At a lot of events I speak at, the participants fill out some type of evaluation form regarding what they thought of my talk. Usually I don’t get to see these, but today in the mail, I received a stack of these forms from a recent event I did. As I read through them, I would say that 98% of them were overwhelmingly positive, but then there was maybe 2% that thought my talk should have been more humorous, less humorous; more stories, less stories; more motivational, less motivational.
As I read through these and saw some of the contrasting statements, I wondered if everyone was even hearing the same talk! Why would one person say I was too funny, someone else said I wasn’t funny enough, and others say it was perfect? Go figure! But I guess I was reminded of two simple lessons.
- You can’t please everyone all the time. You’re always going to let someone down no matter what you do. You will never have a 100% approval rating.
- If you have a 100% approval rating, you’re doing something wrong. Yes, you read that correctly. If you’re doing a great job at what you do, you will always rub someone the wrong way. While I enjoy hearing how much students or leaders enjoyed a talk I gave, I also like to see those that disagreed and disapproved of some part of it. To me, that means I’m doing something right.
