Don’t Be Concerned About Critical Feedback!

Critical feedback, often considered negative, can be the most powerful and most beneficial feedback you can give to someone. To many people this can sound not only counter-intuitive but just plain wrong. But critical feedback has in it the seeds of opening the future to possibilities that have as yet not been imagined.

What Is Feedback?

Technically feedback is the process of returning data/information to the input point of a system with regard to the behavior of that system. The data is used to evaluate the performance of the system with respect to its intended and expected output.

Stated I another way and to humanize this, someone has a stated goal and a commitment to achieving the details of that goal. As they proceed along their process their actions can be evaluated. The evaluation has the intention of effecting the performance as a guide to help them achieve what they expect of and for themselves (and others).

Essentially this is all feedback is.

What Is the Purpose of Feedback?

As I said above the action of feedback is to deliver evaluative information. But what is the purpose? Is it to guide, modify, correct, instruct, assess, enhance or change in some way someone’s performance? Yes but within a course of action predetermined by the outcome desired. It’s not an arbitrary change but one ultimately directed toward realizing specific results.

The purpose of feedback is to give focus to the behavior and the process one is engaged in. In general feedback supports and buttresses some behaviors and discourages others. The purpose of feedback is to shape ongoing behaviors so they can realize and meet expectations.

How Valuable Feedback Becomes Negative

Feedback is a tool meant to situate someone in the reality of their endeavor. Clearly if someone is operating in fantasy the likelihood of their success approaches zero. The task of feedback is to help align a person within the reality of their situation---expectations, resources, time, ability, needs and demands, etc.

Given this rather straightforward and clear objective how is it that feedback is characterized as negative? And negative to whom?

We are all afraid of hearing criticism of what we do as though criticism implies failure. But that’s not the case. Criticism, also known as feedback---a specific instance of evaluative feedback---can and should be supportive. It is meant to orient someone’s performance in alignment with their objectives and the needs of the project. To be afraid of feedback---giving or receiving---is to shrink from the reality of what you are doing. None of us is without the possibility of making mistakes, or misunderstanding the parameters of a project or process, or making assumptions that are misguided. Good feedback is meant to help someone adjust what they are doing for their benefit and the benefit of the project.

Critical feedback can be both poorly delivered and distortedly received.  

As examples the feedback someone gives can be;

• Confusing---making matter worse, disorienting, frustrating, even demoralizing the receiver;
• Anxiety driven---because the giver has characterized critical feedback as painful or perhaps injurious;
• Cautious---for fear that the feedback will backfire and blowback against the giver because of company politics and the like.

The feedback that someone receives can be taken as;

• Punitive---which, in most cases, has more to say about the person receiving the feedback;
• Disempowering---because the receiver uses it against him/herself;
• Personal---meaning that the feedback is thought to be about the person as a person rather than about what he or she is doing.

In both instances neither the giver nor receiver is located in reality. They are caught up in their fantasies, their distortions about themselves and/or each other and what is going on. When this is happening critical feedback can be destructive and painful and, because critical feedback is often delivered poorly and received poorly, people shy away from giving it and receiving it.

So What To Do?

As the giver, accept that clear, precise, and direct feedback can and should be enlightening. Your intention as the giver must be to craft your critical feedback to illuminate what has gone off the mark and to return the receiver to the most productive and fruitful course. Doing so will prevent what you have to say from becoming negative---that is, unhelpful.

As the receiver, orient yourself to the fact that you, as well as all of us, are capable of misperceiving, misjudging, and misunderstanding and when that happens you are not going to die. You will need to adjust both your sense of self and your approach to the task at hand. Don’t let your ego get in the way. When you do then what could be a very valuable moment of learning becomes negative and you are made less-than at your own hand.

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Jim Sniechowski, PhD and his wife Judith Sherven, PhD https://JudithandJim.com have developed a penetrating perspective on people’s resistance to success, which they call The Fear of Being Fabulous. Recognizing the power of unconscious programming to always outweigh conscious desires, they assert that no one is ever failing. They are always succeeding. The question is, at what?

Currently working as consultants on retainer to LinkedIn providing executive coaching, leadership training and consulting as well as working with private clients around the world, they continually prove that when unconscious beliefs are brought to the surface, the barriers to greater success and leadership presence begin to fade away. They call it Overcoming the Fear of Being Fabulous. https://OvercomingtheFearofBeingFabulous.com

And if you are involved in marketing, you may be interested in their 5th book “Love Your Customers and They Will Love You Back”  https://tinyurl.com/lovecustomersbk