It is performance review season at my employer, so giving and receiving feedback is top of mind. I will not belabor the thousands of quality pages that have been written on this topic. See Radical Candor, Crucial Conversations, What Got You Here Won’t Get You There, and many other resources on this topic.
No matter how much I internalize that feedback truly is a gift, it still takes conscious effort to tamp down the defensiveness, urge to “explain”, or jump to counter-feedback. It is easy to forget in the moment that the other person has no obligation to give you the feedback, that it took courage to give you the feedback, and that they probably spent a good chunk of time choosing their words carefully so that it would be well received. Any response other than, “Thank you for that feedback. I will reflect on it”, is doing yourself and the other person a disservice.
So how do you keep the negativity at bay and the positivity in play? I’ve found the following tactics to be helpful.
Take a breath. If your first urge is to defend yourself, explain yourself, or attempt to contextualize, then take a breath, pause, and go to the next step.
Craft an “auto-response” that is genuine to you. Always be ready with your own version of “Thank you, I will reflect on that”. You have to mean it and you really have to think upon the feedback. The reason to have an “auto-response” ready is that any criticism, even if it is constructive, can feeling like an attack. Even the perception of being attacked triggers the fight-or-flight response. The fight-or-flight response is an obsolete evolutionary vestige in our context; we are no longer stalked by lions on the savannah. During the response, the amygdala and hypothalamus in the brain trigger the endocrine system to pump adrenaline into the bloodstream. This makes it even harder for the neocortex to process the information analytically and recognize the feedback for the gift that it is. The auto-response buys you time to get your reptilian brain under control so that your neocortex can go back to processing the information in an objective way.
Reflect. Reflecting on the feedback doesn’t mean you have to agree with it. It just means that you will make a genuine effort to understand that something you said or did was perceived in a particular way by another person. After genuine reflection, you still have the agency to decide whether to adjust your own behavior.
Follow up. After reflecting, you can be in one of three states. First, you may realize that you do need to adjust your behavior. Let the other person know and thank them again. If you want, you can tell them what steps you are taking to address the issue. If they are feeling generous, they might offer to help you monitor your progress or even give you advice.
Second, you may decide that you didn’t quite understand the feedback. You can ask the other person if they are willing to go into more depth with you to help you understand. If you do this, recognize that the other person has no obligation to do this. Any additional time they spend with you on the topic is a gift on top of a gift. If they do offer to talk in more detail, ask them for examples of the behavior in question, what they would have preferred to see instead, and if they have tips on how you can address the issue.
Third, you may decide that you understand the feedback but disagree with it. In this case, still recognize that it took courage and care from the other person to bring this to you. Be grateful for that and at the very least, empathize that an action of yours is being perceived in a negative way by another person. You may disagree with the feedback but you cannot “disagree” with how another person is feeling. They feel what they feel, and they have every right to feel what they are feeling. You don’t have any right to invalidate their feelings.
There is one exception to the above guidance. Some people (and sadly, some organizations) use feedback as a weapon to cut others down instead of as a gift to build others up. If you find yourself in one of these organizations, get out as soon as you can.