From my work in organisations, most people I talk to hate formal feedback processes, such as annual appraisals. This was what authors Stone and Heen also found when they were researching diicult conversations for a project at Harvard University. Feedback sets two human needs in conlict; the desire to connect and belong, and the need to learn and grow. It can make us feel a twinge of rejection, so we get defensive. This was a light-bulb moment for the authors. Helping people give feedback better was only part of what was needed; the real key was showing them how to receive it better by managing their responses to feedback.
According to the authors, unpleasant emotional responses to negative feedback are triggered for three reasons: we feel the content of the feedback is unfair (‘Truth triggers’); we feel the person giving the feedback is not credible (‘Relationship triggers’); or the feedback threatens our sense of who we are (‘Identity triggers’). This book is full of tips on how to recognise these triggers and manage them to make feedback work for you. For relationship triggers, taking a step back to separate what the person is saying from our feelings about them is vital.
Being able to really listen to feedback can help reveal our blind spots (the things that other people see that we do not), know where we are in terms of performance and help us learn and grow.