Shawna Samuel

In many workplaces, now is the start of everyone's least favorite season. No, I don't mean pumpkin spice season. I mean year end season. With it, you'll likely be getting some feedback. Some of it hopefully is positive. But some of it, let's just say it, it might be critical. If you don't want critical feedback to send you into a tailspin of rumination and self loathing, you need to listen to this episode. We will break down how to best receive feedback in a way that's calm, cool, collected, and positions you as the leader you want to be.

Intro

Welcome to the Mental Offload podcast where we talk about women balancing work and life. It's the podcast that combines leadership, feminism, and coaching tools so you can tackle it all with more confidence and less stress. Here's your host, Ivy League MBA, certified feminist coach and corporate warrior, Shawna Samuel.

Shawna Samuel

Hello, offloaders. Today we're talking feedback. It's something of a corporate truism that feedback is a gift, right? But sometimes it can feel a little bit more like a poisoned missive. I was just reading Harry Potter with my older kid. Maybe you've read this as well, but they have these things in Harry Potter called howlers. You know, it's a letter that comes in via owl, and when you open it up, it starts yelling at you. Sometimes critical feedback can feel a a lot like that. Like the howler. You open it up and you're like, I did not want to hear all this stuff. And here it is, it's yelling you in the face. And I think this can be the case.

Even if you've got an amazing boss who is trying to deliver the feedback with care and with kindness, there can be a lot of anxiety involved just sitting in that seat where you know you're going to be receiving feedback. That was certainly the case for me when I went into my first corporate review process. You know, I used to get like really bent out of shape around year end time. Even if I thought that I had delivered everything well. I was really nervous about what kind of grade I was going to be given. And I take even a mildly critical comment deeply to heart and treat it as a kind of emergency that had to be addressed and fixed right away. The goal was always the same, try to get the best grades and make sure everyone around me is happy. It's part of what I sometimes call the a student mentality, and it really goes back to our student days. You know, in the school, feedback is more of a directive, really.

Like, you get comments on a report card that's like, eleanor is very talented in math, but needs to pay more attention to reading the directions and showing her work. It's not so much an invitation to improve. It's an instruction. You need to fix this if you want to do better, if you want better grades. And so we go through school with this a student mentality. What's the grade I'm going to get? Do people like me? Am I going to have people to play with at recess? Right. And we bring a lot of that same thinking and same anxiety into the workplace. And from that mindset, feedback really doesn't seem like much of a gift. It feels sometimes more like you're standing in the courtroom waiting to hear the verdict. So even though the A student mindset can help us achieve excellence when we're younger, I think as we get into our careers and certainly further along in our careers, it doesn't so much promote excellence as it promotes a sense of fear and a sense of having to really please other people. You know, make sure that the teacher is happy with you, make sure your boss is happy with you, really puts the focus on making sure other people are pleased with you.

And so you end up with very little agency or control over the feedback that you're getting. And so I noticed that two things tend to happen when people are in that a student mindset. One thing that you might notice in terms of how you show up is that you end up deeply internalizing the feedback that you receive. So when you get so called constructive feedback, you might go into very apologetic mode. I'm so sorry. I'm so disappointed to hear this. I will do better. And you go home and you give yourself 40 lashes with a wet noodle to try to make amends for the things that you are not doing, quote unquote, well enough. And a lot of people come to me and after having gone through a rough year end review, because they're like, I need to hire a coach to help fix this.

And while I'm always a proponent of working with a coach and the power of having a partner in this, it breaks my heart a little bit when I see that look of fear and panic on a woman's face as she's just received a stinging annual review. But the other thing that happens for some people, rather than internalizing the feedback and beating themselves up about it, they end up lashing out. So this might look like you reject a feedback, or you start arguing with your boss. You blame your boss, you blame the process. You blame the person who, quote unquote, shafted you with bad feedback. In the back of your mind, you're secretly trying to parse out which person on the team was the one who made that comment.

And you're kind of plotting your revenge, even if it's only in your mind. Sometimes we even end up going to your boss's boss or senior leadership team member to complain about the unfairness or the misperception. And in some cases, people end up kind of giving up. You know, you get deflated. You throw up your hands and go, well, nothing I can do here. And when people are in that place, I often see a kind of rash decision. They'll show up on a call with me and they're like, all right, I need to change roles, I need to change companies, and I need to do it yesterday. Just need to get away from that person or try to go where people get you, quote unquote. Now, all of these are understandable reactions.

They're natural in the face of the stress and the surprise and the sense of judgment, you know, when you're hurt or surprised or angry. Sometimes we go to these places where we want to give up or lash out or beat ourselves up. But I don't think that's the best space to really be receiving feedback, not only because of what it does to our perception with the people who see and experience those reactions, but I think even for you, as a leader, wouldn't it be great to receive challenging feedback better with a sense of calm, with some wise discernment, rather than stress and panic and outrage? So let's talk about what it actually takes to receive feedback better. Now this, I'm just going to pause for a moment to note that receiving feedback better is also incredibly important if you are a leader. Because if you know how to receive feedback better, not only does it tend to change the way you deliver feedback, but it vastly improves your ability to support your team and your direct reports so that they can receive feedback better and more constructively.

