Receiving Feedback, Problem #1
Whether you’re a C-Suite executive or an entry-level employee, being receptive to feedback is a highly-beneficial skill.
And I, uh…really hope that that goes without saying.
But if you want me to convince you on why being receptive to feedback is so beneficial, here you go:
For one, feedback itself can obviously help you grow, improve, and gain better results. For another, the act of being receptive to feedback can increase followership and influence, as others will find you easy to get along with and work alongside. Ideally, feedback also boosts your self-awareness, as you gain a more honed intuition for what is “good work” and what is “bad work”. And finally, at the very least, for the sake of PR, showing even artificial interest in feedback expresses humility and collaboration and teachability and all of those great and beloved personal traits that we all love to see, woo. (I do, however, recommend that you strive to express said personal traits genuinely, rather than insincerely. Faking good leadership leads to scandals. Stay out of the headlines, kids.)
Anyway, all of that to say: any leadership and team development coach worth their weight in salt will tell you that being receptive to feedback is good.
Yet. Also. At the same time.
Anyone who has breathed air for longer than a handful of years will also be able to tell you: the benefits of receiving feedback are dependent on the fact that the feedback you receive is good feedback.
Which…it isn’t always.
(See: Your stereotypical disgruntled consumer saying your coffee shop’s latte recipe is cacca because his drink came out 2 degrees hotter than they make it in Italia. Or your boss telling you that the only way to climb in your company is to steal your coworker’s credit when presenting work to the directors. Or a slightly-business-illiterate employee campaigning about how you’ve built an evil corporation because you’re for-profit in a traditionally non-profit space. Uhhh…)
Not all feedback is good feedback. Not everyone will give you feedback for the right reasons.
The benefits of receiving feedback are also dependent on the fact that the feedback you receive is coming from someone with your best interests in mind.
Which…is also not always true.
(See: A boss telling you not to hog so much airspace during meetings - because, in his mind, you’ve begun to outshine him. Or a tantruming customer foaming at the mouth about how rude and unbearable your customer service representative was - after compensation for falsified injuries was not granted. Or even the manipulative psychological attack of a coworker suggesting that you should try to be friendlier in the office - because “well, other people were talking about you behind your back” and “I didn’t want you to find out from them” and “I’m really just looking out for you”. UhhhHHH… HELP.)
In summary, are we supposed to be receptive to be feedback? Yup. But not all feedback is good feedback? Yes. And not everyone will give us feedback for the right reasons? Of course.
Then should we be receptive to all feedback? Weeell, in my opinion, we ought to always receive the feedback. The question is: do we always need to act on the feedback? And the answer to that, in my opinion, is a resounding no. At times, I think it is 100% valid, healthy, and necessary to receive feedback, think about it for a bit, and then eventually decide to Kobe that bad-boy straight into the waste bin. Unless if you’ve taken every single word of advice given to you since the day you were born - functionally, you do too.
Which now brings us to today’s dilemma.
Here’s problem #1 with receiving feedback:
How do you reject bad feedback without giving others the perception that you are generally unreceptive to feedback?
No one wants to be known as defensive, closed off, unteachable, arrogant, hypersensitive, etc. But also, no one wants to take bad, ill-fitted, biased, self-centered, or exploitative feedback either. (‘least, I ain’t ever met ‘em.)
Here is what I recommend as a solution to this problem.
(Please note: this is actually the response that I’d recommend you give to all feedback, whether you think that the feedback is good, bad, ugly, mixed, hilarious - or whatever. I say this, because (at some point, maybe next month) I’ll write about problem #2 with receiving feedback, which is that… Immediately after receiving feedback, you very rarely know with any level of accuracy if the feedback you just received is good or bad. (You may have a gut hunch, but the whole point of feedback is that it illuminates blindspots, so you really can’t and shouldn’t ever trust your initial take on feedback. I’ll give a recommended solution for that problem in the next installment of The Soapbox; stay tuned.) For now, just know that I strongly advise giving a consistent response to feedback, regardless of what your initial take on it is.)
