When Feedback Feels Personal: Staying Curious Long Enough to Learn

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.

It's Not All About You

Photo by Josh Calabrese on Unsplash

Picture this. You recently promoted a team member for their hard work. Outside of seniority, your recently promoted member, let’s call this person Sal, has worked hard to accomplish a great quantity of projects. Recently, one of Sal’s direct reports put in their notice. The report has had trouble for over a year, struggling with personal challenges, something you’ve been very understanding about. 

In your effort to be innovative, you dream up a solution: By offering Sal’s subordinate flexibility to continue to work, albeit not full-time, you allow space for a person who is personally struggling. Your team is performing well and you’ve invested significant time into your team’s camaraderie. 

We often wish organizations would be creative about the “human element.” People are complicated: there must be some allowances. Typically these allowances are measured in policy to ensure folks don’t take advantage. I’m all for standards and policies, but I’m also a strong advocate for innovation. If a company can retain a team member, even if the role and scope look a little different than what they were doing previously, that’s a win for everyone. 

While I could focus on the monumental win here of problem-solving when dealing with personnel issues, I actually want to go back to Sal. 

Sal’s response to this solution was dismal, at best. When approached with the idea to offer this arrangement to the team member, you are met with disbelief. “What will other people think?” “I had a hard year too.” The general tone is negative. 

You decide to proceed, as you feel it reflects the values of the team as a whole, but are troubled by Sal’s self-focused response. What do you do? 

It’s apparent there’s an empathy gap. Everyone has their own “stuff.” And only we know what we go through. But when anyone is put into a managerial position, the truth is empathy must increase. You must try to put on their glasses and see the world through a different lens.  If Sal’s boss also looked at Sal and any direct report without empathy, there’s no way the aforementioned solution would have been dreamt up. So how can we increase empathy, one of the most important attributes for a leader? Stay tuned, as I’ll provide suggestions for you and your team in my next post.

Are you Transacting as a Leader?

Clients are often faced with challenging circumstances at work, and each week we use  these obstacles as learning opportunities to ensure appropriate management. Sometimes in the minutiae of every day life, it’s difficult to allow time for future planning. This is, in part, a job of mine: amidst weekly learnings about effective management and resolving conflict, intention setting is important. 

What’s interesting about the phenomenon of learning is you truly do not know what you do not know. When considering what type of leader you want to be, you might think of descriptors such as charismatic, motivational, or servanthood. But there are actually a number of formalized leadership styles. What’s the benefit of being aware of these differing styles? It allows you to reflect on what you want to be (the intention-setting part). Similar to behavior, you can change your leadership style, but not without the awareness of what direction you want to head in.

Knowing your style helps direct your decision-making, and as a leader, that is paramount. There are numerous styles of leadership that aren’t inherently good or bad—they’re just different. They all have their benefits and drawbacks, as well as their appropriate uses in certain scenarios.

Today, I am sharing information about Transactional Leadership. It is not uncommon for me to see this type of leadership, especially for high performers (who often become leaders of teams due to their impressive track record). 

Simply put, transactional leaders give X and expect Y in return. 

Transactional leaders give instructions to their team members and then use different rewards and penalties to either recognize or minimize what they do in response.

Think of a leader offering praise to applaud a job well done, or mandating that a group member handles a despised department-wide task because they missed a deadline. Rewards and punishment are the way a transactional leader thinks. 

This is a “telling” style, but is often correlated to high-result work environments. So, a natural pro is that confusion is eliminated. Tasks and expectations are clearly mapped out by the leader. An undeniable con is that with such rigidity, creativity and innovation can be stifled and trust decreases. 

Food for thought: Do you transact as a leader? Where might you be falling short?

Managing People, Under Pressure

I naturally can’t help but think of Bowie and Queen when I consider being “under pressure” – and what a relevant description for many working people. We are often under pressure whether that pressure is because of a deadline or the amount of work we need to accomplish. 

What has become commonplace in most of Corporate America is high pressure and high stress. It’s no surprise that Americans work long hours, increase revenue goals YOY, and mandate higher work output (in less time). 

But how does being under pressure affect your ability to manage? It won’t take us long to think of an example when we were pressed for time and reacted poorly to a colleague or subordinate in response to the external stress factor. Stressors can leave you with a short fuse, and will inadvertently create an environment where your team may fear your inconsistency in mood. If you are fostering an environment of fear, trust will be hard to come by and collaboration/idea sharing will slow. 

Since KPIs, deadlines, and aggressive goals aren’t going away any time soon, what can you do to balance the pressures of work while also managing well? 

First, a great practice is being able to acknowledge your feelings without judgment. If you need pointers, revisit my post about mindfulness in management. When you observe that you are mad or anxious about something, you will be more likely to communicate your concern and not misplace your angst on a team member. 

Second, answer what is the worst outcome of the situation you are facing. When you work through worst-case circumstances, you are better equipped to deal with them, according to Hendrie Weisinger and J. P. Pawliw-Fry.

Third, and this may be counterintuitive but it’s proven, slow down. We are more likely to make mistakes when we are in a rush, and are most certainly more likely to make a mess both interpersonally and with the task at hand when we are only processing in our emotional brain (thank you amygdala). By pausing, breathing, and engaging our prefrontal cortex (the most developed part of our brain) we will be poised to solve problems, reason soundly, and even be more creative.