“I hate feedback.”
That response to giving and receiving feedback seems to be a universal. It’s something necessary but dreaded.
So why do it?
As psychologists have demonstrated, all of us see one limited, narrow view of any situation because our minds automatically filter information. We allow in only the data that supports our world view. This is confirmation bias, and confirmation bias is so powerful that we rarely even notice contradictory information.
The solution seems easy enough: just ask what others think about a situation. Then stay open-minded, ask the right questions, and set your ego aside to expand your perspective. This process happens in countless meetings around the world, and lots of the time it works.
But what makes feedback different from this (or any other) method of overcoming confirmation bias?
It’s personal.
Feedback focuses on how we showed up, and it can cement into place or challenge our version of our performance. We think that our intentions are apparent, that everyone knows the obstacles facing us, that everyone struggles with our same foes, and obviously we always do our best. Except our own perspective is exceptionally narrow and rarely shared by others. Feedback challenges both our sense of ourselves and our confidence that everyone else sees the world exactly the way we do.
Giving or receiving feedback is an opportunity to expand perspectives, and receiving feedback especially is an opportunity to learn how others see us. It’s that simple and that scary.
Giving Feedback
Before I share a model for giving feedback, I encourage you to watch Kim Scott’s Ted Talk on Radical Candor. It’s a little salty, very truthful, and illuminates the importance of giving feedback to support growth.
As Scott so memorably argues, being willing to give really good feedback depends on caring for the person receiving the feedback. For that feedback to do any good the provider and the receiver have to agree on a common goal, one that giving and receiving feedback will further. For example, “I want you to grow professionally,” or “we both want the project to succeed.” Feedback fails without this shared, foundational goal.
The Center for Creative Leadership’s SIB model offers these three steps towards providing useful feedback:
Situation: For example, “last week during the team meeting”; “during the presentation to [Client X”]
Behavior: For example, ““last week during the team meeting, you interrupted Joan and then later Carol”; “during the presentation to [Client X], you started cursing during some tech challenges”
Impact: For example, ““last week during the team meeting, you interrupted Joan and then later Carol. Interruptions make it hard for our quieter team members to share their ideas”; “during the presentation to [Client X], you started cursing during some tech challenges. Your cursing made us look unprofessional in front of potential clients with whom we are still building rapport.”
SBI provides you a roadmap on how to give feedback— both positive and constructive.
Soliciting Feedback
But feedback isn’t a one-way street: you must also ask for feedback. Often. From lots of people. Many people are poised to give you great feedback, so be fearless, and learn how others see you.
Mentors: Mentors have the benefit of (potentially) knowing you over a long time, through different phases of your development, and they are invested in your growth (agreeing to be a mentor is a commitment to exactly that growth!)
Peers: This group is a a critical feedback resource because, almost by definition, they are not in a hierarchical relationship with you (you don’t report to them, and they don’t report to you). If a general request “for feedback” feels too big, ask a close peer ahead of time for feedback on one specific thing. For example, ask them to pay extra attention to how you present (alongside what you present) and the audience’s reaction, or ask for observations on writing tics.
Direct reports: Your team is your most important source of feedback. They can answer the questions “What are you doing that is helpful?” and “What are you doing that is interfering with their effectiveness?” However, asking for feedback from your team requires you to give them complete, honest permission to tell truth. Because you are in a power relationship with them, they make themselves vulnerable by telling you things you might not want to know, so you have to be trustworthy enough to hear their honest feedback without repercussion. Often, the best approach to requesting feedback is with an open heart and with curiosity. Calibration Dialogues and Scaling Questions can also be excellent ways to get feedback that mitigate some of the power differential between you and a direct report.
Formal and informal “360” evaluations: Many organizations use formal “360” assessment to provide confidential feedback from all of the groups above. (You usually have to share a list of people who fall into the category of mentor or peer.) Sometimes an external vendor collects and interprets the feedback; these are an investment by your organization in your leadership development. Especially because the feedback giver knows that their comments are anonymous to the recipient, it can be important to review final reports with someone else, and I have worked with many leaders to understand the messages offered in a 360. This mode of feedback is potent but infrequent, and it cannot replace in-person, timely feedback.
Receiving Feedback
Asking for feedback puts you in the wonderful position of receiving a gift from someone else, but what do you do when you don’t like the gift (feedback)? Especially when the person who has provided you the feedback is your direct report (or otherwise subordinate to you because of organizational hierarchy or marginalized identity), it’s really important to respond thoughtfully and without retaliation. Peter Bregman’s “How to Ask for Feedback That Will Actually Help You” provides some really important strategies to signal, in the moment of feedback, that you are receptive. The last three recommendations are especially helpful:
Probe more deeply. Just like with scaling questions, you should ask questions to understand exactly where your feedback giver is coming from.
Listen without judgment. React neutrally, “whether [the feedback is] positive or negative.” Especially if it's negative, you may have the urge to justify away the input, but hearing feedback without reacting emotionally enables the feedback giver to be more open in the future, and it honors the courage they took in sharing their feedback with you. (Remember: most people hate giving meaningful feedback as much as they hate receiving it.)
Write down what they say. Taking notes indicates you are taking the feedback seriously, and it also enables you preserve a more accurate record of their comments for future reflection. (If you’re struggling with the feedback, it can also be a good way to prevent yourself on not reacting in the moment.)
These strategies require, at their core, that you step outside of or beyond your immediate emotional response to whatever feedback you receive. Really meaningful feedback— even positive feedback— can be tough to respond to in the moment, and (as I noted above) feedback feels and is personal. By temporarily depersonalizing yourself from the feedback, you also give yourself an opportunity to learn.
Once someone has shared the gift of their feedback with you, take some dedicated time to process it. In another article, Bregman itemizes thirteen ways that he (and others) “justify, rationalize, or ignore negative feedback.” After you’ve received feedback from someone and spent some time thinking about it, review Bregman’s list. Does anything sound (feel) familiar? If it does, that can be a good cue that you need to return to that feedback. You can share it with a trusted friend, mentor, or—even better— a coach. Friends and mentors are always going to be biased in your favor, but they may be able to help you find what’s helpful in the feedback; coaches are objective, so we can help you work through the feedback and your emotional response too.
In short, giving and receiving feedback is hard and requires a lot of self-awareness. But you can be brave, ask for information, learn, and grow. It will help you and your team flourish.