How to Give and Receive Negative Feedback (and why it's so good for you)
Toxic workplaces suck. As in, they suck the energy/life/joy/contentment/peace/productivity (you name it) right out of you. Or, at least, they try to.
I’ve addressed workplace toxicity before and it’s an incredibly important topic because toxic workplaces cause anxiety and lack of authenticity and communication between colleagues are top symptoms that result from a toxic workplace culture. This article tackles the toxic workplace from a feedback perspective: executives and managers whose approach to giving and receiving feedback just sucks and employees who simply can’t handle the truth.
A 2015 Gallup study of 7,272 U.S. adults found that 50 percent of employees left their jobs "to get away from their manager to improve their overall life at some point in their career." This means that HALF of these workers who participated in this study had left a job just because they HAD TO get away from their managers. Not just to improve the job performance, mind you. No, to “improve their overall LIFE.”
Damn. I feel that.
I recently observed an exchange between a female senior executive manager and a female employee where the former called the latter “the weakest person we have” in her position in the company after the employee asked for assistance and feedback in an area where she felt she needed help. Shocking? It doesn’t just shock because of its poor taste. It’s truly terrible, toxic management from a communication standpoint because:
It was mean spirited
It wasn’t actionable
It wasn’t measurable
It shut down the conversation
Missed opportunity… for both women. Uh, for sure… Why? 1) As women hopefully working collectively toward the goal of lifting other women up, we should be more supportive of one another in general. 2) And, because giving and receiving feedback is one of the most important exchanges of crucial information we need to improve performance. Yes, GIVING feedback can be just as important as receiving it.
Feedback is a key driver of performance and leadership effectiveness. Negative feedback in particular can be valuable because it allows us to monitor our performance and alerts us to important changes we need to make. And indeed, leaders who ask for critical feedback are seen as more effective by superiors, employees, and peers, while those who seek primarily positive feedback are rated lower in effectiveness.
But processing and acting on negative feedback is not always easy. It can make us defensive, angry, and self-conscious, which subsequently impairs our effectiveness. Depending on where we are in our energy levels at any given moment, negative feedback can trigger a real slide into Victimhood or Martyrdom… real quick. (For more on energy levels, what they mean, and why they matter in the workplace, check out this previous article).
Beyond how tough it can be to receive negative feedback, we just can’t take all feedback we receive at face value. While critical feedback can frequently be given objectively and with the purest of motives, it can also be inaccurate and/or nefarious in nature: a coworker who wants to throw us off our game; a boss who has completely lost touch or has unachievable expectations; an employee who is scared to speak truth to power; a friend who projects her own issues onto us. It’s hard to know what is real and what should be filtered out.
Here are two actions you can take to help receive critical feedback openly and calmly, intentionally mine it for insight, and harness it to improve without collateral damage to your confidence and self-concept.
Remember who controls the way you react. (HINT: it’s you).
In my article last week about “difficult conversations” (they don’t exist), I mentioned how our interpretation of something is different from what it actually is. The more objective and grounded you can be while receiving negative feedback, the easier it will be to receive it. This means doing the work to be in the right energy state to hear feedback no matter what it is and really take it in, process it, and evaluate it in the most objective way possible. Learning about our natural energy levels and how we can shift and control them (without letting them control us) is the superpower you need to be able to navigate these types of situations with ease and grace.
Even the most self-aware among us are still human – no one likes being given negative feedback. However, people who tend to REACT immediately when given this type of feedback, whether solicited or not, do not receive the benefits of the experience the way people who give themselves days or even weeks to bounce back and process the negative feedback before deciding what to do next. The latter? They are more self-aware and thus more equipped to look for the silver lining in the feedback and turn it into improved productivity and performance.
The ability to do this is called cognitive reappraisal. It involves actively working to change the way you PERCEIVE the experience of receiving the negative feedback. Even calling it “negative feedback” has to change when you adopt this methodology: you can’t pretend to be an objective observer and call something negative!
