47. How to Receive Feedback

Hi everyone. I’m Saralyn Hodgkin. And this is the podcast to practice your leadership

Hi, everyone. As we’ve been diving into how we work together in teams in the last few episodes, today, I want to revisit another podcast that’s focused on receiving feedback. It’s not just, Hey, dump your thoughts on me and let’s move forward. No, there are some pointers that I can help you out with in how to receive feedback and being able to use your own communication tactics.

Because of course, communication is key at this time of resetting how we show up, how we thrive, how we show up in teams, In in, in whatever groups and alliances you’re showing up in, what are some of the pointers of being able to create the conditions, do your own work, to receive feedback? Cause it’s coming at ya.

Of course it is. Feedback is always coming your way. And this podcast that I recorded, in, uh, the summer of 2021, is here to help you figure out your practice for receiving feedback. It was a powerful one. So thought we come back into it to help you with your practice. Let’s get started everyone.

Receiving feedback. It’s not always so easy.

You’re called in to receive a performance review from your manager, your boss, and how do you set yourself up for that? What does that look like? Because the person giving you that feedback, they may not be so skillful. They have maybe prepped in a way to just share a bunch of stuff with you, just to check off a list, a bunch of things who knows how they’re showing up.

And so what can you do to stand in a place to receive feedback? So to be able to have a dialogue that moves forward on a situation, a purpose for that conversation. Because we need to feel the impact or illuminate or gather insights. Right. But it is the whole point of feedback is to be a dialogue.

And in dialogue, it is not always talk, talk, talk. It is listening and receiving listening and receiving communication. And you know, some of these touchstones around staying curious, having courage, holding accountability, maintaining a growth mindset. These things are really important to have the compassion, the curiosity, the intention to keep the relationship as primary, not the awkwardness or the conflict, which is all going to come up.

But instead seeing feedback to enable this rich relationship. So thought we would dive into here receiving feedback and just orienting around what that looks like. So if the goal is to have this dialogue, we got to set ourselves up to know that there’s going to be stuff that’s not feeling so great and normalize that that is just fine.

That is just fine, right? That the person on the other side, as I said, might not be skillful in giving the feedback, but you can do your work to set yourself up to receive feedback. Brené Brown there’s a quote she has that the ultimate goal of receiving feedback is a skillful blend, blend, a skillful blend of listening, integrating feedback, and reflecting it back with accountability.

I think that’s just such a beautiful quote that the goal is a skillful blend of listening, integrating that feedback and reflecting it back with accountability. That’s from her dare to lead book. So how do we do this? How do we receive feedback? Step number one, do your own work first.

You gotta do your own work first. Rumble with your knowing. Sometimes we don’t always know the conversation that’s coming up. Maybe it just comes right up and atcha. But if this is something you can prep for, right? Do your own work first, rumble with your own knowing. What’s true for me, what’s true in my experience, own your parts of that.

What is reasonably yours to own? And what’s not? Be prepared emotionally, psychologically, did you get enough sleep, you know, all of that kind of stuff, but also be prepared. Not just in rumbling with your own knowing and, and playing with some of that kind of lightly, but also setting yourself up to have mantras or self-talk that allows you to have a stance that when that person across the table, who may not be skilled in giving feedback, that you can be skilled in holding those inner team members and all that self-talk that could trigger you and go off that you’ve got mantras, maybe it’s around generous assumptions. Maybe it’s around, just get through it. Maybe it’s around learning, whatever it is, some mantras or self-talk prep that allows you to have resilience.

Especially in the face of being with those who may not be skilled in giving that feedback. Number two, set it up for you, set up the container for you. You can advocate for yourself about what you need to be able to receive the feedback that’s about to come your way such as like a performance review.

Hey, for me to do this performance review with you, what I really need is to have a quiet room, do it on zoom with camera off. I need it to happen every three months. I need it to be right after meetings. Advocate for yourself for what you need and how timely it is or how you like to be approached, or when you like to receive feedback for different things. For my performance, it’s this. But when we just finished a workshop, I’d love to do a quick do well, do better with you and receive some feedback right after this workshop. That be okay? Sure. So you can advocate for yourself for what you need with the feedback that might be coming your way.

And then you can ask yourself as you set it up for yourself. Am I ready? How do I get calm, grounded? Just in the right headspace. How do I stand in a place where I can believe in my own worth and my own value, no matter the feedback, which is just input, but that I self author my worth and my value first and foremost, can I be in that head space and hold that?

While at the same time listening to this feedback that’s coming my way. Can I stay in a growth mindset, a learning stance that might be able to be helpful so I can receive what is being said to me? Can I hear this feedback as data, not a judgment about who I am, but as data that I can then grapple with? That I know the context of, and I can grapple with, can I give myself the permission to feel in that moment or if I need to, to freeze off my heart for a bit, if it’s real troubling, right. And discern in that moment what I want to share and what I don’t want to share, because sometimes it might be a stressful place. And so you just kind of want to freeze and move through that stress cycle.

As the Nagoski sisters talk about, move through the stress cycle to the other side to do your own work in private. If it triggers a lot of emotion for ya. So do your own work, set it all up for yourself, and then you can contribute to framing the conversation. What do you need in this conversation? Advocate for it.

How can you frame the conversation to say, Hey, I’m going to be listening and integrating and trying to reflect back with accountability. And it may not always meet you at the same place where you think I should be, because I’m trying to do my own work in this. Frame up the conversation.

Fourth seek to understand. Well, what I hear you saying is I statements, right? The story I’m making up by what you’re saying is, right. These rumble prompts that Brené Brown has and her team have provided to us. Respond with some inquiry, be present, seek to understand with that curiosity and you don’t have to own all of it.

You don’t have to own all of it. You take what’s valuable, you leave the rest and you don’t have to explain yourself. Have faith in yourself that you’re doing your best. Seek to understand, and then digest in a way that makes sense to you. That allows you to take what’s valuable. Then either with that person in front of you or afterwards, create some actions from here.

Hey, you know what? I need some space to integrate Ask for it when you need some space, take that space and commit to circling back and then actually circle back. Don’t let it, don’t leave it hanging.

Even if it’s real hard, those hard things are grit. They help us grow. And then maybe an action is that you need support. What’s the context of support that you need? The support that you might need is Hey, I need to talk about this with a colleague, uh, my partner, I need to figure out the support that I need from you directly.

Right? You got to figure out internally for yourself what support do you need from what you’ve gathered here to maybe make sense of it or, or integrate it or try to leave some of it behind even. And what’s this context with the feedback that you’re receiving, what’s the context that you need in order to take this for you to thrive with it, right?

For you to thrive with it. Which means are there things that I need to unlearn? Are there new things here that I need to learn? Is this a pattern for myself? Is this their stuff? And not actually my stuff? Because that is completely possible.

So receiving feedback is a practice. It takes practice to receive feedback and it can be anything from the scale of quick five minute, do well do betters with your co-facilitator. It can be in performance reviews. It can be with your partner or in your family. Feedback is always present and to be skilled at receiving feedback means having a practice with it.

Do your own work, stay in the practice all.

Thanks all, I’m Saralyn. You can find me at holonleadership.org. I walk alongside you as you practice your leadership.