Creative Feedback: Friend or Foe?

At one of my many day jobs, I worked in communications for one of the world’s largest banks. Not my dream job, but I had an office, so that was cool. When I wasn’t pasting press clippings into photo albums with solid gold covers for a former chairman (a real thing that happened), I got to work a fair bit with the CEO. It’s de rigueur to demonize bankers, but this guy was actually very decent.

I was with him on one occasion when he gave a speech to employees. He told a story about how he regularly received what he called, “I hate you and hope you go to hell” letters.