CBP S2E8: Feedback Is Your Friend

Last week we talked about when you get feedback, to say thank you and then shut up. Feedback itself is a whole other topic! There is an art to accepting, taking action on, and giving feedback. There is a perspective that, if you can develop it, will help you implement feedback in ways that enrich your life and your relationships with other people. In this episode I’m talking about the different types of feedback, how to give it, how to receive it, and what to do with it once you’ve got it. Plus I define “synthesize” which is helpful no matter who you are. <3

A lot of the material in this podcast I got from the following books, which are affiliate links. This means I get a commission if you use my links to purchase something. You can see more info here.

• What Got You Here Won’t Get You There by Marshall Goldsmith and Mark Reiter
• How Women Rise by Sally Helgesen and Marshall Goldsmith

Also referenced in this episode:

• Times We Should Just Say Thank You and Then Shut Up (CBP S2E7)
• Stop Drop and Roll: Practice Taking Constructive Criticism
• Email me at: dianne@coffeegritandinspiration.com
• Submit comments and feedback at: https://coffeegritandinspiration.com/contact/ 
• Subscribe to the newsletter at: https://coffeegritandinspiration.com/subscription/

Transcript

Hey everybody, this is Dianne Whitford from Coffee Grit and Inspiration and this is your weekly Coffee Break podcast. Last week I talked about three times that we should just say thank you and then shut up. One of those times was when getting feedback, so this week I wanted to expand on the feedback topic a little bit and talk about the different types of feedback, how to give good feedback, how to get good feedback, how to handle it and what to do with it. So a lot of the information that I want to share today came from a couple of books I mentioned these last week too, I think. One is called How Women Rise by Sally Helgeson and Marshall Goldsmith and What Got You Here Won’t Get You There by Marshall Goldsmith and Mark Reiter. So I’ll link both of these in the description. I do really recommend them. They’ve got a lot of great content about changing habits that may be holding you back or interpersonal behavior tics that may be causing some issues with people around you.

So definitely recommend those. Meanwhile, a lot of the information I’m going to share today is from both of those. So first, when we think about feedback, we need to understand that, like I said last week, feedback is a gift. We get it in all sorts of ways. School, work, grades, performance reviews, customer surveys, feedback forms. We may also tend to associate it with work or school, but it’s equally important at home with family and friends and your loved ones. When we think about feedback, we may think of criticism or negativity or blame, and there’s a difference between feedback and criticism. Criticism, whether it is constructive or destructive implies judgment or fault. So even when it’s constructive criticism is usually geared towards pointing out specific flaws or things that need to be fixed and probably giving direction on what it should be. Feedback is more of an evaluation and passing on information that can be corrective.

So criticism might be, “You need to fix this in your presentation”. And feedback might be, “When you give a presentation, think about these things”. So it’s a little bit different in terms of the intent of the criticism versus the intent of feedback. If you’re feeling resistance to the idea of feedback or getting feedback, it’s important to remember that our reactions to feedback will be based on our personality or disposition and other factors like background or even gender. You know, men and women hear feedback differently and they’re also influenced by their personality, their disposition, their, you know, their position relative to you in the company. Things like that. When you get feedback you might feel discouraged or undervalued or try to understand the cause or the circumstances that led to the feedback. You might look at how your own behavior may have played a role in the feedback., Or you might also think the person is confused that the feedback might be valid but certainly shouldn’t apply to you, or you might blame the messenger.

You might immediately feel defensive or like you’re being blamed for something or feel attacked. The thing is is that feedback is how we understand where we are today and how that compares to where we want to be. Most of us probably have a sense of who we are and who we want to be. And feedback sometimes can point out that we are not that person or that we’re not showing up the way that we want to. And so that can feel really bad. But it’s helpful in that it shows you that. You don’t know…you may not know that you’re showing up differently than you want to. You may not know that something you think you’re good at, you’re not that great at when it comes to how other people see you. That’s valuable information. How people see us and what, you know, you might consider those people, your stakeholders. Your family, your friends, your coworkers, your boss, your colleagues are your stakeholders.

