Feedback is the breakfast of champions - but can be an acquired taste

Do you remember your first ever cup of coffee? Or your first oyster? Or olive? Or Marmite on toast? Not everything tastes good the first time you try it. But if you try it again, you may come to like it.

Getting feedback can be a similar experience. When someone says, ‘do you mind if I give you some feedback?’ we often tense up, as if expecting that first challenging taste of an unfamiliar food. It’s rarely a welcome phrase to hear: you know that you’re about to be presented with something that is going to be difficult to digest.

But if, as Ken Blanchard famously said, ‘feedback is the breakfast of champions’, it is something that we must try to learn to enjoy. I’ve made plenty of mistakes in my career, and have had many opportunities to improve. I’m fortunate enough to have worked with people who have been prepared to point them out to me. So, whether I like it or not, I’ve been served many dishes of feedback. I can’t say that I’ve learnt to enjoy all of them, but I have learnt to recognise when my own reactions make them more difficult to swallow.

I’ve also learnt that feedback doesn’t just come from individuals: it also comes from more structured, collective exercises such as staff surveys. If you’ve been a manager or a leader in a large organisation, you have likely participated in and been the recipient of many such surveys. And they can often be just as hard to take as direct, face to face feedback. In fact, they’re sometimes harder: anonymity gives people the chance to say what they really think. But that doesn’t make them any less valid: we owe the staff survey at least the same courtesy that we owe the person standing in front of us.

Here are four natural but unhelpful reactions I know that I still have when dealing with difficult feedback, and some ways I try to address them.

Shields up! The first natural reaction when you know that difficult feedback is coming is often to brace for impact, to prepare your defences. The obvious remedy for this is to consciously lower your shields, to put yourself in a more receptive mode, but this can be difficult to do. I find it helpful to remind myself that feedback is not an attack (if it was, it would probably come in a different form): it’s an attempt to help.

Ah, yes, but . . . I find that the second natural reaction to difficult feedback is to find excuses, to find all the aspects of our environment to which we can attribute the causes of the feedback. Yes, I haven’t spent enough time with the team recently, but that’s because we have been so busy. Yes, I haven’t been clear enough on our roles and structures, but that’s because things are changing so fast. I find it helpful, when I hear sentences like this in my own head to recognise that they have two parts: the acknowledged problem (yes . . .) and the ascribed cause (but . . .) and to separate my responses. The causes will come and go, but the problem will persist unless I do something about it.

I can fix that! The third natural reaction might seem constructive: to seek an immediate solution. I’ve heard about a problem: let’s fix it! I’m not close enough to the team: let’s have more team meetings! Roles and responsibilities aren’t clear: let’s draw a RACI chart! Sometimes these reactions are well placed and helpful. But often they are too fast: dealing with difficult feedback requires reflection and internalisation. Are we really addressing the problem, or are we addressing the symptoms? Is this a deep change in beliefs and behaviours, or is it just a change in outward practices? I find it helpful, when receiving feedback, to quell the immediate desire to find a quick fix, to create the space and time for reflection.

Blame the messenger Giving feedback is an art, and it is an art that many people have not mastered. (I’ve written previously on why I think that, while feedback should be timely, it is best thought of as a batch process: reflection and preparation help make feedback as useful as possible). It’s natural, and often justified, to think, when receiving difficult feedback, that it could have been delivered in a more helpful way. But clumsy delivery does not invalidate the message. While it may be hard, it’s worth trying to see past the way the feedback was delivered, and to listen to what it is telling us. If we do that, we might be able to thank the messenger

I realise that, throughout this article, I have fallen into the trap of characterising feedback as negative. Of course, much feedback is positive: it is praise and recognition. That sort of feedback is much easier to swallow - but may also be hard to suggest. In my next article I’ll share some thoughts on how we can get more than a warm glow of satisfaction from positive feedback.

(Views in this article are my own.)