pressure of official performance appraisal, I may not have developed such a response.

This has made me realise that I need to ensure I do the same for my subordinates. Because if I feel this way, they most likely feel the same.

so, yesterday I stood proud at my work farewell. I took the warm wishes and I thanked people. because that is what helps cure the tall poppys and the atychiphobia.