And how they see you, that is their reality. And so when they’re giving you feedback, they’re sharing information and it’s important information that you need to have. Think about if you want to be a better listener, more organized, a better spouse or better parent. Feedback is what helps you know if you’re making progress in that area or if you still have work to do and where to focus that effort. It can also help expose areas of your personality or habits that everybody else sees, but you don’t see. So there’s a thing called a Johari window, and I don’t know if you know about this, and not going to get into it here, but the idea is that there’s things that everybody knows you and everybody else know this. There’s things that other people know that you don’t know. There’s things that you know that nobody else knows, and there’s things that nobody knows, and of course that stuff is irrelevant.

What feedback can help expose is that area of of your personality or your behavior that everybody else knows about except for you. You can’t fix something if you don’t know it’s broken. And so feedback helps you know that there’s something broken. When it comes to types of feedback, there’s basically three: solicited, unsolicited and observational. Solicited feedback means that’s feedback you’ve asked for. You’ve gone to somebody and asked them for feedback.

When you are somebody being asked for feedback, it’s important to depersonalize the feedback so that you’re talking about an outcome or a task or deliverable and not the person themselves. That can help make your feedback be received better. Some other things to keep in mind when you’re giving feedback is to let go of the past. So somebody hurts you last week, they’ve always been this way, they screwed you over two years ago, they did something bad, you know, two years ago. You’ve got to let that go. Don’t give feedback about that. Give feedback about today and the future. Also, when giving feedback, tell the truth, don’t embellish. Don’t say “You always do this.” “You never do this.” Tell the truth. Don’t embellish, don’t exaggerate.

And then really focus your feedback and being supportive and helpful. Telling somebody that they’re stupid or that they always do something or that this is a really bad thing that you do. That’s, that doesn’t engender a desire to change in the person that is hearing that feedback. So do what you can to share the feedback that you have in a way that is supportive and helpful to the person that’s hearing it. You could even as you’re giving feedback, pick something of your own that you want to work on and share that with the person that you’re giving the feedback to. What that can do is put both of you in the mind of focusing on the future and focusing on improvement and not focusing on judgment.

When you, when you are the one that has asked for the feedback, that’s when it’s important to just say thank you. So when, when we were talking last week about we get feedback, just say thank you. This is really the best way to implement that is when you’ve asked for feedback. Someone tells you their feedback, don’t give your opinion. Don’t start arguing. Don’t start justifying or rationalizing or anything else. Just say thank you. When you’ve asked somebody for their opinion and they’re generous enough to give it to you, don’t degrade that experience by arguing with them about it. Just say thank you and then take some time to process and synthesize the feedback. If you don’t understand the feedback, if you don’t understand what the person is telling you, it’s fine to ask clarifying questions.

Just be really careful that your questions don’t come across as challenging or argumentative. Your objective when someone’s giving you feedback is not to explain all the ways in which they’re wrong. Your objective when someone is giving you feedback is to listen and hear it. And then go figure out, “What does this mean for me? What do I need to work on?”, And then come back and take action on it. It’s also, you know, a lot of times someone gives you feedback and you might say, “Oh yeah, I know, I’m just, I’m just a disorganized person” or “I that’s, I’m just so disorganized”. Don’t even agree with the feedback that they’re giving you. Don’t try to blame it on some personality trait like it’s outside of your control. Just say thank you. When it comes to how to ask for feedback, the best and simplest way to ask for feedback is just to ask some form of, “How can I do better?”

“How could I be a better listener? How can I appear more organized?” Or even when was the last time you asked your spouse how you could be a better partner? Your kids how you could be a better parent? Asking for feedback doesn’t have to be just at work. It could be in the home as well. It could also be specific to something recent that happened. Just be careful that you’re not focusing on the past. You’re focusing on the future. So if you just gave a presentation, you can ask somebody you trust to be honest with you, to tell you how…how you can do better next time. The beauty of asking for feedback in this way is it is it solicits advice more than criticism. It focuses on the future instead of the past. And it implies that you will act on it.

You don’t have to act on every single piece of feedback that you get, but every piece of feedback is valuable to tell you what might be broken. So once you understand what’s broken, you can figure out what do I want to work on and how do I want to work on it? Asking questions like, “what do you think of me?” Or “do you like me” or “do you think I’m a good teammate?” Those kinds of things are loaded and they’re probably not going to give you the most constructive feedback. You’re probably not gonna get the most constructive feedback that way. The best way I’ve found, and Marshall Goldsmith talked about this in What Got You Here Won’t Get You There, but it really resonates with me that the best way to do it is just ask, “How can I do better?”

