Feedback: The Secret to Limitless Growth
It’s that time of the year where you’re glad it’s arrived but also secretly wishing it was over already. No I’m not talking about Christmas lunch with those relatives you prefer avoiding, I’m talking about performance review season, where those months and months of hard work and dedication accumulate to formal feedback forms from your leadership and colleagues. Although I understand the value of feedback, it doesn’t stop my anxiety levels from rising whenever I see the notification that I received new feedback. To help calm the nerves I reminded myself why feedback is so important and what I can do to make it a positive outcome by reading ‘Thanks for the Feedback’ by Douglas Stone and Sheila Heen. Below I’ve outlined some of the themes from the book that reminded me about how best to receive feedback and what I needed to keep in mind during the process.
- Not all feedback is the same
When it comes to feedback we know that we need it but some types aren’t as useful as others. For example a simple rating or marks system may help us to figure out where we stand, but it doesn’t give us information on how to proceed or improve. What’s more useful is constructive criticism and these come in 3 forms: appreciation feedback, coaching feedback and evaluation feedback. All have different impacts and are best in different situations. Appreciation feedback motivates us and gives us encouragement to continue, coaching feedback helps us improve and evaluation feedback helps us understand where we stand and what’s expected of us next.
Since these all have different impacts we need to understand when to seek out specific types of feedback. For example if you’re feeling burnt out and exhausted, seeking evaluation may not be the best outcome. Instead receiving appreciation feedback will give you the extra energy boost you need to get back on track. On the other side if you’re struggling in your role seek out people that give you coaching and evaluation feedback, as appreciation feedback may keep you performing at an unsatisfactory level.
2. Dismissing feedback is counterproductive
Often we can dismiss feedback because we think the other person may be biased or view you as competition but it could just be that we are not understanding the feedback through their eyes. A study showed that 90% of managers think that their performance is in the top 10% but obviously they all can’t be right, but the study highlighted that we are biased towards rating ourselves positively. This is why feedback from others is so important, because they may have more information than you, like what others say about you when you’re not in the room, which could give you a clearer image of yourself and how to move forward.
When you receive feedback that you have a knee jerk reaction to dismiss, rather start by attempting to understand the reviewer’s intention, try to ignore generic comments and then draw tangible outcomes on what they would like the impact of their feedback to be. It’s important to remember people are different and that their feedback may also be a reflection of their own background, but it doesn’t mean it’s wrong. Any feedback may have valid points regardless of the view point, and so it’s important evaluate it before throwing it away
3. Feedback helps you identify your blind spots
There are parts of our presence that we can’t always see or hear, like our facial reactions or tone of voice. Our face may be betraying our hidden thoughts or our tone of voice could be sounding sarcastic to others instead of jovial. Feedback helps us identify these parts of our performance that we wouldn’t be able to pick up on our own.
We should also be actively seeking this type of feedback as the power of presence is a large part of enhancing our impact and influence. As humans we often judge ourselves by our intentions and others by their actions. It’s important to note that others do this too, and so as much as our intentions may be clear in our minds, our actions are clearer to others and so the feedback we receive should reflect that and help guide us on how to improve in actionable ways.
4. Some uncontrollable parts of feedback
The truth behind feedback is that some people will just receive it better than others, good feedback or bad. This is because our genes set our benchmark of what we deem normal levels of wellbeing. Studies show that genes impact around 50% of our reactions, and that negative feedback will always take significantly longer to recover from. Those of us that are right side dominant in regards to our brain also take longer to recover than those that are left side dominant. Parts of how we feel when receiving feedback we have to forgive ourselves for, because it’s out of our control. What we can do though is be aware of our feelings and make sure that the parts that we can control we maximise in a positive way.
The book ‘Thanks for the Feedback’ definitely helped me forgive myself over some of the stress I felt over performance reviews but also promoted my view on how impactful receiving feedback really is. Having a growth mentality makes receiving feedback a lot easier and a little fun but having a bit of anxiety around it is okay too. Feedback challenges our idea of ourselves and forces us to see our skills and personal characteristics as developing instead of perfect, which is going to feel uncomfortable but we should always remember that it’s an opportunity to push our boundaries and grow to new heights, and so turning towards it should be our only option.