I love feedback and am a fan of creating a feedback culture. I’ve participated in and led many 360 feedback assessments over the years. It takes humility and self-awareness to ask for and act on feedback. It’s something most of us, myself included, don’t do nearly enough of. Even so, at times choosing not to take feedback at face value is also an important decision to make. Acting on the wrong feedback can lead you down a rabbit hole, and become a distraction from what really matters.
So how do you know when to reject, ignore, or delay? I’ve found that in these three situations it’s best to pause and give it some extra thought before taking action.
The feedback is more about the person giving it than it is about you
At times you may receive feedback that simply doesn’t ring true. It’s not something you’ve heard before, you can’t think of a relevant situation, or it’s downright the opposite of what you typically hear or know to be true.
Once my client, a senior executive, became extremely upset with me. He wrote me a long and angry email late one afternoon telling me that, as his HR Partner, I should be much more available when he needed me. He was outraged. Why? He had stopped by my desk more than once and I wasn’t there.
As an HR leader, I care deeply about my clients and certainly wanted to be there when they needed me. However, this person did not attempt to send a message, text, or call my cell. Rather than feel bad about what he saw as a lack of availability, I reiterated my commitment to helping him and suggested next time he tries other ways to get in touch.
It may be accurate, but isn’t critical to your role or priorities
There are plenty of ways we can all grow and improve. That’s what a growth mindset is all about. No matter how much experience or expertise you have, there’s always more to learn and better ways to do things. If you’ve recently completed a performance review or 360 feedback assessment, you’ve likely come away with a long list of things you do well and a list of things you could do better.
In order to make progress, you’ve got to prioritize where to focus your time and energy. Not sure where to start? Try asking yourself:
- Is there a theme in the current feedback (or even past feedback) that I know I need to work on?
- Of all the feedback, what are a few things that will make me a better leader/colleague/team member?
- What one or two changes are most going to help me succeed in my current and future roles?
It’s perfectly fine and even healthy to prioritize feedback you feel is most important, and come back to other suggestions at a later time. Protip: When you share the results with your feedback providers, tell them what you chose to prioritize and why.
You’re receiving a mix of feedback and direction and it’s just too much
This is not something I’ve seen addressed before. I was in a meeting with my manager years ago discussing a project. We disagreed on some of the details and direction the work was taking. At times he would veer away from the project and give me feedback that was more general. Then when I started to respond, he’d be back into the project.
I had always been taught to accept feedback with curiosity and without getting defensive so that’s what I tried to do. But it became distracting as we moved back and forth between general feedback and project specifics. It was only after talking to my coach that I realized I could ask him to hold his feedback for another time. It’s not that the feedback was invalid, it just wasn’t possible to take in his unrelated feedback and discuss the project at the same time.
Worried about missing out on important feedback? We can all be limited by our own lack of self-awareness. Sometimes we simply don’t see ourselves as clearly as others do. In that case, consider asking a friend, peer, coach, manager, or mentor if the feedback resonates with them. Remember at the end of the day, feedback is there to help you build skills and improve your performance. Just like your business goals, it’s ok to prioritize, focus, and not follow every little thing to its conclusion.
Would you like to learn more about creating a feedback culture, giving and receiving feedback, or working with a coach on a 360 feedback assessment? Contact us – info@reverbpeople.com
