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I recently had an extremely profitable exchange with the author of “Finally {} In the end everything will be fine; if it isn’t fine, it is not the end,” Joseph Jude.

Joseph published a list of some of the web based publications that are currently on his reading list and why he chooses to read them. As a portion of his list he was kind enough to refer to Elemental Truths

See below for our exchange.

Joseph says:
ElementalTruths.Com: Reg Adkins is a behavioral consultant. I found his early writings to be very informative. I feel that recently, he has deviated from his core strengths. But I still keep reading him.

This really piqued my interests in all the basic need areas of control, inclusion and affection. I wanted to know if there were elements I could adjust that would make ElementalTruths more useful to Joseph (control). I wanted to bring him in to why I had taken certain writing approaches (inclusion). And I wanted to thank him for taking the time to reflect on and react to something I had done (affection). In order to take action, I went to Joseph’s site and left the following comment.

Me (commenting on Joseph home page)
“I feel that recently, he has deviated from his core strengths. But I still keep reading him.”
Not that is feed back I can use!
Can you be more specific about the type of content you would like to see?

Joseph immediately capitalized on the cardinal rule of building web publication readership. He actually interacted with his reader (me) by providing the feedback below.

Joseph (replying in his comments section):
Reg: I didn’t mean to offend. If I had, my apologies.
To answer your question, I enjoy every article on behavior management and temperaments. I didn’t understand your experiments with water (and so I didn’t like it). And sometimes I felt that you posted few articles just for the sake of posting.Probably it is a dilemma between what you want to write and what your readers come to expect.

Keep posting your articles. They have helped me a lot. In case I come across any entries in the category of ‘deviating-from-core-strengths’, I will email you.

That was absolutely some of the best feedback I had ever gotten. Joseph was very clear about what he did and did not like. The control aspect of my temperament was ecstatic. This was actually something I could take action on to improve my work and provide a better product at the same time. And I had to tell him about it. So, I wrote the following comment on his site.

Me:I took no offence from the comment.

I am sincere when I say this is feed back I can use.

I spend an extremely large portion of my time building, evaluating and conducting professional development training. So, what I write sometimes gets colored by the questions asked by participants. Their questions can cause me to stray from behaviors and temperament into other surrounding areas and if I don’t do a good job of connecting them for my readers it can definitely look like I’m doing “filler pieces.”

The water cure experiment is a case in point. In one of the behavior focused classes I was teaching the impact of environmental chemicals and stimulants and their relationships to temperament came in to question. The experiment was an attempt to explore how someone with my temperament might react, and cope with an arbitrary adjustment in their life. I chose liquid intake because it was the easiest to explore. But, as you point out, I didn’t do a good job making the connection.

Elemental Truths is about the readers. I want to provide something of value them. When I get feed back like yours, it gives me an opportunity to do that.

In fact, I will probably use our entire exchange (with your credit of course) in a post about temperament behavior and product continuity.

Thank you and God Bless,
Reg Adkins

Folks, you can’t BUY this kind of open honest feedback. It is only available when readers like Joseph take the time to reflect about something you have done. That means they have no ulterior motive, it is an open, honest reaction. If you bread and butter is temperament and behavior, it just doesn’t get any better than that. Ted Demopoulos himself could not have contrived a better client provider exchange.

This is why I don’t understand how some authors can say they are about providing something of value to readers and yet have no method for readers to comment and provide input.

If I could figure out how to get feedback from readers like this on a consistent basis I’d be writing about it every single day.

Rangers aren’t the only ones who lead the way.

This entry was posted on Monday, April 28th, 2008 at 8:18 pm and is filed under Elemental Truths, behavior, blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.