Why is accepting feedback so dang hard?
© Pete Longworth
Tell me if this sounds familiar: Someone gives you feedback, and all of a sudden, you get mad. You feel hurt. You respond defensively. You shut down.
If you haven’t reacted to feedback that way yourself, maybe you’ve been on the other end of that conversation: You give someone feedback, and they get angry. They cry. They begin to tell you all the things you’ve done wrong.
Why is accepting feedback so dang hard sometimes?
There are many reasons.
First, we’re rarely taught how to give feedback. That means when people are giving us feedback or when we’re giving it to others, we might not have the best delivery. Our intentions may be in the right place, but our words leave the other person feeling hurt.
In addition to that, there's a lot of baggage and personal history with feedback and conflict. My earliest memory of confrontation happened when I was in elementary school: A girl told me she was going to beat me up because we had the same red, curly hair, and people thought we were sisters. Thankfully, my mom picked me up just in time, but I remember feeling shocked and scared. In all likelihood, your earliest memory of conflict and feedback left you feeling shocked, scared, invalidated, confused, angry, or hurt, too. Plus, not everyone grew up in homes where conflict was handled positively. For some, it may have even been abusive. Difficult conversations can trigger these deep-seated memories and emotions so that, instead of staying focused on the present, we let something from our past take over and manifest.
So, how do we get better? No matter what our relationship with feedback is, and no matter how much or how little we know about how to best deliver it, how do we get better at accepting it and help others do the same?
Delivery matters: The way we give feedback has a direct correlation to how the person accepts it. I recommend giving feedback with the FBI format, a tool I learned from a company I love called Barry-Wehmiller. The F stands for feeling, the B stands for behavior, the I stands for impact. How do you feel? What was the behavior that made you feel that way? What was the impact of that behavior? The reason I love it is that you’re making it about yourself. By going in with I instead of You, the person is less likely to feel attacked, and it’s really hard to argue with the way someone else feels. Here’s an example: I felt disappointed that you were thirty minutes late to the meeting and the impact is I’m not sure if I can rely on you.
Think about the place you’re coming from: Before you give feedback, it’s important to identify the place you’re coming from. Are you coming from a loving and caring place, a place of wanting to help this person grow and be better? Or are you coming from a place of anger or ego? If you are coming from the second, you can expect to be met with resistance.
Become aware of your triggers: When you feel triggered in a conversation, it’s worth exploring why. We all have limiting beliefs—narratives that tell us things like I’m not good enough or I can’t do anything right. Sometimes when you’re given feedback, it can trigger one of your limiting beliefs. An easy way to tell if that’s happening is when your emotions exceed the moment. When that happens, your feelings likely aren’t the result of the conversation you’re having. They are about something deeper, perhaps something from the past. A practice that helps me when I’m feeling triggered is to remind myself that my narrative isn’t true. If that doesn’t work, I ask if I can have time to think and collect myself and schedule another time to talk so that I can be in a better headspace.
Practice empathy: When you are on the other side of a conversation where someone is responding poorly to the feedback you gave, remember that they too might be experiencing a personal trigger. We have no idea what people have been through in their lives. We have no idea what their relationship is with conflict and feedback or the specific topic we’re addressing. When I notice someone else becoming emotional, I meet them with empathy. I tell them I care about them, that I see them, and I acknowledge how they feel.
Recognize the effort: Not everyone will have great delivery, and we shouldn’t expect it. Until feedback is something that’s taught in every classroom and every organization, we will have a lot of bad feedback-givers out there. I try to look past the delivery and instead recognize the effort. It’s a lot easier not to say something difficult, so when someone gives me feedback, I see it as a sign that they care about me, so much so that they are willing to get uncomfortable.
See it as a gift: No matter how hard feedback might be to hear, there is always a gift in it. A chance to understand someone else’s perspective, a chance to learn, a chance to become more aware of our behavior and the impact it has on those around us. Even if you don't agree with the feedback given, you can choose to see the conversation as a gift. This person felt safe enough to tell you how they feel, and it's a chance to make your relationship stronger.
If you want to learn more, my team put a wonderful guide together that will help you get better at delivering and accepting feedback. You can download it here. As always, it’s pay-what-you-can. 100% of the funds raised goes to supporting our team members during COVID-19.
I’ll sum it all up with this: The better we get at accepting feedback, the more people will feel safe giving it to us.
Big hugs,
