How To Receive End-of-Year Feedback (even if you’re not looking forward to it)

As an executive coach, I’ve spent nearly 20 years working with highly successful leaders who’ve hit a bump in the road. My job is to help them get over that bump by clarifying their goals and figuring out a way to reach them so that hopefully they can lead with a little more ease.?I work with my clients through my firm?Paravis Partners ?and with some of these leaders on my Harvard Business Review Presents?Coaching Real Leaders podcast , where I take you behind the closed doors of real coaching sessions. I also host the?Coaching Real Leaders Community , where I’m joined by an amazing group of leaders and coaches who come together to take a deeper dive into leadership issues.?And in this?Coaching Real Leaders?newsletter, I share takeaways from the many coaching conversations I’ve had over the years. Whether you are a coach or a leader, my hope is that this will help you more easily navigate the challenges you and/or those you coach face.

So here we are at the end of the year and what’s most top of mind for a lot of my coaching clients is, wait for it…. performance reviews! Participating in this annual feedback ritual (which IMHO needs to be totally revamped but that’s a post for another time) can be quite stressful for many especially if you are on the receiving end. To that end, I want to share some suggestions on how you can approach receiving feedback with a little more ease.

There are four steps I offer my clients when they are on edge going into their performance reviews. And, yes, I coach very senior, highly successful people and even they get the jitters when it comes to feedback discussions. Here’s what I suggest:

1. Prepare for the Feedback
2. Understand the Feedback
3. Process the Feedback
4. Respond to Feedback

Let's unpack each step.

First, you need to prepare for the feedback. This happens before you sit down with your boss for the actual review conversation. ?Please, please, please – don’t skip this step. It’s the warmup that you never think you need. So, what to do to prepare?

• Take stock of your own performance over the past year. Even if you don’t have to write a formal self-assessment, it’s a good practice to do so any way. Be honest with yourself. How do you think you’ve actually done? What feedback would you give a colleague if they had performed the way you have? And don’t just pay attention to the results you delivered – what about how you got to those deliverables? By writing your own performance review as though you were doing so for another, it may help you be more realistic about what kind of feedback to expect.
• Figure out what’s stressing you out about getting feedback. When I ask my clients to get to the root of their concern, it usually comes down to this – they don’t like getting negative feedback because deep down it triggers that little voice (and sometimes big voice) that says “You’re not good enough.” Here’s the thing. It is unrealistic to think you can go through life without receiving negative feedback. I mean, you could certainly try to avoid it or ignore it but good luck with that approach. So instead of fearing critical feedback – accept it as part of your reality. And understand that negative feedback does not mean you are not good enough – it simply means you have not mett your potential in this particular area yet. Know the difference. ?

Ok, so now you’re in the performance conversation and your boss is giving you the feedback. Some of it is good; maybe some of it not so good. Maybe it's very detailed. Maybe it’s all very vague. Regardless of what’s happening, now is the time for you to seek to understand the feedback. Notice I didn’t say agree or disagree with the feedback. There’s a distinction between understanding and agreeing. Why is the focus on understanding? Because without it, you’re going to have a very hard time knowing how to respond (more on that below.) To really understand anything, including your feedback, you need to listen well. Check out Amy Gallo ’s video vignette on The Art of Active Listening if you want a refresher on listening effectively. The goal at this stage is to hear and understand what your boss is telling you – not get distracted by what your thoughts are on what is being said. And if you’re not sure if you are understanding the feedback, check in with them by saying “So let me make sure I’m understanding the feedback….” and synthesize (not repeat) what you’ve heard. It will give an opportunity for the boss to clarify any points made. ?

With a good enough understanding of what was shared, you can now move to processing the feedback. This is where you make meaning of what’s being said. What do you think about it? How do you feel about it? What does this mean in terms of how you respond and how you move forward? This can take place during the review conversation but for some of us, it may need to be processed outside of the meeting. I often advise my clients to get some distance from the feedback (ie, take a day or two away from it) to let it marinate for a while. This is especially true if you find yourself getting all caught up in your feelings as you’re hearing the feedback – your chest tightens, your neck gets prickly, your jaw clenches – all signs that you should probably thank your boss and suggest that you all have a follow up to discuss further. I have a client who I recently had to give feedback to from 360 interviews I’d conducted, and he was a bit taken aback from some of what he heard. I told him to put the feedback away and not read it again until two days later. That next week, when we met, he said to me that he felt like he’d gone through Kubler Ross stages of grief in processing the feedback and now he was ready to decide what to do with it. Processing in this way is a very real thing -- Adam Grant aptly illustrated it as the “7 phases of feedback grief”. Has this ever happened to you?

The goal at this point is, regardless of the feedback, to get yourself to the growth stage and, like my client, make a choice on how to move forward given what you've heard.

Once you’ve processed, you can now respond to the feedback. You see what I just did there? We didn’t go straight from prepare to respond. That would be called reacting not responding. You want to slow your roll and be intentional with what and how you respond. In no way am I suggesting that your response can never be one of disagreement. All I’m saying is be clear about what ever next step it is you want to take. The anchoring question I ask my clients when they reach this stage is “what outcomes are you looking to drive to that are within your control?” which is a fancy way of asking them “what do you want and is it realistic?”. ?For some, it might be that they want to counter the feedback. For others, it may be that they want to show their boss their willingness to own and work on their gaps. And there are a lot of other options in between. The bottom line is you choose how best to respond in a way that is aligned with what you want for your professional development and is reflective of your understanding of the feedback.

As you head into review season, may you give yourself the space and grace to approach it with ease. I hope these words have helped a bit in making that happen for you.?

Thank you for reading my LinkedIn newsletter!?Don’t forget to subscribe to Coaching Real Leaders episodes on?Harvard Business Review ,?Apple ?or wherever you get your podcasts. And please join me in my?Coaching Real Leaders Community , where I host members-only live Q&A’s, CRL episode debriefs, and more. You can also learn more about the coaching work I and my fantastic team do by visiting us at?Paravis Partners.