1. Listen attentively, patiently, and impersonally to the feedback as it’s being shared.
I do not care if the feedback comes across like someone is telling you to chuck your pet dog of nine years off of a bridge into crocodile-infested waters.
Just. Listen.
“Attentively”: This word means keeping a neutral and nonjudgmental face, internally disrupting all innate judgments that might come to mind, nodding, giving your full attention (i.e. not getting distracted on your phone or zoning out of the conversation by staring out of the window), and keeping an open posture.
“Patiently”: I’ve seen some leaders act like, if they don’t immediately, vocally, vehemently disagree with bad feedback (even to the point of interrupting the speaker), they will be consigning themselves to obey every word of the feedback they just heard. I am happy to inform you now: there is no such law. Merrily, I proclaim: listening until the sharer is finished does not auto-force you to agree. Listening just means that you’re…listening, yay.
“Impersonally”: If your direct report suggests you need to chuck your pet dog of nine years off of a bridge into crocodile-infested waters, you may be tempted to think things like: “Wow, how dare you? Who do you think I am? Some kind of animal abuser? You think I’m a cruel, twisted, sick person, don’t you? Why else would you suggest I chuck my pet dog of nine years off of a bridge into crocodile-infested waters, huh?!”
Well, don’t go that way. If those thoughts come to mind, stop them. Tell yourself to withhold judgment for the time being. Force yourself to listen to the actual feedback, without making assumptions about what the sharer is trying to imply about you. Also, if it helps, remember that if someone wanted to attack your personhood, they’d likely just do so either fully directly or fully indirectly. (Some people do go out of their way to make up legitimate-sounding reasons to sneakily aggress you, but…they’re both rare and confused people. Much, much easier and more common to just tell you off straight to your face or slander you completely behind your back.)
To note: if the whole issue with problem #1 essentially boils down to perception-management (i.e. not wanting to be perceived as unreceptive to feedback), then, by not listening, you’re already shooting yourself in the foot. To come across as receptive to feedback, you have to actually succeed at receiving the feedback. Again, what you do with the feedback once you’ve received it - that’s a different matter. Just get past the gosh-dang finish line first.
2. Thank the sharer for the feedback.
Literally smile, nod once, and say, “Thank you so much for sharing that with me.”
If you’re receiving feedback from someone who has less positional authority than you, you also should thank her for the courage it took to share her thoughts with you. Being in a power-down position makes providing genuine feedback a slightly nerve-wracking process, for reasons I talk about in this post on Servant Leadership. If it happened at all (again, I do not care if she’s way off the mark and wants you to, I don’t know, start wearing a Barney costume to team meetings), just express your thankfulness. She might be suggesting something ridiculous today, but her feedback tomorrow might change your career forever for the good. You don’t know, and (especially in light of today’s problem #1) you certainly want to be known as someone who encourages the flow of feedback, not as someone who stifles it.
3. Ask the sharer if you can repeat back what you heard her say (regardless of whether you think it’s true, reasonable, etc) to make sure you understand. If you didn’t understand, keep clarifying what you don’t get until she is confident you understand.
So far, we have: [insert attentive, patient, impersonal listening] > “Wow, thank you so much for sharing that feedback with me. I understand that it can be really scary to bring up issues like this to your boss. Thank you so much for still taking that risk with me.”
Now, we add: “I want to make sure I really understand what you’re saying. Can I repeat back what I just heard, and you tell me if I’m off the mark?”
Then give it your best active-listening-skills attempt. (I’m not going to break down active listening here, because there are a million resources online that already do so, like this one from MIT’s Human Resources.) If you did a good job in step 1, this step should be very straightforward: “Sounds like you want me to take my pet dog, find a river infested with crocodiles, and then throw my dog into the river. If that’s not correct, can you tell me what I’m missing please?”
Allow the sharer to make edits: “Yeah, that’s mostly correct. I…um, just want to make sure you do it from a bridge, not from the river’s edge.”
Keep reflecting until you succeed: “Ah, sorry, you did say that. So…take two: I need to grab my pet dog and find a river infested with crocodiles that also has a bridge. Then I need to get onto that bridge, and then I throw my dog into the river from the bridge. Am I correct that time?”
