Receiving Feedback: Separate

Episode Transcript

The Receiving Feedback Separate card states, “Decouple your identity from your performance. When the two fuse, feedback can feel like a threat to who we are. You are more than your current performance.” And the card invites you to practice what’s called the object, which you can do by imagining your performance as an object on the table between you and the feedback giver. The feedback lands on it, not on you.

Let’s spend some time with this one, because perhaps no card in the deck has positively changed people’s feedback experiences quite like it. So many of us naturally tangle up our performance at work with our core identity, with the very root of who we are. And in certain societies, this fusion is almost trained into us. Notice how in many places, immediately after we ask someone their name, we ask them what they do, as if what they do is the greatest glimpse we can get into who they are, what matters to them in life, or even the thing we’re most interested in learning about them.

I don’t think the social norm is innocuous, because it does kind of propel an illusion, and it’s an illusion with real consequences. Because when we believe that a certain behavior, including a behavior that could use improvement, is not just something we do but is at some fundamental level a major part of who we are, feedback conversations can become terrifying. Getting helpful negative feedback, even when it’s delivered well, can feel like an existential threat, an attack on our deepest nature. Our nervous system responds accordingly, and learning becomes nearly impossible in that heightened survival state.

This is where the object comes in. Many people, especially those who struggle with this fusion, and I certainly have and many times still do, have found it helpful to imagine something concrete, say a shiny red apple sitting on the table, as they receive feedback. Just imagine the apple. The apple is your performance. It’s the thing being commented on. It’s a part of you, yes, but it’s just a part of you, and it’s also separate from the deepest core of who you are. Seeing it as an apple means for some that it can be more easily examined, kind of turned over, improved, and it’s exactly this little bit of distance that allows them to see the feedback from a vantage point that feels safer and, importantly, more useful. Because when the feedback is landing on the apple rather than on you, you can actually look at it, consider it, ask questions about it. It might help those defensive parts in you calm down, which can allow you to absorb information better.

Here’s something encouraging. Even doing this a few times can begin to rewire the pattern. Many people find that after a handful of feedback conversations with the apple and the table thing going on, they no longer need the visualization at all. The separation starts to become how they naturally relate to their performance.

That’s card 03 of the Receiving Feedback suit. Before your next feedback conversation, try placing your performance on the table. You may find the conversation feels less like a verdict on who you are and more like two people examining something together, because that’s what it actually is, or at least should be.