Episode Transcript
The Receiving Feedback Instinct card states: “Difficult feedback can activate a stress response that may limit how you take in information. Self-judgment can then amplify this response.” And the card invites you to practice what’s called the reset, which you can do by, when receiving feedback, supporting your sense of internal safety by regulating your breath or touching the table.
For many people, receiving feedback, especially critical feedback, is one of the hardest experiences they will have in the workplace. Some carry the memory of a particularly difficult feedback conversation for the rest of their lives. I once worked at a company for four years, and while I have many good memories, the one I often return to is when I received particularly negative feedback from my manager.
And in many ways, the data confirms why. Research from the NeuroLeadership Institute found that heart rate can spike by as much as 50% during feedback conversations. Let that land for a moment. A 50% spike. That’s not a metaphor for discomfort. That’s a measurable physiological event happening in your body while someone is still talking to you.
We tend to think the challenge of receiving feedback lives only in the mind, in our fear of what it might mean or how it might be delivered. But this card is pointing at something we don’t talk about enough. The challenge also lives in the body, and often the body needs to be addressed first. That’s what the reset is designed to do.
Touching the table, bringing conscious attention to your breath. Uh, they’re not trivial gestures. They’re deliberate acts of self-regulation that can help restore a sense of internal safety at precisely the moment your nervous system might be sounding the alarm. From that more regulated state then, you can actually take in information better, respond more clearly, show up as the person you want to be.
Here’s what makes this especially worth sitting with. Most people actually want feedback. Research highlighted in a Harvard Business School article titled Why People Crave Feedback and Why We’re Afraid to Give It found that 72% of employees say manager feedback is important for their development. But get this: only 5% said they actually receive it.
That gap isn’t because people can’t handle feedback. It’s because receiving critical feedback gets tangled up with all kind of stuff, with fear, fear of losing a job, losing income, losing the ability to care for the people who depend on us. When the stakes of receiving feedback feel that high, a 50% spike in heart rate starts to make complete sense.
So that’s card 01 of the receiving feedback suit. The next time you feel your body tighten before or during a feedback conversation, remember that response is human, it’s normal, and now you have a few practices to self-regulate a bit so that you can show up as your best self. The reset is not likely to eliminate all of your discomfort.
Such discomfort is part of being human, but it might help you create just a little more space so you can receive feedback better.
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