By now, any manager who doesn’t know the importance of providing feedback isn’t worthy of the position. Yet when asked what’s on the list of the most difficult conversations, feedback is always near the top. Given how hard it is to muster the courage and energy to give feedback in the first place — and the fact that it just as often leads to a worker being less motivated, not more — who needs it, ask Sheila Heen and Douglas Stone in their book, “Thanks for the Feedback: The Science and Art of Receiving Feedback Well” (Viking, 2014).
Turns out, almost everyone does. There are three types of feedback, and workers need all three:
• Appreciation acknowledges, connects, motivates and thanks.
• Coaching helps the recipient expand knowledge, sharpen skills and improve capability.
• Evaluation rates or ranks a recipient against a set of standards in order to align expectations and inform decision making.
But Heen and Stone say it’s equally obvious that in many organizations, feedback doesn’t work. Only 36 percent of managers complete appraisals thoroughly and on time. In one recent survey, 55 percent of employees said their most recent performance review had been unfair or inaccurate, and one in four said they dread such evaluations more than anything else in their working lives. When senior HR executives were asked about their biggest performance management challenge, 63 percent cited managers’ inability or unwillingness to have difficult feedback discussions.
Many companies train their leaders how to give feedback more effectively and more often. But improving the skills of the feedback giver won’t accomplish much if the receiver isn’t able to absorb what is said, the authors state. “It is the receiver who controls whether feedback is let in or kept out, who has to make sense of what he or she is hearing, and who decides whether or not to change. People need to stop treating feedback only as something that must be pushed and instead improve their ability to pull.”
Becoming a better receiver
Taking feedback well is a process of sorting and filtering. Heen and Stone contend that you need to understand the other person’s point of view, try on ideas that may at first seem a poor fit, and experiment with different ways of doing things. Their six steps for becoming a better recipient of feedback are beneficial in both the giver and receiver role.
1. Know your tendencies. You’ve been getting feedback all your life, so there are no doubt patterns in how you respond. Do you defend yourself on the facts (“This is plain wrong”), argue about the method of delivery (“You’re really doing this by e-mail?”), or strike back (“You, of all people?”)? Do you smile on the outside but seethe on the inside? Do you get teary or filled with righteous indignation? And what role does the passage of time play? Do you tend to reject feedback in the moment and then step back and consider it over time? Do you accept it all immediately but later decide it’s not valid? Do you agree with it intellectually but have trouble changing your behavior?
2. Disentangle the “what” from the “who.” If the feedback is on target and the advice is wise, it shouldn’t matter who delivers it. But it does. Work to separate the message from the messenger and then consider both.
3. Sort toward coaching. As mentioned earlier, people need both evaluation and coaching, but it’s not always easy to distinguish one from the other. Evaluations tell you where you stand and what is expected of you; coaching allows you to learn and improve and helps you play at a higher level. When in doubt, people tend to assume the worst and to put even well-intentioned coaching into the evaluation bin. Instead, the authors say, work to hear feedback as potentially valuable advice from a fresh perspective rather than as an indictment of how you’ve done things in the past.
4. Unpack the feedback. It’s not always immediately clear whether feedback is valid and useful. Before you accept or reject it, do some analysis to better understand it. “When you set aside snap judgments and take time to explore where feedback is coming from and where it’s going, you can enter into a rich, informative conversation about perceived best practices — whether you decide to take the advice or not.”
5. Ask for just one thing. Find opportunities to get bite-size pieces of coaching from a variety of people throughout the year. Don’t invite criticism with a big, unfocused question like “Do you have any feedback for me?” Make the process more manageable by asking a colleague, a boss, or a direct report, “What’s one thing you see me doing (or failing to do) that holds me back?” When you ask for feedback, you not only find out how others see you, you also influence how they see you. Soliciting constructive criticism communicates humility, respect, passion for excellence, and confidence, all in one go.
6. Engage in small experiments. When someone gives you advice, test it out. If it works, great. If it doesn’t, you can try again, tweak your approach or decide to end the experiment.
Criticism is not easy to give or take, even when you know that it’s essential for development. “Your growth depends on your ability to pull value from criticism in spite of your natural responses and on your willingness to seek out even more advice and coaching from bosses, peers and subordinates,” say Heen and Stone. “They may be good or bad at providing it, or they may have little time for it, but you are the most important factor in your own development. If you’re determined to learn from whatever feedback you get, no one can stop you.”
