Emotional Un-Attachment
“Don’t take it personally but…”
We’ve all heard this, whether it’s in a business meeting or a personal conversation, we’re always having to preface our honesty. Why? It’s because we live in a culture of “If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all” so we inherently feel bad about telling the truth if it’s negative. We have no issue with exclaiming positivity, but when it comes to criticism we’re concerned for the feelings of one another to the point it limits the growth that can occur.
Regardless of if you’re the most successful C.E.O in New York City or the secretary for a small company in Oklahoma City, there is always room to grow and improve. I truly believe you can learn from every single person you interact with, no matter their perceived worth in your mind.
This is where emotional un-attachment becomes incredibly important in the business world, but specifically within the scope of marketing. What we do in marketing is inherently personal, we’re pushing forth our own ideas and creativity into the world in a way that makes us vulnerable. The key is accepting this vulnerability before anyone even sees your ideas at work, while also accepting the fact that regardless of how many hours you put into something, you’ll only ever reach 99% without the feedback of others.
I find one of the most important variables in making a good campaign or idea great is the ability of those executing it to remove their personal feelings and attachments to the work. The easiest way to limit the potential of an idea is to think it’s perfect. Taking feedback, both positive and negative, and adjusting accordingly to varying degrees is an invaluable skill that must be attained.
As a “real world” example, let’s imagine you and your team work for weeks to bring a campaign idea to a client. Late nights, early mornings, painstakingly editing across email chains and feedback loops within PDF threads...only to have the client hate your executions. You can either take it personally, let it ruin your day, night or week by complaining about it and lamenting about how wrong the client is...or you can suck it up and take the feedback for what it is and improve upon your ideas.
In expletive terms, you need to not give a shit about what the feedback means to you or somehow insults you.
To a certain extent, you aren’t doing the work for yourself, you’re doing it for an audience. Don’t be the naive marketer steaming mad for the rest of the week because of how a client meeting went. Accept the feedback, pivot to adjust towards it, and move on! You’ll be impressed by just how much better the work can be when you remove your own emotional attachment from the situation!