Unsolicited feedback. This is where you did not ask for it. Somebody approached you with some feedback about yourself, your behavior, the way you handled something, something like that. That can maybe be the most difficult to take. Part of the reason that we have trouble with feedback, in general, whether it’s solicited or unsolicited, is because it shows us a different version of ourselves than the one that we may hold of ourselves. So maybe I think I’m a good listener. And then I ask for feedback. And what I hear from the people is that I’m not a good listener. That is hard for me to hear because I think I’m good at it. And research shows that I’m not. It’s hard because hearing something negative about yourself is usually not easy, but it also challenges your view of yourself. And that’s why, a big reason why, it’s hard. Another thing to think about with unsolicited feedback is sometimes the things you complain about in others are things that others would complain about in you.

We tend to see things that we don’t like about ourselves or things that we are aware of in ourselves at some deep level in other people. So when you’re thinking, “Man, I wish this person wouldn’t do that”, or “I wish, you know, when they do that, it makes me feel bad” that, mmmmm, it’s possible you might be doing that as well. And that’s a way to kind of get feedback without getting feedback. So when someone comes to you with an observation about you or or something that they want to share with you, information that they want to share with you about you, one of the things you can do is like what Heather talked about last week in the blog is just kind of stop, drop and roll and then listen. Listen to what they’re saying. You have a great opportunity to compare what you want to be and how you want to show up with how you are showing up and how you are being perceived.

Another thing Marshall Goldsmith says is that as human beings we are, we almost always suffer from the disconnect between the self we think we are and the self that the rest of the world sees in us. I think that’s particularly impactful and it’s a big reason why we have a hard time hearing feedback. Because it may tell us that what we think about ourselves is not how we’re being experienced by others.

Observational feedback is the last type of feedback and it’s a little bit trickier than the others because you’re evaluating people around you and their reactions to you and interpreting what that might mean. So intentionally observing those around you and how they’re reacting to you, it’ll increase your social awareness. It’ll make you more aware of the world around you. You can pay attention to things like eye contact, whether people are making eye contact with you, whether they’re leaning towards you or leaning away from you.

You can also listen to things they say about you. So things people commonly say in a casual situation will give you a clue to what they really think. All of that is forms of observational feedback. The thing with observational feedback is that usually it can tell you that something might be wrong, but not necessarily what it is or how to fix it. It’s also really easy to get into a trap where you’re analyzing everything that happens around you and you’re putting a negative spin on it. So you gotta be really careful that you’re not taking, you know, someone didn’t mean my eyes. You know today or someone didn’t make eye contact with me, that must mean they hate me. The book, What Got You Here Won’t Get You There, has a whole section on feedback and a big part of of it is around observational feedback and exercises that you can do to actually collect feedback in this way.

So I’m not going to go into it here. I would encourage you to read the book. I really do encourage you to read the book. It’s really good. Suffice to say, observe how people are reacting to you. Think about what it might mean. Just don’t fall into that trap of being overly sensitive and jumping to conclusions about what you’re observing. Just take it as an indicator that you may need to ask some questions or do some relationship building or maybe solicit some feedback to understand what that might mean. And don’t assume that a negative native interaction with a person necessarily means they hate you or something like that. So once you’ve gotten all this feedback, the next thing is to synthesize it and synthesizing is just a fancy word of saying, take everything you heard, found, everything you know, everything you’ve observed and put it into a single message or a big picture.

So if you heard a bunch of things from a bunch of different people, synthesizing is the process of taking all that feedback, processing it, and figuring out what does all this mean and what do I want to work on. Again, going back to Marshall Goldsmith, he recommends that once you’ve synthesized the feedback, you go to your team or stakeholders, family, friends, whomever is impacted by whatever it is you’re trying to work on and doing the following things. One, apologize. Two, advertise. Three, thank, and four, followup. So apologizing to the people you may have inadvertently affected by the behavior that you’re trying to change. So a simple apology is usually best. “I’m sorry, I’m working on it”. That’s all you have to say. You don’t have to add a whole bunch of justifications or rationales or reasons or anything like that. Just, “I’m sorry, I’m working on it. I’m trying to do better.”

