Receiving Feedback: Accept

Episode Transcript

The Receiving Feedback Accept card states, “Acceptance is not agreement. It means you have understood and acknowledged that this is their perspective. It creates space so you can begin reflecting.” And the card invites you to make the choice. If you agree, act. If you disagree, consider a second opinion and then follow up: “I’ve reached a different conclusion. Here’s why.”

Let’s spend a moment with this final card of the Receiving Feedback suit, because it carries a vital distinction. So when receiving feedback, you may reach total clarity with the giver. In other words, you understand exactly what their feedback is asking of you. You could restate it in your own words, and they’d nod. That’s real progress. But here’s where many of us feel a kind of false pressure. Accepting their perspective does not mean you need to rapidly move to agreeing with it and adopting it.

Acceptance and agreement are two different acts. Acceptance says, “I understand this is how you see it, and I acknowledge your perspective is real.” Agreement says, “I’ve reflected, and I’ve concluded you’re right.” The first can happen in the conversation. The second often shouldn’t. That’s why the entire next suit in the Feedback Deck is about processing feedback, which mostly happens after you’ve received it.

One approach here is to stitch together some of the insights from across the suit. Maybe you use your fallback phrase, the one we covered earlier in the suit, to acknowledge the feedback and get some space, something like, “I need some time to process that. Can we return to this later?” Then after genuine reflection, maybe after seeking a second opinion from someone you trust, you follow up with a real discussion. “Here’s why I agree, and here’s my plan.” Or, “I’ve reached a different conclusion, and here’s why.”

And here’s something worth noticing about the disagreement path. Even when you disagree with the specific feedback, the feedback still told you something and highlighted an area the giver believes could be improved. That belief likely doesn’t vanish because you’ve reached a different conclusion about the prescription. So the follow-up conversation might then become collaborative. You may disagree about the how while agreeing something is worth examining, and now the two of you can work on that together. In my experience, some of the best working relationships get built in exactly these conversations, where disagreement is handled with respect and turned into shared and more collaborative problem-solving.

Too often in feedback conversations, the relationship flows one way, then the other way, then back the first way. So it’s like the giver gives, the receiver then receives, the giver says something about what they just gave, and it sort of ends there. But usually, in between all of those one-way paths are a ton of potential areas for deep collaboration, opportunities for both giver and receiver to work their collective genius.

That’s card 10, the final card of the Receiving Feedback suit. Keep close the idea that acceptance is not agreement, even if it feels like it. Acceptance is ultimately just space, and it’s usually space where you have a ton of options.