One simple yet effective reappraisal tool is labeling, or putting our feelings into words. For example, after a critical performance review, we might simply acknowledge, “My experience of this situation is feeling blindsided, annoyed, attacked and a little pissed off.”
Regardless: the only person you can control in this situation is YOU. You get to determine how this feedback affects you and your quality of life. You get to control, maintain and shift your own energy.Remember that you don’t have to change.
Most successful, ambitious people probably believe that when a behavior is limiting their success, they should work to change it. However, the best way to manage our weaknesses isn’t always clear cut. For all of the reasons mentioned above about why we shouldn’t always take feedback at face value, it is going to be necessary to view the feedback with a critical eye.
Yes, listen to it. Consider it. Mull it over.
But don’t take it as gospel…don’t immediately take it as truth…for you.
If it doesn’t align with the truth of who you are (for instance: if you have just been told by a supervisor that you are the weakest person on the team in your position) or it doesn’t make sense or it’s simply mean-spirited… it’s time to let that sh*t roll off like water on a duck’s back.
Easier said than done, right? This is where understanding your own energy levels is CRUCIAL. If you haven’t already explored the Energy Leadership Assessment and what it can mean for you and your career (and whole life), check it out here.
Now, let’s talk about being on the other end of this feedback exchange: how best to GIVE negative feedback (and why this exchange has the potential to make you better and not just bossier).
Stop using verbal gimmicks.
Want to use the least productive way of delivering feedback? Enter the verbal gymnastics of the typical soothe-hurt-soothe approach: the traditional three-part sequence of delivering feedback – compliment/critique/compliment. The problem with this is that it gives the employee a false sense of how they’re doing. They’ve just received two positives and one negative, so they take that to mean that they’re doing well. People also typically focus on the last thing they hear in a sequence, so they’re left remembering the positive comment rather than the critique. The actual point of having the conversation is buried in the middle.
Not only is this ineffective, it gives employees a false sense of progress. Even if they’re getting feedback weekly, they’re still hearing positives outweighing negatives. Fast forward to review time, and they’ll be shocked and disappointed to find out their review doesn’t match what they thought you’d been telling them. This leads to frustrated employees, and weakens their level of trust. They feel that they were working hard enough or doing enough, and you were giving them compliments, but they weren’t rewarded for their efforts. It’s a vicious cycle that can only come to an end if feedback is delivered properly.
This isn’t to imply you should just focus on the negative! Management brings down the morale of workers by focusing solely on what they are doing wrong or correcting problems; rarely, if ever, do they give positive feedback and reinforcement for the things that are going right.
If you’re looking to strike the right balance, consider HONESTY. If an employee is underperforming, it’s the manager’s responsibility to let them know that. Chances are, the employee is aware that their performance isn’t up to par. Frame the conversation in terms of you wanting to help them to overcome the problem or challenges they’re having. If you approach the conversation by letting them know you see their struggle and are offering to help, they’ll be much more receptive to the critique.
Remember:Check in on your mindset and energy levels. Are you feeling frustrated, upset, or judgmental? Maybe even just tired, stressed, or distracted?
Exercise your empathy. If you were the one receiving feedback, how would you want someone to share their thoughts with you?
Stay true to the relationship. Avoid taking on a more professional or personal tone than usual. Approach the conversation how you would any other one-on-one with this person.
Make it measurable and actionable.
We’re all familiar with SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Bound) Goals. Negative feedback should also be SMART!!! Take care to present your feedback in a way that makes it very specific what actions you are looking for from your employee or team, how you plan on determining improvement, why it’s their responsibility, and when you will expect to see the implementation of your suggested solutions.
This is why giving effective negative feedback should be such an excellent exercise for YOU! It forces you to ground yourself, check in with your own energy, evaluate a situation in the most objective way possible, and present your solutions while reasoning with the person and people you may have helped put in the very position to execute the task at hand in the very best way.
Don’t miss out on the incredible opportunity that is both RECEIVING and GIVING negative feedback! I devote an entire section of my upcoming How Women Speak Training on how to be on the giving and receiving end of conflict communication. Don’t miss out!
