Reacting to Corrective Feedback

My brain used to freeze when someone points out a mistake I made; a sense of embarrassment and shame typically followed. Consciously observing and reflecting on one's emotional state in such situations helps reprogram reactions to achieve better outcomes.

When receiving corrective feedback, what is your knee-jerk reaction? I think the default should be inspecting the facts and the feedback’s merit in a manner devoid of emotions — like a judge in court; my coach at LinkedIn, Nick Strauss, gave me a great analogy for this: Catch the feedback in your baseball mitt and inspect it from afar; don’t let it hit you in the chest.

Assuming good intentions, I believe the second reaction and the first emotion to feel should be gratitude: Treat corrective feedback as a nudge towards improvement — a sign of caring — and thank those who give feedback; express gratitude in a way that lists the specifics of your analysis in step 1 (why you think the feedback is valuable) and describe its impact on the future.

When receiving feedback, listen with the intent to understand — not to reply. This is a good rule for listening generally; it’s more critical when listening to feedback. Another factor to consider when building a fruitful feedback loop is reducing the time it takes to process and react to corrective feedback. Too much back-and-forth or time taken to “reflect” can be interpreted as dissecting the feedback for fault-finding or simply ignoring it. You don’t need to agree with all feedback, but you should at least entertain it and close the loop; Aristotle said: "It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it."

How do you react to corrective feedback?