Reliance on feedback is stifling your growth
Know the limits of that input and look for feedforward to grow
Early in our careers, we learn how to receive feedback: don't be defensive, request specific examples, express gratitude to the person giving feedback, extract lessons from even the most critical and unexpected comments, and finally, incorporate the learnings.
Then, as one rises through management roles, we are trained to provide effective feedback, such as the "sandwich method," exercising empathy while conveying negative (yet always constructive) comments, giving specific examples, and providing resources and support to help incorporate feedback into action.
This early and continued emphasis on feedback, both giving and receiving, as the holy grail of career development assumes that all input is helpful: that the feedback giver has better knowledge or skill and can qualitatively or quantifiably assess where you stand, that if you fix the flaws pointed out to you, you will be better at your job, and that retrospective analysis of your actions is the best way to reach your future goals. If you disagree with the feedback, you might hear that your actions must have improperly reflected your intentions, so you must reflect on becoming more self-aware. But is focusing on feedback-based development holding you back from significant growth?
Humans Are Idiosyncratic Judges Of Others
The feedback you receive is a better reflection of the giver's beliefs in which competencies are essential based on their own experiences and biases (e.g., "I was promoted based on my ability to tell great data-driven stories so that must be the most important skill in this role") than an objective source of qualities that would make you successful at your job. Furthermore, numerous studies have found that how the manager rates you on those competencies is better explained by the rater's intrinsic attributes (e.g., the harshness of the grading, unconscious bias, similarities between the rater and the recipient) than the actual performance, a phenomenon known as the idiosyncratic rater effect, repeatedly described and reaffirmed since 1998.
This unexpected peculiarity is why one of the first steps in receiving feedback is to consider its context before accepting and working on it. Some context is simpler to assess (e.g., is this feedback only applicable to this project, team, or company). At the same time, some are difficult to unravel, especially when they come from people you admire or your perceived skill gap to feedback giver is very large (i.e., "they must know something I don't know"). Based on your assessment, you may incorporate the learnings, which may only make sense temporarily for the current team or job, incorporate permanently into your repertoire of new skills, or ignore them (a much more difficult decision).
Feedback Is In Service Of Incremental Growth, Not Greatness
Feedback, by definition, is based on the past you so that the current you may act on them in hopes of doing the same set of activities better when the future you repeat them. Therefore, most of the time, successfully implementing the feedback will improve you incrementally, and more importantly, it may even prevent you from embarking on an entirely new level or goal. Because many corporate cultures expend resources on identifying misses, many employees become fixated on perfecting a skill, not recognizing when it is "good enough," and moving on to a new set of skills. While some growths are long-term accretive, only some feedback will help you acquire new skillsets required for the paradigm-shifting growth you envision.
Furthermore, concentrating solely on filling in skill gaps will help you reach adequacy but may deter you from learning what makes you excellent. For instance, at an organizational level, focusing on exit interview insights may make you miss the company's noteworthy aspects that make people stay. Practicing the piano solely to correct the notes you miss may mean you play every right note, but don't learn to play with passion and interpretation that would make you an artist. Of course, a musician should learn to play the notes correctly first, but that is only the beginning.
It's essential to assess which feedback is valuable and how much time and effort to commit to embodying it. More importantly, hyper-focusing on incremental improvements may be taking away from doubling down on your strengths, the skills that are more intrinsic and natural to you, that would differentiate you and make you indispensable. Prioritize becoming exceptional in an area that will set you apart while achieving a sufficient level of proficiency in other areas so that they won't detract from your strengths. You should spend the rest of your time and effort fortifying, expanding, and adding nuances to what you are exceptional at, the set of skills that will differentiate you.