Practical Lessons On Receiving Feedback Well
By: Tarun Kohli
Tags: Management, Leadership, Self Improvement, Feedback, Work

There are two types of professionals in the world: those who receive feedback well and those who fall behind.

And I’m here to talk about ‘those who fall behind’.

“Snuggling with the feedback, analyzing the feedback, and then embracing the feedback is the highest-leverage skill to upgrade the firmware of your mind. “

Not that you aren’t enough as-is but if you truly want to experience the beauty of growth in life, then you should seek it like love.

It’s then not a surprise that I consider feedback a gift. A gift that gives you all the cheat codes for success.

But, unlike the gifts that come wrapped in glossy papers, this one can be delivered in different ways.

Sometimes wrapped in genuine concern, and other times cloaked in pointless criticism.

Sometimes at the Goldilocks time, just when you need it, and other times delayed by months like India’s monsoon.

Sometimes as a reminder that someone cares for you, other times making you feel like a neglected child.

But no matter the feedback, we rarely know how to receive it well. For example, most of us react to positive feedback by downplaying it with modesty. We accept it with awkward silenced or with a shoulder shrugs “Oh, it was nothing. That’s what I am here for.”

Or the ways we sometimes react to critical feedback by sulking, dismissing, justifying, or ignoring it — all the things I’ve done while receiving feedback (not proud of it) and I’m sure you might have too. And in the minority of the cases, some people even handle it with aggression. “Huh! You are the last person who should give me that kind of feedback. ”

“Feedback is the ultimate bicep curl for our careers.”

Receiving feedback well is like exercising. We know it is the bicep curl for our careers but we couldn’t care less in learning how to receive it well. I wish that wasn’t the case.

Enough pontificating. Let’s see how you can receive the feedback well, praise or criticism.

How to receive positive feedback

Aww…thank you for all the praise, illustration done by Quovantis

Imagine yourself in this situation — your manager calls you into a meeting room for a feedback session. And the next thing you know, she starts gushing with appreciation on your flawless execution — and the positive impact it had on the team.

You feel a nervous twitch at the back of your neck anticipating negative feedback to start rolling, as that’s what years of corporate culture have trained you. Praise, followed by criticism, and wrapped up by praise again. The classical corporate shit sandwich. But to your surprise, she doesn’t share anything but praise.

You don’t want to appear self-aggrandizing, thus you say a modest “ohh…thank you so much” and wrap up the conversation.

While there was nothing wrong with your modest ‘thank you’ as there are a lot of times when it’s the most appropriate response, but in this case, you could have handled this a bit differently.

After acknowledging that you indeed did something to create a positive impact, the next step could have been to ask follow-up questions to understand the feedback in a better way.

You could have said — “Thank you for sharing such positive feedback. Your appreciation means a great deal to me. It would be great if you could share how my contributions helped the team execute better. There is a chance that I made those decisions subconsciously. So, I want to understand them better to amplify this behavior in the future.”

You must unpack the praise. Not to gloat in your praise. But to understand it better so that you can do more of it.

It’s unfortunate that we spend disproportionate amounts of time discussing criticism, but hardly a fraction of it on our strengths. It’s great to be wanting to improve, but you must also understand skills or behaviors that are having a positive impact on the team around you.

So the next time you are in this kind of situation, don’t let your instinct of shrugging it off take over. Acknowledge it. Understand it so you can do more of it.