Okay, so let's talk about then, what does it take? And as with many things at work, it first starts with that mindset shift, moving from the a student mentality. Did I get the grade? Does everyone like me? I wonder what they're gonna say about me. I hope I don't get judged too harshly. Right? All the mindset of the A student. We wanna make the shift to the powerful leader mindset. The powerful leader approaches feedback in a very different way. Right. They're looking at feedback and thinking about it from the space of, does the perception of me match the leadership brand I want to convey, am I inspiring and motivating the right people, and am I making the right people uncomfortable? That's right. I just said, am I making the right people uncomfortable? And I'm going to focus in on this for just a second, because if you think about the powerful leader and their mindset, if you're coming at your work from a place of being powerful, strong, and effective, you will probably ruffle a few feathers.

And so the question becomes more, are these the right feathers to be ruffling? Probably don't want to be ruffling the feathers of my direct reports who have to carry out some important work on the team, but I might want to be ruffling the feathers of people who are opposed to my agenda or who have done things in the way that we're trying to move away from. So that's an important question. Am I ruffling the right feathers? And let's be clear, we're trying to ruffle feathers, potentially, not set up a gladiator battle. And you'll know that you're doing that because if you're ruffling feathers, you're probably going to get some feedback that's like, she's quite opinionated, she's got a very strong character versus stuff like she's completely impossible to work with. But the key point here, without digging too far in the weeds, is that powerful leader approaches feedback, not just bracing themselves for some potentially critical or constructive feedback, but really from this space of am I conveying the leadership brand that I want to convey, and am I inspiring and motivating the right people and making the right people uncomfortable as I lead, that's a huge shift.

That's a confident shift. That is a really different mission versus trying to make sure that everyone's happy and no one has a bad thing to say about you. So, first and foremost, receiving feedback well does require a mindset shift, and that's going to be important to how you approach the task. But let's talk about showing up in the room, and I'm going to get pretty tactical here for you. The first element of receiving feedback well is to manage your nervous system. Right. Like I said, for many of us, this can feel like you're in the courtroom about to receive a verdict. It can bring up a lot of nerves and anxiety. And so managing your nervous system, easiest, cheapest, most immediate way you can do this is to take deep breaths. And if you're subscribed to my newsletter, from time to time, I give some tips on specific breathing techniques or breath work. But there are also some great YouTube videos that cover different kinds of breathing.

There is a whole book out there by a guy who's a specialist in breathing techniques. I will link to that in the show notes so that you have it. Bottom line, there are a number of techniques that you can use to manage your breath and that has a direct impact on your nervous system and how calm or how anxious you feel in the room. And this is key not just because it feels better to be less nervous, but when we're approaching a feedback conversation with a well regulated nervous system, this is what enables us to do some active listening and have a productive conversation in the room. Really hard to do active listening when your body is in fight flight freeze mode. So taking some deep breaths, some calming breaths, using breathing techniques that work for you can really just help to manage your nervous system and enable you to be an active listening mode. Now, the second thing that's really important in receiving feedback well is to manage your demeanor. One of my coaching colleagues has this great phrase that I love to use with clients. It's try to stay curious, not furious.

Right? Sometimes when we're confronted with feedback that we didn't expect or don't agree with, it might make you angry. And so trying to manage your demeanor so that you can stay in a state of being curious instead of furious, really, really helpful. And I'll get to some questions that you might ask from a place of curiosity that really can help you address feedback in a constructive way. But what we're really trying to do in terms of managing our demeanor is staying curious, sitting open instead of defensive, maintaining that calm and cool demeanor instead of this sort of hot and threatened demeanor. And that cool demeanor is important because it signals emotional maturity, it signals leadership maturity, and it shows confidence. So the leader who's able to be confronted with challenging feedback and maintain their cool is oftentimes simply perceived as a better leader, frankly. So we want to manage that demeanor. But it also has a substantive impact, because when you're calm, when you're cool, when you're staying curious, when you're doing active listening, then you have the best chance of actually being able to understand and respond to the feedback that you're being given. And it's essential that you understand the feedback because how you first hear it and how it hits a may or may not get at the heart of what the feedback is and what you need to do.

So you need to understand the feedback that you're getting before you can bring any discernment to it. Like, here's what I'm hearing in this feedback. Is that how you see it? Once you have a solid understanding of what the actual issue is, a great technique is to ask for more detail, because sometimes you're not getting the full picture in the one sentence or the two sentence version of whatever feedback is being delivered to you. So asking for more detail not only can give you a fuller picture, it can kind of buy you time to figure out how you want to respond to that feedback. So some great questions that you can ask. Can you give me an example of what that looked like? Are there some specific moments where this behavior tends to come out? Does this seem limited to one project or one set of stakeholders, or is this a broader theme that you're observing? And can you help me see some other ways I might have responded in that situation? The more detail you can get, it creates an open conversation. You're staying curious. You're showing and signaling that you're interested in addressing legitimate concerns.

