Receiving tough feedback without questioning your self worth
Breaking down the skill of receiving negative behavioural feedback
When you receive negative behavioural feedback you didn’t see coming, it can feel like the floor drops out from underneath you. Your perception of yourself is not what others see. It’s a moment where you realise the full responsibility of leadership - your behaviour can have real, unintended consequences on how people feel at work.
That initial shock or emotional reaction can in the way of fully understanding and being able to act on the feedback. There’s a lot written on how to give great feedback, but less on how to receive tough behavioural feedback.
This post covers just that. It’s for you if: you’ve just received tough behavioural feedback, you’re about to ask for honest feedback and want to be prepared, or you want to bookmark this one for the future.
There are four parts to this post:
Sleep on it: how and when to come back to the feedback
Research mode: an exercise to get curious and learn
“I messed up” vs “I’m a mess up”: taking the learnings, not the identity crisis
Action time: different ways to move forward
Note: this is for receiving feedback from someone that you believe is giving feedback in your best interest - no matter how tough or uncomfortable that feedback is.
Sleep on it
When most of us receive negative behavioural feedback we didn’t see coming, we have an initial emotional reaction. This can be one or many of anger, frustration, shame, resistance, anxiety, hurt, or self-doubt.
Personally, when receiving a piece of tough feedback I remember a distinct combination of:
“I’ve worked so hard and you’re picking me up on this small thing”
“Do you not believe in me as a leader?”
“Why haven’t you told me this sooner? This feels really unfair”
“Does everyone think this about me? I feel like I’ve failed”
I know with hindsight that a few days later I was in a different place. If I responded to the feedback immediately it would be from a place of hurt and it would be to hurt back. If you follow that path through, it wouldn’t lead to growth for me and it would likely discourage people from giving me feedback in the future.
When receiving tough feedback, my advice is to ask for a couple of days to read and process the feedback. The person giving you the tough feedback is probably worried about an emotional or defensive reaction. So if you respond by saying “Thank you, I’d like to take some time to understand it before we talk it through” it’s generally a positive for them as well as you.
This isn’t about ignoring the emotional reactions. Emotional suppression ends up being bad for us in lots of ways. It’s about giving yourself space to process any intense emotional reaction and come back to the tough feedback with a clearer judgment. It’s the “sleep on it” stage. A few things that I’ve found (personally and with clients) help here are:
Speak to someone you trust and who is a good listener, but not someone who will fan the flames. More of “I felt the same way, but it does pass and you’ll work through this” vs “Your boss sounds really unfair, I’d be really angry at them”
Do something that you know works for you to clear your mind. For me, that’s usually moving my body outdoors, but it can also be having a cry, seeing a friend, or watching a favourite movie.
It’s also not about waiting until you have zero emotion about the feedback. Emotions motivate us, they make us want to take action.
Ask yourself the following: “Are you ready to get curious about the feedback? Are you ready to listen, ask questions, and accept that you might be missing something? Are you ready to acknowledge that the feedback comes with good intentions?”
As a guideline, give it a few days but not a few weeks.
Research mode
When you feel ready to get curious about the feedback go back to the person that shared the feedback with you. The goal here is to understand the feedback a bit better so you can decide what the next steps are.
A few pointers here:
Share back (in your own words) how you understood the feedback
Check that’s the correct interpretation
Go into research mode and ask any questions that might help you deepen your understanding
Is this something I always do? Or just on occasion?
Are there any environments where you see me do this more?
What have you seen the impact of this to be?
Is there anyone that you think it would be helpful to speak with about this?
What do you think is going on here?
This should feel less like a grilling and more like a shared exercise of trying to understand the situation a bit more clearly. That doesn’t mean it will feel easy or comfortable.
“I messed up” vs “I’m a mess up”
I have a vivid memory from early in my career—seeing a leader own some tough behavioural feedback by saying, “I messed up here,” without giving off “I'm a mess-up” vibes. I saw them take incredibly tough feedback on board, learn from it, and not spiral into self-doubt.
It has stuck with me throughout my career how important that skill is - to take tough feedback on board without questioning your whole sense of self.
Based on this observation, I’ve found it’s really helpful to clarify what feedback means and what it doesn’t mean.
Here are a few examples:
Believing the right column does not help you grow. If you believe you’re an unempathetic leader you will spend more time ruminating and less time taking positive action to support your team. If you believe you’re not good at board presentations, you’ll retreat versus stepping into the next board meeting with learnings and confidence.
So write down what this feedback means, and most importantly what it doesn’t.
Action time
The final piece is deciding what to do about this feedback. Again it’s a balance of giving yourself time to feel grounded and level-headed, but not leaving it so long that the motivation to do something feels like a dim memory.
As a guide, deciding what to do within a couple of weeks feels about right. If you can do it quicker, brilliant.
A few options for what you might decide to do:
Nothing - it’s ok to disagree with feedback
Ask for more feedback from peers close to you
Write down a few tests/experiments to try out
Ask someone to prompt you when you do the thing/don’t do the thing
Ask for some support e.g mentorship/coaching
Receiving feedback is a skill
Tough behavioural feedback can be a gift, but it rarely feels like it in the moment. Learning to take the true meaning of feedback is a skill - one that requires you to be able to move through a few stages of processing, learning, meaning making and taking action.
Acting when you’re still angry or frustrated rarely leads to positive outcomes. Staying in ruminating mode rarely leads to growth.
I hope this guide helps you take considered action. And if you’re considering asking for feedback - this post might be for you.
As always, thanks for being here!
Flora
I’m a coach for ambitious product founders and executives. You can read more about how I work and get in touch here.