How do we receive feedback? 6 tips to be awesome during difficult conversations

Receiving feedback can be a most magical experience - rewarding, humbling, a little embarrassing for some, or really hard for others. It really can be a mixed bag igniting many different emotions and responses.

I’ve been thinking about the place of feedback more recently. A good friend of mine shared with me a problem they had been having at work recently. Let’s call him Phil.

Phil's been working with a new team. It’s rather large and has had a history of some not so good culture. The team are working on finding solutions in a dynamic situation. There are always changes and little curve balls that have to be managed. Phil has talked to me a lot about maintaining openness and feedback with his colleagues, and he has set an intention to support team processes with a positive energy that both spots the strengths in others but also verbalises this consistently and constantly in individual and collective situations to both foster a supportive team and support the formation of a new culture.

Recently he shared with me on a Friday evening a tension that had occurred that afternoon. The team had received seem unexpected feedback that deflated many in the team. We discussed personalities, different approaches, how to respond, how to support individual team members and the collective team…various scenarios were workshopped and offered in our conversation. There was some swearing, shaking of heads, and laughing as we decoded the importance of realising that sometimes it can take just one person to impact a collective. That impact can be positive, or it can be negative. In this case it was the later.

The conversation really highlighted for me how crucial it is to be able to have difficult conversations. How honesty and integrity are key, as well as an intuition to really “read” the situation and know how to have difficult conversations with a delivery that isn’t personal, delivered poorly or seen as a “to-do-list” task rather than a part of collegial learning from one another. Most importantly it made me aware of two aspects - how to deliver constructive feedback and how to receive feedback. This sparked some thinking and looking at the bigger picture. How do we receive feedback? What can this look like when we are not always receiving positive or constructively framed feedback?

We are surrounded by constant feedback. We are taught lots about how to give constructive feedback - the feedback hamburger comes to mind where we start with a positive, share something that needs some work, and then end with an encouragement aligned to an action or goal. But when it comes to receiving feedback, we are not really taught how to receive it. We know we need to listen. But what does this really mean?

What has struck me is that receiving feedback is a skill - what is it we are being told? What can we learn from this? What is it we shouldn’t listen too? What is the bigger lesson from the experience in itself?

Sheila Heen, the author of "Difficult Conversations: How to Discuss What Matters Most” offers a great 6 part process for us to consider:

Know your tendencies - what are your patterns? What does your baseline look like? That is, what is the level of satisfaction you gravitate back to, where you feel content/comfortable/just you? What happens to you when you are excited, elated or experience a positive? And what happens to you when you experience something negative, a set-back or an upset? What are your patterns physically, emotionally and physiologically? What does this look, feel and sound like? How do you recover?
Disentangle the “what” from the “who” - who delivered feedback to you matters, even though it shouldn’t. Be careful not to spend most of your time seeking feedback from people who think like you, seek out other perspectives (even the people you find most difficult to work with).
Think about feedback as coaching - think about feedback as having 3 different purposes: 1) Appreciation: noting a win, something good, a contribution or new insight. (This style of feedback is contagious, and many people want this, and more of it); 2) Coaching: helping you get better at something; and 3) Evaluation: where you are ranked. Seek out all three, not just number one.
Unpack the feedback - be an active participant in the feedback, decode and ask questions rather than assume. Look for the subtle or vague points that can unpack some rich opportunities.
Ask for just one thing - “What’s one thing you see me doing (or failing to do) that holds me back?”.
Engage in small experiments - Just because you can receive feedback well, doesn’t mean you have to accept the feedback, but try the feedback and see if it is helpful. Experiment be curious. Keep and discard what is appropriate for the time…but do give it time.

So, if I reflect back on the initial experience that sent me off to find out more, my pondering has highlighted for me the importance to really listen well when feedback comes our way, and to focus on “what” not “who” while also being curious about what we can learn or try. This sounds like it is so easy, maybe it is, maybe it isn’t.

If I think about to Phil and his story, I can acknowledge that when he first told me about the experience of feedback his team had received late of a Friday afternoon via email, the initial response was reactionary and very much focused on the person - the “who”, not the “what”. This difficult feedback however did enable Phil and his team to step back (eventually), reflect and look at the bigger picture. Phil’s case reminded me of some key practices from a leadership perspective:

• Late in the day emails with critical feedback are not a great way to end the day, or a week.

• There is always something nice that can be shared - find the positive, and if you can’t step back and reflect on this…then it is best to spend some more time observing and spotting strengths or some good aspects.

• Sync with your intuition and connect with the strength of awareness to think about how your feedback will be taken or interpreted.

• Ask yourself some questions: is there another way it can be said? what do you want to achieve? what communication style or method will be best?

• Just as we invite the receiver to be curious with the feedback, being curious as the deliverer of feedback would be a beneficial way to explore this strength.

• Just as we might not take on board all feedback, a leader may need to consider that their feedback is not always going to be taken on board either…especially if the delivery method and style triggers the recipient to close off and shut down.

Some further links

Shelia Heen podcast episode

How to use others' feedback to learn and grow | Sheila Heen | TEDxAmoskeagMillyardWomen

Sheila Heen: Decoding Difficult Conversations (2019)

Doug Stone & Sheila Heen: "Thanks for the Feedback" | Talks at Google (2014)

Thanks for the Feedback: The Science and Art of Receiving Feedback Well (2016)

The Science of Receiving Feedback: Mentor Workshop Introduction

Carol Dweck - A Study on Praise and Mindsets (2014)