Taking Feedback – How not to MESS it up.

Dear Readers, 

Taking feedback is also an important skill that we need to know, practice and harness.  If we don’t know how to handle feedback, we may mess up the relationship and our Career too.  In this posting, I want to share my thoughts on how to take or handle feedback. 

1. First Listen:

First listen and listen fully without any filters, disliking and any interruption.  It’s easier said than done.  It is a tough task because we immediately become busy thinking as to how to counter or justify.

Genuine efforts to listen and understand what the other person has got to say will go a long-way in understanding ourselves better (Knowing the Blind spot) and understanding and realising our full potential.

Talking about Listening, it’s a skill to be really practiced and harnessed like any other skill. Many times it’s generally taken for granted thinking that we are really good at it. But the fact is, right from the beginning of our life, we have always been taught how to read, write and speak but very rarely how to listen.

  

Believe me, Listening pays.  Listening is respecting.

2. Accept and don’t become Defensive:

No human is perfect. Taking and accepting feedback that highlights our improvement areas need not have to hurt our ego or self-esteem.  In fact, it will show us in better light as a person who is willing to take accountability for the mistake and learn from it. On the other hand, when we allow it, we tend to be defensive.

It’s a common mistake that many of us do.  It’s easy to accept the mistake than to justify in detail why you could not do it. The more we try to justify, the more we would get exposed. That’s the fact.

  

I would like to quote what Stephen R Covey said. “Making a mistake is one thing and not accepting is another thing.  When we refuse to accept, we refuse to learn from our mistake and own responsibility for the mistake”.

When we become defensive, we become blind to all the important feedback that we need in our professional or life journey and we also stop the other person/s from giving feedback to us freely.

It’s a sure recipe to become stagnant and obsolete.

3. It’s not Personal

It’s commonly said that it’s very difficult to give feedback to Indians because we tend to take it personally.  By and large, I would agree with this.  The first feedback raises some doubts as to whether I am being disliked.  We take the second and third feedback as a confirmation for disliking and it causes friction in the relationship.

It would be good if we can consciously train ourselves to accept that the feedback is about a particular job and it’s not personal. 

Let us not dislike the person, peer / boss, giving the feedback. It should not cause friction in the relationship, reporting or peer relationship.

4. Do Validate:

We may get lot of feedback in our professional /life journey. We don’t have to start acting on every feedback given and it may not be wise too.

But it’s important to evaluate it objectively first and if it’s making sense, we should accept it and work on it.

Acceptance is the first step towards change and self-development.

5. Do Participate:

We can become proactive and participate in the feedback process.   We can ask for situations and circumstances wherein we did not perform to the expected level, mistakes made etc., This will throw lot of light as to where we are lacking and what we need to do.

This will make the whole process healthy and one would come across as someone who is really interested in self-analysis and development. 

6. Check your Emotions

Sometimes, I’ve seen people getting really disturbed and becoming very emotional.  Few get very upset and end up crying too.  This is a strict “Don’t” unless you want to come across as someone who is not matured enough/who cannot handle his/her own emotions.

We should learn to channelize our emotions and express it in a more acceptable manner.

Conclusion:

As I said before, we should learn how to handle feedback. It’s one important skill that every professional should possess.  One should take conscious efforts to learn and acquire it like any other skills.

When we don’t handle feedback well, we may mess up the relationship and our Career too. That is a huge stake.

Remember, every feedback pushes us to give our best and become the best.

diD yOU enJOY ReADinG ThIS ArTIcLE? 

                                  If yES, 

yOU maY sHAre it wiTH Your FriENds tOO.