2. Receiving Feedback

Welcoming feedback is a method for seeing that continuous improvement remains on your agenda. If you can move beyond taking feedback as criticism, if you can move beyond asking for feedback when you want to hear only praise (“Do I look fat in these jeans?”), then you are moving toward seeing feedback as a tool to help you learn and grow.

When we receive feedback, we have a choice. When the feedback is provided in a positive and respectful way, we can accept it and learn from it. If the feedback is provided in a negative way (more as a weapon), we can enforce a boundary around the presentation of it, and still seek the underlying value in what was shared. Here are four suggestions for being more polished when accepting feedback:

• Listen. It is important that you hear what is being said, and it is impossible to do that if you are busy defending yourself. Listen without interruption, denial (“It wasn’t me!”), defensiveness (“Yes, but”), deflection (changing the subject), accusing (turning the table), excuses, or justification. Do not react, just respond.

  If you have ever sent a flame email, you have reacted. If you have ever snapped at an employee, peer, or family member, you have reacted. If you have ever picked up the phone to give that so-and-so a piece of your mind, you have reacted. If you have ever replayed a personal or professional interaction and wished you “hadn’t said that,” you have reacted.

  A reaction is automatic and unthinking, needs based, and limiting. A response requires time to consider and evaluate, clarify and understand. When you give yourself permission to respond, you immediately create more options for yourself. You can still send a flame, you can still snap at people, you can still blast someone by telephone, and you can still let’em have it. But you can also take some time—a few minutes, an hour, a day—before you take any action in these situations, to honor your own values, respect others (even when they’re wrong), and maintain your professional reputation at the same time.

• Clarify. Get as much information as possible. Be sure to get specific examples so that you completely understand.

• Acknowledge. Let the feedback messenger know that you have heard the feedback by thanking her or him for sharing the info with you (even if you do not agree with it). Then review what you have heard on your own time, and consider what it means to you and whether (or how) you can incorporate it into your life.

• Circle Back. Make the time to get back to the feedback messenger to let him or her know what you plan to do about the feedback. Make the messenger “right” if that is the case.

Initially Raj was focused on getting his needs met, so feedback was painful for him. He has since learned how to connect the dots between his unmet needs and his behavior, and he can now accept and use quality feedback. He chose to identify and change his less-than-effective behaviors so that he could begin to build more productive work relationships. Raj also found that accepting feedback helped him create an environment of motivation for himself and his team.