The Discipline To Listen

What I find to be one of the most annoying aspects of working with fellow real estate professionals is hearing arguments to my feedback.  What I find to be one of the most difficult aspects of working with fellow real estate professionals is maintaining the discipline to hold back arguments to their feedback.

Is the purpose of feedback to start a discussion, or is it to offer or glean insight from a different perspective?  If 5 agents tell us the front door at our new listing is a terrible color and makes the whole house look ugly, are we better off trying to convince them all that our client is an artist and we should all see the beauty of their work?  Or are we better off thanking them all and making them all feel like any additional comments they might have would also be appreciated?  The answer is obvious, but why is the discipline so difficult sometimes?

There really isn't any bad feedback.  That doesn't mean we should act on all feedback, because that would be impossible.  Much feedback is contradictory, because tastes and opinions and knowledge and perspectives and experience vary greatly among people.  Absorbing it all, though, instead of denying any of it, tends to steer us intuitively in the direction of acting on what we should act on, and not on what we shouldn't.  Our clients need our good intuition about what others in the market think, more than they need our opinion based solely on our taste.

Instead of acting on an urge to defend, how about pursuing further suggestions instead?  How about "Thank you, what do you think the best color would be for this door on this house?"