Transcript
Hi there and welcome to Module Two in our Constructive Feedback course.
Processing feedback happens as we receive feedback and is the period after where we determine what to do with it.
If you’ve received challenging feedback, this processing step is especially important.
In this module, we will explore and expand upon my article at Harvard Business Review titled The Right Way to Process Feedback.
While I’m not sure of the editorial choice of referring to the way I’ve come up with as “the right way,” you might think of “right” as meaning “appropriate,” as in the right tool for the job.
The article resonated with thousands of leaders from seemingly every sector from fighter pilots and yoga instructors to senior business executives and academics.
And since the article’s publication I’ve seen many folks now speak to the three elements of feedback: giving, receiving, and now processing.
Before we dive in, and to keep centering our theme of understanding the why behind feedback, why did an article on processing feedback resonate with so many people from so many different industries?
I think this is partly because the article brought to the main stage a third and critical layer to our understanding of feedback.
As we’ve covered, there’s no shortage of content out there about how to give feedback and receive feedback, but mentions of processing feedback rarely get any attention – let alone featured in this way.
Additionally, despite my searching, major business Publications like Harvard Business Review haven’t highlighted a process for processing feedback until this piece.
This is all the more important because, as Angela Duckworth said, the active processing is as essential as its immediacy.
In other words, it’s just as important to be able to process feedback as it is to receive feedback in a timely manner.
As I shared in this video, my thinking about processing feedback arose not from some intellectual exercise but because I was really struggling with feedback I had received from my former manager.
Long story short, it was stressing me out beyond belief – to the point where I couldn’t sleep and felt sick to my stomach.
As I wrestled with this feedback, and allowed it to surface during my meditation practice, I was able to bring awareness to the parts of my thinking that were allowing me to gain some insight into it.
And this eventually became The Six Ps of Processing Feedback, which I wrote about in the article.
So let’s explore each of those a bit.
The first is Poise.
So Poise is about holding the feedback you received with neutrality and grace – both in the moment you receive it and thereafter.
For anybody who has received constructive feedback that maybe touched on a sore spot, this is easier said than done.
Many of us tie some of our personal identity to our work, our performance, and so getting constructive feedback – even if it’s delivered well – can feel like a personal attack and make us want to react.
But here neutrality and grace work in tandem to protect you.
What does this mean in practice?
Step into a feedback session with neutrality – neither enthusiastically agreeing with the feedback nor forcefully rejecting it.
You might recall our feedback fallback phrase from the previous module.
What this phrase did was allow us to respond to the feedback but do so without either emphatically agreeing or disagreeing with it.
In other words, with the neutrality we are talking about here.
This approach, in my experience, allows me to be a better listener instead of simply trying to hear the other person with an intent to respond.
Also, because I tend to be a bit conflict averse, this approach usually stops me from wanting to please by showing my agreement even before I fully understood.
But what if you feel a sense of agreement or disagreement arising within you?
That’s fine and natural, but my advice in that moment is to bring awareness to what you’re feeling.
There’s no need to act on it yet.
If you have questions about the feedback, ask them, but try to do so from that neutral position.
One way to do this is through what’s called, reflective listening or mirroring, an important practice we touched on in the previous module.
Basically you restate what the feedback provider said but in a slightly different way.
For example, if they say you need to get better at delegating tasks more effectively, you might ask something like, “Okay, what I hear you saying is that you think I’m getting stuck in the weeds of work my team could be doing, and that this is limiting my time to think strategically.
Is that correct?” The second P is about Process.
Avoidance, negative mulling, and immediate acceptance of the feedback usually only prolong processing it and can lead to the feedback’s potential usefulness disintegrating or being held with disdain.
This can turn even great feedback into a kind of hardened Play-Doh that is tough to work with.
Processing feedback is about metabolizing it.
This demands time, sometimes even a week or more depending on the content and nature of the feedback you received, and in my experience doesn’t happen in the moment you receive it.
I believe it’s critical to let feedback run through both your body and your mind.
That means feeling your feelings and investigating why you may be feeling them.
Why is running it through your body important?
As books like The Body Keeps the Score have made apparent, our bodies contain an ancient wisdom we fail to gain access to if we don’t listen to it.
In the example I shared around challenging feedback from my manager, I tapped into my body by lying flat on the floor, arms and legs extended.
This is also known as savasana or the corpse pose in yoga, and it can help bring about a state of awareness and relaxation that calms the nervous system.
From that state, I brought to mind the feedback I received.
I felt my temples pulse and my fingers start to move from open to more closed, almost beginning to form a fist.
It was fascinating – as I observed my body without judgment and without trying to change how it was expressing itself – I realized why this feedback was so challenging.
It actually made me feel like my core values were under attack, core values instilled in me by my mother when I was a young boy.
I was literally willing to fight to hold on to these values, and the feedback I received was telling me to do the opposite.
So the next time you get feedback and are struggling with it, the most helpful thing you can do might just be to lie down and bring mindful awareness to what happens next.
What might your body be trying to tell you?
Notice if your jaw, fingers, or stomach begin to contract.
Notice any changes in your breath and bring awareness to those changes.
Keep an open mind and know that tension may not equate to disagreement with the feedback.
You may be feeling tense simply because the feedback is spot on, and you’re feeling a bit embarrassed that you didn’t see it for yourself.
The goal is to begin working on your feedback devoid of judgment and with an awareness of and gentle investigation of the emotions it may be bringing to the surface.
