Does this sound like you? A friend or co-worker offers you some negative feedback and you get flustered, perhaps say some unpleasant words, avoid him/her, and deliberately choose not to send your now ex-associate a holiday card?
Receiving feedback can be hard because nobody wants to hear negative comments about themselves. It could make you feel undervalued, disappointed, discouraged, and even disengaged. Moreover, defense mechanisms usually ignite - you may consider the source of the feedback and assess whether he/she is “qualified” to provide it in the first place, or you may reject the comments on the basis of not being relevant to you, but true of the messenger.
So, how can you see value in feedback? If your objective is to be as good as you possibly can be, you want guidance and should go out of your way to seek it! Even if you consider yourself to be self-aware and feel like you have a clear picture of how you are doing, it is still important to get an outside view as we all have blind spots. Getting multiple perspectives from a network of people who care for you personally and are willing to challenge you professional is vital to your success.
Now that you may be warming to the idea of getting feedback, what’s the next step? Enlist Help! You could ask a trusted coworker to pay attention to one thing you are trying to work on. Perhaps, you may feel that when you speak, you give too much information and want to work on bottom-lining essential points. Your feedback partner can observe you during meetings or collaborative sessions when you are being too loquacious, discuss it immediately after, invite you to offer ways to improve, and possibly provide some suggestions. Your accountability partner can also champion you for the moments when you were concise. This information will be instrumental in your progress and to create the desired behavior change.
If you are not as self-aware to know the one thing you are trying to work on, you can create a go-to question to expand your understanding of what you need to improve on. You can ask - what is one thing I can start doing or stop doing to make it easier to work with me? What is one thing I’m doing that is stopping me from being an even better leader/coworker? What’s one new behavior I can adopt that you see really successful in senior leadership?
Finally, it is always a good idea to be gracious in receiving feedback. Here are some ways:
1. Don’t be overly reactive to the feedback. This is because that may push well-meaning people away. When you are soliciting feedback, defensiveness is self-defeating.
2. Don’t interrupt before the person has finished. Sometimes our inner dictator highjacks the conversation by responding too soon thereby missing the benefit of the full report.
3. Always say thank you. It is a gracious way to accept information while showing your gratitude.
When you can receive information that you did not know was making you less effective, it is a gamechanger. Too many people march through life unaware of how their behaviors may be positively or negatively impacting others and when you learn about it, you can make adjustments that will improve your performance.
Q: What is one behavior in which you would like to get feedback? Who could you ask to be your feedback partner?
[The next blog in this series 2/3 will focus on 5 common mistakes to avoid when giving feedback]
Quote of the day: “God gave us all weaknesses and it is a blessing to find out about them” -Ben Horowitz, CEO and Author
Feedback is a gift