Three Empowering Steps to Deal with Negative Feedback
Feedback is a gift and this is not a cliche but nevertheless people dread receiving negative feedback. There are many reasons for that but often one of the reasons is that very few people are able to give feedback constructively and as a result the feedback sounds more as a final verdict that leaves the recipient powerlessThe good news is that there are ways to deal with such situations and to empower ourselves. Follow these simple steps:
Thank the person giving you the feedback. It is very likely that they come from positive intent and even if they don’t, hearing what they think gives you insight that you would not have had before.
Play back what you have heard - it is important to repeat the feedback in order to make sure that you have understood it correctly. Our hearing is selective and we often make things sound worse than they really are. The added benefit of playing back is that if the feedback is not constructively provided, it may make the person giving you the feedback realise that.
Ask specifying questions - this is probably the most important thing to do. When you are given negative feedback, ask questions to make it specific - “What exactly did you see that you thought I can do better?” “What did I not do well?” “What did you expect to see instead?” “Could you give me an example.” A few years ago, I had a terrible situation when I was leading a meeting of my team with a very senior person in my organisation. I also had my boss and coach who was observing my boss in that meeting. At the beginning of the meeting, the senior leader asked a question that was supposed to be handled by one of my teammates further down the meeting. I was perfectly able to briefly answer the question but instead I passed it to my colleague who unfortunately did not provide a good answer. The meeting did not go as well as we wanted after that. I had a debrief with my boss and his coach after that and my boss told me that I was not able to lead meetings and I had to learn how to do that. I felt terrible even before that but after the debrief, I was feeling even worse because I was apparently really bad at leading meetings. While the meeting was not the best meeting I have led, it was not that terrible as it was in my head. What I should have done during the debrief was to ask my boss what exactly did I not do well. In this case, my mistake was not answering the question of the senior leader. What I could have done better was to answer the question briefly and say that we will review it in detail a bit further down the meeting. As you can imagine, this made me feel much better. I could do something about it. Asking the specifying question empowered me to know what I can improve. Asking a specifying question not only shows you what exactly the problem was but it also helps us judge whether to take action on the feedback or not. I have been in situations when I was given broad negative feedback and when I asked specifying questions, examples of situations that I was displaying the behaviour, the person giving me the feedback was not able to answer and it became clear that he is giving me the feedback because he has heard someone making a comment. While I did not completely ignored the piece of feedback, instead of taking it as something I must change, I began looking for additional feedback from other people to decide whether this was something I had to address.
So, in summary, remember the golden trio of dealing with negative feedback - thank the person, play back what you have heard and ask specifying questions to make sure you understand where the issue is.