Feedback is relatively easy to receive when we agree with it. The harder—and often more useful—work begins when someone offers an observation that feels inaccurate, unfair, or inconsistent with how we understand ourselves.
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Our natural response in those moments is often to evaluate the feedback before we have really considered it. We explain the context, identify what the other person may not understand, or begin building the case for why their assessment isn’t quite right. Sometimes, of course, it isn’t. Feedback is inherently subjective, and not every observation deserves the same weight.
But feedback does not have to be entirely accurate to contain useful information.
I often encourage leaders to separate intent from impact when they are trying to make sense of difficult feedback. We tend to evaluate our own behavior with the benefit of knowing our intentions, while everyone around us experiences that behavior primarily through its impact. A leader may know that she is thoughtful and collaborative, for example, while others experience her reluctance to speak early in a meeting as a lack of confidence. Another may believe he is being direct and decisive while his team experiences the same behavior as dismissive.
The question, then, is not simply, “Is this feedback true?” A more productive question is, “What might someone be experiencing that caused them to reach this conclusion?”
That subtle shift matters because it replaces defensiveness with curiosity without requiring us to accept every piece of feedback as fact. Ask for examples. Look for patterns rather than isolated comments. Consider whether the perception changes depending on the audience or environment. Most importantly, resist the urge to explain your intention before you fully understand the impact.
This is particularly important as leaders become more senior. Leadership is not only about what we intend to communicate; it is also about our ability to recognize how our behavior is being interpreted by the people around us. Perception should not dictate every decision, but neither can it simply be dismissed because it does not match our own assessment.
The goal of feedback is not to construct a perfectly accurate description of who you are. It is to give you information about how your leadership is being experienced.
You can disagree with some of that information and still learn from it. In fact, sometimes the feedback we are most inclined to reject is precisely the feedback worth examining a little longer.