TLDR: How to receive it is just as important as how to give it. Use this 6-step process to receive and process feedback.
For many of the teams and organizations we work with, giving feedback is the norm. Some companies even make the act of giving feedback a measure of individual performance. These organizations recognize that developing a work culture that values feedback increases collaboration and strategic agility. With time and practice, the act of giving feedback becomes a normal, expected part of the culture where each person is willing and able to tell someone else how their actions and behaviors impacted them.
But what about how to receive feedback?
While I was lucky enough to experience some training about giving feedback early on in my career, we didn’t spend much time on how to receive and process feedback. I’m pretty sure I was advised to listen carefully, not respond or debate, and to just say “thank you.”
Only later did I discover that the process for receiving feedback is just as important as the process of giving feedback. Processing feedback is the only way that the feedback being delivered has an opportunity to lead to personal or professional growth. How someone receives feedback can clear or block the path to change dynamics at work. Giving and receiving feedback with intention and care are key to building collaborative, high-performing teams.
This part of the feedback loop is commonly overlooked in training, approaches, and formulas for feedback. So, we decided to make a Receiving Difficult Feedback card to go along with our Giving Difficult Feedback Collaborative Communication Card. After several follow-on conversations, we decided to expand from card length to article length.
Use this 6-step process to receive feedback with intention and care:
Decide if you are prepared to accept feedback – if not, offer a specific alternative time.
Is this a familiar situation? Someone swings by your office, unannounced, only to deliver some unasked for, inconvenient feedback. It’s sometimes called the “swoop and poop” or “seagull management,” and without practice or preparing for how to handle a situation like this, it can feel inescapable. But there is another option. You don’t get to control what other people do (or whether they start the swoop), but you do get choose how to respond and what happens next.
Agreeing to the conversation you’re having is an important part of a healthy conversation. It’s reasonable and respectful to propose a different time to have a discussion to solicit and welcome feedback. If the person trying to deliver feedback doesn’t ask if this is a good time and you end up needing to interject, ensure you let them know you appreciate their perspective and you’ll make time for the discussion, but that time isn’t now. Scheduling another time lets the other person know you aren’t dismissing them, avoiding the conversation, or hoping it won’t happen.
While receiving feedback, remember to listen, keep breathing, and don’t say anything until they’re done talking.
If you feel an overwhelming need to say something, consider taking down a few notes so that you don’t lose the ideas and revisit them after the person has fully shared their feedback with you. Exercise caution if what you want to share could be misinterpreted as dismissing or explaining away their feedback. This person feels how they feel and they’ve decided sharing it with you is worth the risk of discomfort. This is an opportunity to build trust by accepting whatever it is that person is feeling.
Giving feedback can take a lot of courage, and even in cases where it doesn’t, you can demonstrate respect for the other person by listening fully to what they want to share with you. Reminding yourself to stay present will help you focus and receive the feedback.
Paraphrase what you heard and check for understanding.
There are so many subtle signals in how we communicate with each other and the information we use to derive meaning from our interactions. The benefit of paraphrasing and checking for understanding is to ensure you’re hearing and interpreting what they’re trying to say accurately.
When we check for understanding, it helps prevent us from responding to hidden assumptions or misinterpretations about the feedback. It also provides the feedback-giver an opportunity to correct any misunderstandings.
Remember this feedback doesn’t define who you are – feedback is one data point about someone else’s experience with you.
I think this is the one I needed to hear most earlier in my career. I felt like feedback was “right” or “wrong” which in hindsight I view as a self-inflicted, limiting, binary perspective on something with far more nuance. That perspective also made me miss the true value of receiving feedback. It led me to self-talk-tracks of debate, shame, dismissiveness, embarrassment, low confidence, and yes, sometimes gratitude – all of the feelings, really – but mostly unhelpful, emotional conclusions that only slowed my potential growth.
Instead of deciding whether the feedback was right or wrong, it would have been more helpful if I examined the feedback as an offering about this person’s perspective and experience of me. Feedback isn’t right or wrong – it isn’t who you are as a person, it doesn’t define or erase your value, worth, or potential – it merely reflects someone else’s experience with you.
Decide what to do as a result of receiving feedback.
Similar to number four, the goal isn’t to accept or reject feedback, but to explore why and how this is the impact you’re having on someone. You may decide to change your behavior or not, but in every case, demonstrating consideration and respect for the other person goes a long way in building trust and healthy working relationships. In our workshop on Charisma, Storytelling, and Presentation Skills we go through exercises that highlight the disconnect between how we’re feeling inside and the intentions we have compared to the impact we have on others and how other people perceive us.
What we know best is our own intentions and experience, but without hearing from the people who experience our presence, words, and actions, we don’t know how they impact others. The question to consider is, if and/or how you’d like to better align your intentions with how others perceive you. You get to decide what to do as a result of receiving this feedback.
Thank them for sharing feedback.
Feedback is different than praise or criticism – it offers insight into someone else’s experience of us and the impact our actions and behaviors have on them. This act has the potential to unlock new possibilities, build momentum, inspire personal and professional growth, and holds the potential for team transformation. Extend gratitude to the person sharing feedback with you, because it’s key to developing relationships based on trust and respect.
Giving and receiving feedback is most effective when done thoughtfully and with intention. Using a repeatable process, or set of guidelines for both actions, will help team members feel confident and safe in approaching this situation. Feedback isn’t the single thing that gets us to a culture of collaboration, learning, and trust, but it’s an important component. How we receive and process feedback is just as important as delivering feedback. Both of them, together, are ingredients for meaningful change.
At scale, a repeatable process for giving and receiving feedback can lead to increases in employee engagement, collaboration, trust, psychological safety, and authentic leadership at work. It can enable a learning culture. That’s the workplace culture I’m striving to cultivate, both at Navicet and with the teams, organizations, and companies we partner with.