Receiving Feedback: Advanced Strategies

Domain: Self Awareness - Estimated reading time: 3 minutes

Receiving feedback can be hard. For everyone.

As managers, one of our responsibilities is to provide feedback to our team. Unfortunately, we have and often over-use the luxury of standing behind our authority to do so.

When our team gives us feedback, they don't have that same luxury. They are operating from a place of courage because it's much more of a risk for them to provide you with feedback than the other way around. We want to reward that courage.

Most managers want their team to be receptive to feedback in order to help the growth and development of the team as a whole. If we expect that of our team, we need to be able to model what that looks like.

In part 1, I talked about the foundations of receiving feedback well. That advice was mostly focused on getting you in the right mindset to receive feedback.

Today, we'll talk about some more advanced strategies for receiving feedback. The goal here is to graciously receive feedback from your team in a way that rewards the behavior.

Thank them

This is my favorite piece of advice for receiving feedback.

Thank them. Intentionally and specifically.

You want a team that feels comfortable giving you feedback. This is how you learn about problems early and gain insights that you otherwise wouldn't have access to.

So before you do or say anything, you are going to thank them for providing the feedback.

Not just a casual "Thanks". It should sound something similar to: "First off, thank you for bringing this to me. I know it's not always easy to provide feedback like this but I truly do value it."

That's just an example, make it your own but make sure you are reinforcing the behavior. This is actually a form of feedback itself. You are giving indirect feedback that they are safe and even encouraged to be open with you.

Assume it’s true

It's easy to get defensive about feedback. We talked about that in part 1. A specific method for overcoming this is to simply assume that whatever feedback they are providing is true and correct.

That doesn't mean that it's objectively true. We just don't want to get caught-up in debating the validity of their feedback. Doing that will discourage them from coming to you in the future.

The fact that they are bringing this to you suggests that the feedback has at least a degree of truth from their perspective. Put your objections aside for now so that you can engage with them within the context of their experience.

Stay curious

Asking clarifying questions is a great way to show that you are trying to understand where they are coming from. The questions will depend on the context. Consider asking questions that highlight either recent examples or the impact that the topic in question is having on their work.

You want to be careful here, because it can be easy to ask questions that come across as defensive or dismissive. Every question should be framed in a way that shows you are trying to deepen your understanding.

Work on it

We've all had instances, either personally or professionally, where we give feedback and recommendations that seem to evaporate into the ether.

If you do this enough, your team won't take you seriously. They'll see you as saying the right things in the moment but not taking them seriously enough to act on it.

The best thing you can do to combat this is to take an action that follows up on the feedback. This doesn't mean that you have to change your behavior every single time someone gives you feedback. There may be really valid reasons why you are doing some of the things you are doing. It simply means that you value the feedback enough to further explore it.

Maybe it's a behavior change on your part, maybe it's a compromise or maybe it's a follow-up meeting to collaborate on alternatives for something that can't be changed. Again, this will all depend on the context of the specific situation. All we're doing here is showing that we're taking the feedback seriously.

Thank you for reading. My hope is always that you've found something helpful and easy to implement. If you have feedback, suggestions or questions, please reply to this email.

If you are interested in exploring one-on-one coaching to transform your leadership, email me at [email protected] and we’ll coordinate a free, one-hour discovery session.

This week’s action items:

1. Before you say or do anything, intentionally thank those who bring you feedback.

2. Assume the feedback you are receiving is true so that you can better understand their perspective.

3. Ask clarifying questions to deepen your understanding.

4. Take some form of action or follow-up to show that you are taking the feedback seriously.