And this is, for those of you that are screaming at me, I know who you are, this apology is valid. This is not over apologizing. This is a situation where you’ve heard somebody or you’ve had a negative impact on somebody and you need to apologize. It’s part of being a grownup. Advertising means telling people that you’re working on this behavior. Part of it- there’s a lot of reasons why this is important. One of the studies that they talk about in What Got You Here Won’t Get You There, is that it takes for every 100% of effort we put in about 10% of that effort will be recognized by others. And that’s because you are more present to what you are working on than other people are. And they don’t know necessarily that you’re working on it until you tell them.

So advertising helps you to start changing that perception that other people have of you or those stereotypes that they’ve put you in and start helping them understand that you are working on some changes. So for example, if someone has stereotyped me as a jerk, I mean we all know I’m not a jerk, but if they had stereotyped me as a jerk, then everything I do is going to be viewed through that filter. If I do something that is not jerky, if I do something that is not jerk-like, they’re going to see that as an exception to the fact that I’m a jerk. Not that I’m no longer a jerk. So when you tell people, “I’m working on being a jerk”..I mean, “I’m working on NOT being a jerk. I want you to know that I am working on not being a jerk”.

Then when they see you do something that is not jerk-like, they see that as a change and an improvement in behavior and not an exception to the rule that you are a jerk. You start to kind of chip away at that stereotype that people might’ve formed of you based on your previous habits. Thanking is – should be – a no-brainer. When somebody gives you feedback, thank them. We talked about this last week. Somebody gave a, took the time to share their opinion with you, thank them. Not only does this kind of close the loop with the fact that they gave you the feedback, but it also helps ensure that they will come to you again when they have feedback. And again, feedback is valuable information. You don’t want to cut yourself off from that source. Thank the people that took the time to do that.

And then following up just means checking in regularly to ensure that you’re staying on the right track. Another good thing about this is kind of like the advertising thing. If you can get someone to agree or if you can, if you can say, “I’ve been working on these things, have you noticed a difference?” And they say “yes”, then that’s also chipping away at that stereotype that they’ve developed about you over time. So they stopped thinking of me as someone that’s a jerk and they start thinking of me of someone who is no longer a jerk or somebody who is changing and that changes their stereotype. Another good way of following up or something you should do when you follow up is to show the ways or identify, detail out, list out, whatever the things that specifically that you’re doing to change the behavior that you were trying to change. And then ask people, “have you noticed?” You know that’s the best way for them to say “yes, I have noticed”.

Because if you haven’t advertised and you haven’t asked people to tell you whether they’ve noticed a change, then the next time you ask them for feedback, they might not. They might say no because they haven’t thought about it, right? They haven’t thought about it. So by asking, following up with them, you’re bringing it back to the front of their mind. You’re pointing out a change that you made and you’re asking them to confirm that they also have seen those changes. And by confirming that they have, they’re changing that stereotype that they might have of you. So that’s ah, that feels like enough for today. We talked about giving feedback, getting feedback. What to do with feedback, the different types of feedback, what to do once you’ve got it and how to take action on it. So I would love to hear if you guys have any additional comments. I would love to hear what are some ways that you are able to handle feedback or anything additional that you’ve found helpful and effective in handling feedback in the past. And while we’re on the topic, I’d like to ask you for feedback. How am I doing? How can I be a better podcaster for you? I would love to hear any advice or feedback that you have for me on ways that I can improve so you can drop comment in the blog. There’s a blog page that goes along with this episode. I will link it in the description. You can drop me an email, dianne@coffeegritandinspiration.com. Or there’s a contact form in the blog that you can go, I’ll link that in the description as well and you can drop me feedback or comments or any, anything motivational sayings, anything like that you can send to me at any of those ways. I would love, love, love, love, love to hear it. If you would like to subscribe to the newsletter, you can do that at www.coffeegritandinspiration.com/subscription. I hope you have a wonderful, wonderful, wonderful week. I’ll talk to you soon. Bye now.