Redefining Your Relationship with Feedback
“Great job!”
“I really appreciate your help.”
“You did really well on that assignment.”
“You handled that challenge beautifully.”
As a self-proclaimed praise-junkie, statements like these lift me higher than a hot-air balloon.
“I didn’t like how you led that activity.”
“You really didn’t do well on that assignment.”
“You are not very personable.”
“You don’t know what you’re doing.”
And statements like these leave that same praise-junkie totally defeated.
What I know is that for many folks when it comes to feedback, accolades are cherished and critiques can rankle. I have only met a handful of people who are able to completely shake off supposed “negative” feedback. A few months back, I got some insight into their secret. It’s actually a couple of secrets used in combination.
The first secret to being able to hold feedback more graciously is to understand that feedback is not gospel-truth. Feedback is nothing more and nothing less than another person’s perspective of you (or your offering) within a specific situation or circumstance. Unless we are talking about a math test or the equivalent where there are definitive answers to proscribed questions, feedback is a subjective piece of information.
Once you’ve gotten your head around that, here’s another secret to hold: within every piece of feedback, there is a nugget of truth. No more, and no less. In other words, even though feedback is based on an individual’s subjective experience, rather than objective reality, there is still an aspect of truth to notice. The opportunity is for you to source it, contemplate it, and then decide how to work with it.
“How do I do that?” you might ask.
The answer is: get curious.
Curiosity is the key to graciously accepting feedback of any sort. It’s the magic fairy dust that will allow you to stay grounded in the face of both praise and critique. For example, when someone shares that they really like the way you work, you get to take a breath and get curious: what is it that they value? What, specifically, do they appreciate? What are you doing or how are you showing up that is eliciting this response? Similarly, if someone shares that they don’t like what you’re doing, you again get to take a breath and get curious: that thing they don’t like, what is not working about that? What, specifically, are they reacting to? And, is there a reason that you chose to do/act that way?
Other questions that you might ask in either event include:
What could I have done differently, and how would that have served?
Why did I do that thing, that way?
What might I change going forward?
Questions like these – open-ended, from a genuinely curious space – will help you to work with the nugget of truth, rather than wearing the feedback like a cloak. If you take feedback and wear it – whether the feedback is seen as good or not-so-good – the truth of you, the core of you, the authentic part of you starts to get covered up. The purpose of sincere, meaningful feedback is for you to use that feedback in such a way as to allow your true self to shine as brightly as possible. Covering up your true self with praise or critique doesn’t work.
So, the next time you receive feedback of any sort, my challenge to you is this: let yourself receive it. Let yourself get curious about it. And then, regardless of whether the feedback was “good” or “bad” , let yourself find the nugget of truth. Once you know what that truth is, decide how you will use it to bring – actually, to continue to bring – your best, true self forward.