Taking feedback
Feedback is crucial to identify our areas of improvements. In order to make the exchange effective, the onus is a lot more on the receiver than the person giving feedback. Many of us become defensive when we hear something different from how we wish others to perceive us. The key is to be aware of our biases and be better prepared to receive feedback.
I love taking feedback. I see it as an important way to see the gap between how I think I am and the self others see in me. It helps me know the unknown and make real changes.
I have been fortunate to have people around me who care enough to give me frequent and unbiased feedback. Often to things that I am blindsided to.
Till sometime back, I used to have a love and hate relationship with feedback. I had a vice of taking a lot of it personally, only to realise it later and often apologise for judging the person giving me feedback. The competitiveness in me translated into “winning at all costs” and made me unreceptive to a lot of great feedback.
One of the most significant one happened last year. My manager reached out to my immediate team and stakeholders to conduct a 360 degree feedback review. While I was open to almost all the feedback and received it with a growth mindset, there was one (by a very senior stakeholder) which hurt me a lot. It was bad. I ended up making a hue and cry about it, judging the person and his intent. I even ended up confronting him in a triple threat match including my manager and made matters worse. Ouch!! I still feel shameful about how I behaved back then. But, I learnt a lot of important lessons.
Looking back, here are the reasons for why I did, what I did.
- Letting external factors creep in. I remember being overwhelmed by work around the time this happened. I was neck deep in work with no respite in sight. This over load of work translated into frustration of not being appreciated enough. This general feeling of unhappiness and non-content made me unreceptive to the critical feedback. In my head, it read much more negative than what it actually was.
Ask yourself: How are you feeling at the time of taking the feedback? Are you stressed/unhappy about other external factors around you? Are those affecting how you are taking the feedback? - Inconsistent with my self image. All the rest of the feedback I had got, was in-line with how I perceived my self. Except for this. I saw this inconsistent with my self image, and I rejected it.
Ask yourself: Are you prioritising your self view over the feedback? - Knowing who gave it. My 360 degree feedback was confidential, exactly how they are meant to be. But, after reading this critical feedback, I could confidently put a name to it. This led my expectations from this person to come in the way of the message he was trying to give and I ended up making it sour. I started judging the person and somewhere punishing him for betraying my trust by showing anger.
Ask yourself: Are you shooting the messenger? Would you have felt any different if someone else would have given the same feedback? - Mistaking feedback as commandments. I was looking at the feedback as a forced to-do list. Reading the book “What Got You Here Won’t Get You There by Marshall Goldsmith” made my realise that not all advise is meant to act on. We need to stop being defensive by expressing our opinions to the feedback, and instead treat it like a gift by saying “thank you”. We need to learn to listen, and act on advise that makes sense.
Ask yourself: Which part of the feedback makes sense to you? What are you going to act (and not) on.
It took me a year and a book to finally understand the reason behind my feelings and discontent. Reflecting on this episode has made me more self-aware and be prepared to take feedback.
Yes, it wasn’t the best feedback. It could have been worded differently. I would have liked if it was given as an advise instead of a criticism and directed towards the future instead of holding me accountable of the past. Nonetheless, I could have done better to make the exercise more fruitful.
A lot of times, we ask for feedback but arent prepared to take it. While taking feedback, we should stay quiet and listen to it. No matter if its to our liking or not. What’s important is to listen what others see in us.
I hope that reading this will make you reflect on your biases and come out stronger. I definitely have :)
