Steps that can help you make the most of what you hear
No one likes to hear that they are performing poorly. Being either praised or left alone is generally preferred over having someone describe our faults. While receiving critical or negative feedback can be a challenge and can sometimes know the wind out of your sails, there are few key things to do to make receiving it less painful and more productive.
Many of the things in this list relate to our professional lives, but the basics apply to most situations in life.
1 – Connect to your character. Before you do anything in the place anchor to the things and ideal that you value. Maybe it’s courage, maybe it’s kindness, maybe it’s learning or honesty. Whatever those big ideas are, make sure you have them in mind before you start working with any type of feedback. They become your touchstones and anchor you to how you hear and use all types of feedback.
2 – Start while you’re ahead. Are you doing something well? Is there something you enjoy and know that you’re skilled at doing? It can be anything task, large or small: Getting everyone’s lunch order right or building great presentation decks? Closing guest issues well or resolving tense situations in meetings? Connecting well with overseas customers or just not freaking out every time the weather makes getting to work a challenge? Find one thing that you do well and a peer, supervisor, or a mentor who knows it, too. Discuss why you do it well (your motivation or interest), and what about the steps of how you do it make it a job well done (accuracy, clarity, precision, follow-through, etc.).
Then, within that example, explore what you could improve to make it better—even if only fractionally. Maybe it has to do with your motivation or sense of satisfaction, or maybe it’s to do with some aspect that you see could be better or more precise. Connect those small changes to the character qualities you value—your touchstones from above—and determine how or whether those improvements might help you feel more of those qualities on a regular basis. Would they help you feel like you’re learning more like you have the courage to push through even the smallest changes when you know you don’t need to? If those changes connect you more to the things you value, consider making them. If they don’t, then with the tasks you’re already good at, you’re probably fine as is.
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3 – Move to the middle ground. We all have things that we know we could do better. It may be tasks that you dislike, processes that you don’t fully understand, or things that you cannot seem to get better at no matter what you seem to do. Take a look at one of these—the thing you know you’re not great at—and go through it as you did with the thing you do well. Ask a trusted colleague to observe your work and give you feedback. You know the feedback will likely be more critical than the thing you do well. The trick is to listen without responding to every single point or explaining the comment away. Really listen. Take notes. Then go back and ask for details to specific suggestions on what you might adjust to improve. Then go practice. In all of this remember that you are using your qualities of character to connect you to how you want to make use of this feedback.
4 – Now for the tricky part: when the feedback is negative.
Sometimes negative feedback will arrive unexpectedly. If you keep the character traits you value in mind, they help make that experience less disrupting. But you can also address it head-on if you know there is something that is just not working well. The best-case scenario is that you ask to have a conversation with a person you respect about a part of your work or performance that you want to improve. From there you can listen well, as questions, and plan for how you might make use of negative feedback to your advantage. You can do this in the context of your character.
When it’s not so simple
Sometimes people give negative feedback because they are inept at giving positive feedback. Those people can tend to be hypercritical while also being somewhat vague and also personal in their criticism. They are vexing. But you have your character touchstones to keep you grounded and get you through.
If you are dealing with people who cannot give negative feedback well, who yell, or rant, or change their minds mid-thought, or who just don’t like you much; it can be really hard to handle and emotionally exhausting.
The trick in all of this is to stay in contact with your character: if you value integrity, how might you hear or respond to this new information in a way that supports your integrity? If you value learning, what are you learning about this person, the circumstance, or yourself at the moment? If you value kindness, what is something that can demonstrate kindness at the moment—to yourself and to the other person?
And if you don’t know how you would do any of those things, imagine what someone who did know how to use their character that way would do and just do what they would. Building character and living in alignment with what you value isn’t easy, it also takes practice. You might be clumsy. That’s ok. Keep trying—you are a person of character.
