How to Receive Feedback From Others
4 key factors you can implement today and use feedback as a tool of managing your emotions.
Receiving Feedback from others is tough. Especially when the feedback is of disapproval and differs from your ideas. It hurts us, even more, when we receive negative feedback from someone we know and appreciate.
Place yourself in a situation when you’re at the office, working for two years straight. You do your job exponentially. You finish all your tasks. You’re never late. And your manager tells you “I couldn’t have a better employee than you”. Yet you wonder to yourself, if I’m such an outstanding employee, why I don’t receive any raise offerings? Kinda peculiar don’t you think?
I believe you had different situations where you simply don’t know why the person you’re associating with, doesn’t show any regard for your actions. Or gives you feedback that contradicts what you expected of them.
It all comes down to comprehending the other person and what they’re trying to accentuate to you. Everything has a reason. And just like receiving feedback from someone, there’s a reason for what people say to you. Or the actions they take. It’s your job as the recipient to unfold the meaning of their words or behavior. Communication is key to everything.
Here’s how I perceive feedback and the methods I take in my daily life:
Feedback triggers
Feedback can come in all sorts of ways. It could be truth feedback, emotional feedback, or identity feedback.
we’ll separately go through each in detail and provide examples:
Truth Feedback — The painful thing about feedback is hearing the unexpected truths that contradict your perspectives. For instance, imagine yourself singing a song you like in front of people and someone telling you that your singing is awful. You don’t have the vocals, yet you still sing because you enjoy it. Although, vocal tonality can be learned like any other skill and the truth is we’re not great at things when we first start.
Emotional Feedback — From time to time, we’re confronted with the choice of whether, to be honest with the person we care about and say what’s on our mind. Even though it could potentially hurt them. There was a time when a friend of mine wanted me to try some nutrition supplements with rich vitamins for a fair price. Now I’m not a fan of such things, and I prefer eating original foods and not processed ones. I tried her product for two days and I already felt unfulfilled, hungry, and had bowel syndromes. I knew saying such things would be a bit hurtful, but I’d rather be honest about it instead of concealing it within me.
Identity Feedback — Identity refers to being honest in a relationship with yourself. Whether the feedback is good or bad, it’s our responsibility on how internally we accept the feedback and not recoil from it. Think of a situation when you first try to cook a beef wellington as Gordon Ramsey does. What do you think, could you make it a masterpiece like he does? Of course not!
It takes practice and as of the moment, you’re terrible at cooking a beef wellington (which comes back to our truth feedback) and you need to deal with it till you become better.
It’s our task as the receivers to know how to handle the feedback we get from others and accept it. Even though most of them could contradict our insights. Always try to see where the person is coming from and try to place yourself in their point of view. Whether it’s feedback about a true fact, from a loved one, or on how you internally handle it.
Interpret the label of the feedback
Often, feedback could be misleading, misunderstood, or simply taken in a whole new direction.
As the receivers, we can’t control what the giver is saying to us. It is our task to unfold the labels that come from the feedback of the other end and to interpret what they’re trying to convey to us.
“Explicit disagreement is a lot better than implicit misunderstanding”
as mentioned above, I think we’d prefer to disagree with someone rather than misinterpret their intentions toward us.
Take, for instance, Amanda, a senior product manager who wants her product manager Paul to be more assertive with the customers and close the deal. Paul takes on Amanda’s statement and meets with the potential customers. Instead of closing the deal, Paul became frantic and anxious about their customers buying their product by any means necessary. Due to such a lack of control, the potential customers declined the proposition and the deal was canceled. Amanda became furious with Paul and demanded answers to the unfortunate events. Paul misinterpreted the meaning of assertiveness and aggressiveness. Amanda wanted Paul to be more energetic, to be more excited, and to let his personality shine through.
So it’s highly imperative to know what’s hidden within the label of the giver’s feedback and to unfold the meaning of it which comes down to asking questions.
Ask questions
Asking questions is crucial for us to truly comprehend what the giver is trying to deliver to us.
As the situation with Amanda and Paul turned out to be a disaster. It could’ve been much more profitable and simple if Paul asked Amanda what she meant by “being assertive”?.
If Paul asked Amanda that question because he didn’t fully understand her, Amanda would’ve probably explained to him more in detail in how he should express himself in front of the customers. And they wouldn’t have lost them.
The reason he asks questions is because we don’t fully understand something. And we need more clarification on such things.
Remember: “Explicit disagreement is a lot better than implicit misunderstanding”. And Paul misunderstood Amanda which turned out in a declined deal and loss of money.
See the feedback as a growing possibility
Don’t take things emotionally. Take it as a learning experience and an opportunity to grow and learn more about yourself.
Feedback comes in different forms, and often we receive negative feedback. Nevertheless, it’s not as horrible as it seems. In fact, how we receive it and react to it, shows our true maturity as grown-ups.
We can’t alter the things that happen around us. However, it is our full responsibility how we perceive the feedback from the giver, and try to construe their intentions.
Find the good in the negative things. Learn from where the other person is coming from, and what they’re trying to convey to you. As I said before, everything has a reason. And it is your duty to unfold the label within the feedback and take the appropriate actions. Be mature about it and take it as an opportunity to grow and improve yourself.
Thanks for reading and I’d really appreciate your feedback regarding the article or any opinions in how I can improve my writing for the next article.