“Yes, that’s correct!”
4. Tell the sharer you are not going to give an answer immediately because you need time to consider and look into the feedback.
Please note: at this point, we still have given absolutely no indication on if we are going to accept or reject the feedback.
We’re simply trying to succeed in the process of receiving the feedback.
To that end, now is the time to say: “Great, I’m glad I understand what you’re saying. Look, I want to be super transparent with you: as a boundary, I personally do not respond to feedback immediately. I’m sorry if that affects you. Because I take feedback very seriously, I always want some time to consider it, look into it, reflect on it, mull over it, get extra counsel on it - all of that good stuff. When I’m done with that process, I may circle back with you, or I may not, if it’s most appropriate that peers or folks above me are the ones to hold me accountable on what you suggested - just depends. Either way, I give you my word that I will set aside time to truly, thoughtfully consider your feedback.”
(In the next installment of The Soapbox, I’ll explain why this step is not simply for politics and appearances. You actually should set aside time to consider the feedback you’re given, even if you think it’s hogwash.)
Most people who give feedback expect pushback to their feedback. They’re usually ready to have to explain themselves, wrangle with your defensiveness, placate you, etc. By comparison, a response that welcomes feedback and seeks to take it seriously will be well-received.
5. As you close the discussion, thank the sharer again.
“Is there anything else you’d like to tell me? If not, thank you again so much for bringing me this feedback. I genuinely appreciate it.”
6. Leave; do your research. Discard the feedback if it’s bad; internalize the feedback it’s good.
I’ll hash out this process fully in our (at this point) highly-anticipated next post on receiving feedback. For now, just know that there is a lot of value in genuinely considering all feedback, even feedback from your enemies or belittling feedback that you feel does not fit you at all. At the end of the day, you can always discard the feedback. But particularly if you’re a leader, we owe it to the people around us who support us and help us to at least weigh the advice!
I’m going to include a very small addendum for a slightly rare case that is unfortunately not quite rare enough to make this addendum unnecessary. Occasionally, you’ll have a very sweet, very kind leader who really wants to listen to and serve his direct reports. This leader will generate an environment of incredible psychological safety where his people are inclined to bring him all manner of input. Unfortunately, if this leader has not also amped up the development of his people, his feedback “inbox” might be flooded with…uhhh…really, really stupid suggestions. On top of that, his people may even feel the psychological safety to follow up with the leader and ask, “Hey, so now that you’ve had time to process my feedback, what’d you think? You’re going to do it, right? You’re going to wear a Barney costume to our team meetings from now on?!”)
This is the result of a “high support, low challenge” leadership style (pulling from GiANT’s Support-Challenge Matrix).
Ordinarily, a leader will have to rebuff the suggestions of his direct reports - occasionally. These occasional rejections should not be frequent enough to create the pervasive perception that that leader is, on the regular, unreceptive to feedback. On the other hand, in this slightly-rare-but-not-that-rare case, if you’re getting a lot of feedback and having to reject a lot of it (because it’s all dumb), then that could create the perception that you’re unreceptive to feedback. The solution in this case is not to change your process for receiving feedback - but to change your leadership style so you’re not managing a bunch of lollipops (*cough this is a “dum-dums” joke cough*). Does that make sense?
Converting a “high support, low challenge" leadership style into a “high support, high challenge” leadership style is unfortunately a completely different discussion from the one I’m having here. (And after you’ve made it through all 2000-odd words above, I don't think anyone is asking for another mini-novel.) If you’ve identified yourself in this addendum, feel free to contact me, though. I’d love to talk about it and see if there’s anything I can do to help you.
All right, that’s a wrap! Everyone tells you to “receive feedback” - but I hope this post made that goal actually a bit more digestible and easy-to-accomplish.
Problem #2 of Receiving Feedback is on the horizon.
See you next month!
Hey, Megan here! I love hearing from you. If you have any thoughts about this blog post, if you found anything funny or thought-provoking, or if you just want to let me know you were here, please drop me a comment below!