One final note here: if you are at all interested in this type of body-based work, I’d recommend checking out a therapeutic approach called Somatic Experiencing.
I’ve worked with a therapist trained in this approach and it dramatically improved my life.
The third P is about Positionality.
This is where we consider the feedback provider’s motives, position, and intent.
When I asked my LinkedIn connections for advice on how they process feedback, Eleanor Stribling, a group product manager, said “We often think of feedback like a mirror on our behavior, but it’s primarily reflecting the needs, values, and impressions of the person giving it.” So you might ask yourself: do you believe the feedback giver genuinely wants to help you?
Do you trust them?
Gaining a better understanding of where the feedback provider is coming from and how you feel about them will help you develop the objective mindset necessary to work with potential dissonance like great feedback coming from someone you don’t trust.
Positionality can go as deep as you find valuable to take it.
For example, it could be helpful to understand where the feedback provider is positioned in the organization’s hierarchy, and where they may be feeling pressures.
And, although controversial, it could also be helpful to understand your own and their positionality in terms of social identities such as gender, race, class, ethnicity, ability, and location.
Feedback research has pointed to a few interesting insights, such as how Black women are nine times more likely to receive non-actionable feedback at work and that women are 20% less likely to receive actionable feedback than men.
So positionality as it relates to our social identities matters here, whether we want it to or not – it literally impacts the quality of the feedback we get and therefore our professional development and potentially our career progression.
The fourth P is Percolate.
This is about running the feedback you received through a simple decision tree, a method to bring consistency and structure to your decision-making process if you feel all over the place and you’re thinking the visual format of a decision tree can help you remain focused as you logically progress through a few critical questions.
Here’s what mine looked like.
You’ll see I started with “Do I trust the motives of the person who delivered the feedback?” After the body work it was clear that this was very important to me.
Regardless of your answer, you can move to another important question: “Does the feedback align to your personal values and professional goals?” Note there are actually two important parts to that question.
It will take some deep thinking to understand what your values are and what your professional goals are.
Most of the more junior folks I’ve worked with have a great sense of their values but aren’t quite sure of their professional goals.
If that’s the case for you, that’s totally fine.
In your case, I’d recommend leading this question with a focus on on your values and go from there, making sure that at some point you keep thinking through your professional goals.
From there, the decision tree continues, this time split out into a few scenarios.
If no to any part of the previous question was the answer, I highly recommend sharing the feedback you received with a trusted colleague or mentor – someone who sees you and can be real with you.
I was fortunate enough to have a person like this in my workplace and when I shared the feedback with them their response validated everything I had been feeling.
This validation meant the world to me and ultimately was the final signal I needed to discard the feedback entirely.
If your answer was yes, you trust the feedback giver, but no the feedback doesn’t align with your values or goals, I still recommend discussing it with others – including, if it feels safe, to do so with the original feedback provider.
This step may help you and your giver reach a deeper sense of understanding or even refine the feedback so it works better for you.
The next P, our fifth step here, is Proceed.
Keep in mind that if adopting the feedback is the way, proceeding to adopt it all at once might not be the best way.
For example, let’s say the feedback you received and chose to implement involves being more assertive in meetings.
Let’s say you’ve got six meetings lined up for the day.
Rather than going all in and showcasing this new assertive side of yourself, I’d recommend the drip approach, perhaps practicing being more assertive during one meeting that day which is on a topic where you have a clear and informed opinion.
You can then journal or otherwise take time to reflect on how they went and proceed from there.
Think of Proceed as your opportunity to practice developing expertise of a new skill.
And forming a habit is more likely to happen with consistent practice over a long period rather than jamming six practice sessions into one day.
The slower approach can be especially helpful when the feedback you received was constructive but didn’t necessarily come with a guide for how to incorporate it.
And our final P is Perspective.
Perspective can be about asking those who you respect and who have seen your new post- feedback performance what they think of it to ensure there isn’t a mismatch between how we perceive our performance and how it’s landing for others.
If the colleague you ask doesn’t know it’s something you’ve been working on, you can frame the question like: “I’ve been working on X.
Have you noticed any performance changes in this regard? “If the person does know, you might ask something like: “As you know, I’m working on X.
Can you let me know if and when you see improvements in this regard?” Regarding Perspective, I’d also recommend journaling your experiences so that you understand how it’s landing with others and how it feels to you.
Earlier I mentioned practicing during one of your six meetings for the day.
In this example, I want to highlight again how helpful it can be to reflect on how that practice went.
If your attempt to be more assertive was exhausting because you’re an introvert, capture that in your journal.
Over time, you may start to notice patterns and gain a better perspective on how to improve in the ways you want while protecting your energy to stay motivated for the long haul.
Lastly, with Perspective, I recommend casting your gaze wide so you are observing others who seem to be doing great in the area you are trying to improve in.
When we commit to improving in something, whatever that something is, it can be helpful to see what a future state might look like.
Although I prefer to use the order outlined here: Poise, Process, Positionality, Percolate, Proceed, and Perspective – it’s also possible to pursue the six Ps in a different order.
You may, for example, already have a sense of the change you want to make.
In this case, you could begin directly at Percolate or even Proceed and progress from there.
Lastly, have some fun with this!
Not all professional development must be paired with a formula, but I found it can be a joy to take something like implementing received feedback and looking back over time at how you’ve practiced, how the practice went, and what new perspectives you’ve gathered along the way.
So that’s a wrap on Module Two, team.
I’ll see you over at Module 3.