But this gives you the detail that you need to really start to exercise some discernment. And I've used that word discernment a couple times here. I think this is such an important quality to bring to feedback. You know, like we talked about with the Ace student, oftentimes the feedback that you're given is more of an instruction. There is not a lot of discernment to be had. It's like, show your work on the math problems. Okay, noted. I need to do that if I want to get the grade. When it comes to feedback, there is often much more subjectivity to this. And so one of the key qualities that you can bring as a leader in receiving feedback, well, is that sense of discernment. We're going to talk a lot more about that in this episode, but, you know, I'll be really honest. I didn't realize that even several promotions into my corporate career, I still kind of thought that any quote, unquote constructive feedback was stuff that I better address. Even if one person was telling me, go east and the other person was telling me, go west, I'd be there trying to figure out how do I go in both directions. And it didn't really become clear to me that you can be discerning in your feedback until, ironically, I was working for a leader who had gotten a rather challenging employee engagement survey. You know, one of those annual surveys that polls the entire team, how they're feeling, what their mood is, what they like, what they dislike. So I was asked to help lead up a committee of people looking into what we could do as a team to address some of the employee engagement feedback.

And so I was leading some feedback sessions with members of the team and had to report back the feedback to my leader. Well, the only challenge with that was that I uncovered some stuff that sounded deeply sexist in the feedback that this leader was being given. You know, oh, she's. She's abrasive. She's very opinionated. She seems dismissive of my ideas. There's nothing overt. Like, I don't like working for this person because they're a woman. But if you know anything about sexist feedback in the workplace, these are often some coded ways that feedback is given to women about their style, about their appearance, that generally is not given to men. And so, as I was reporting this feedback up to this woman, who I deeply respected and considered to be a great and strong leader, I've heard myself saying, you know, some of the feedback that came out seems like it has a sexist undertone. And so I want to leave it to you to decide not just how you address it, but if you address it at all. And I realized in that moment, I was like, gosh, that's something I really don't allow myself when it comes to my own here. And feedback, that sense of discernment, the power and privilege to decide whether or not you really want to address a piece of feedback that you don't like or you don't agree with or doesn't match the brand that you want to convey as a leader.

And so staying in that curious mode, asking great questions, opening up a conversation, this doesn't necessarily have to commit you to addressing every single piece of feedback that you get, but it does give you the data and the understanding that you need to decide with discernment. Is this an area that I want to address, or is it something that I want to leave on the table and leave behind? Let's assume for a moment that you decide that you're getting feedback that you do want to address. Receiving feedback well means taking it from the conversation into action mode. What does success look like? On what kind of timeframe do you want to address this? So, for example, maybe you've gotten some challenging feedback from a key stakeholder whose input and buy in is critically needed on a project that may require some immediate attention.

You could also get some really different feedback about potentially displaying more of a certain technical skill or helping the team establish a leading reputation around AI tools, for example, that might be more of a six month project. So maybe that is a piece of feedback that rather than addressing right away, you'll need to take some small, consistent steps between now and maybe even your next mid year before you're making serious traction on it. I'm not saying you have to create a detailed plan on the fly. In fact, I wouldn't recommend trying to do that right in the room, but at least getting to a common understanding of the priority level and the timeframe. This allows you to understand the assignment and say, okay, I'm going to come back to you with a plan on this by, say, next week. Okay, so let's talk now about what to do if you're overwhelmed. The reality is sometimes feedback will hit you hard. It's unexpected, or maybe it's completely out of left field where you're going into the conversation with your nervous system already a bit dysregulated, and it just seems to push you over the edge. Now it becomes really hard to have that productive conversation about the feedback. So I want to give you permission that it is perfectly okay to hit the pause button as you're receiving feedback. And a really good way to do this is just to say something like, I'm open to the feedback. Thank you for the feedback, but I'm having some trouble digesting it and I think I can discuss it most productively once I've had a moment to digest.

Can I come back to you in two days or two weeks to really have a productive conversation about this? Sometimes just having that pause between the initial surprise factor of what you're hearing and the moment when you sit down to discuss and address it is really crucial. And it can just give you the space and the grace that you need to maintain your composure and the demeanor that you want to put across as a leader. Now, what do you do if you disagree with the feedback that you're receiving? You know, because sometimes we get feedback and we're like, no, that doesn't sound right at all. I completely disagree with this. And I think the key question when you are hit with feedback that you disagree with is, do we have a factual disagreement or do we have a stylistic or a difference in perception? Because the way that you go about addressing these is slightly different. So if you have a factual disagreement, let me state that again here. So if you have a factual disagreement, how do you correct the record without seeming defensive? So look, there's no winning from getting into a factual dispute. The feedback is already out there. It's been delivered.

This is not the time when you want to relitigate the facts necessarily, but you can defend yourself without getting stuck in the mud. And the key here is to defend, but then pull it up a level. So let's say that someone's pinned the blame in their feedback on you for a missed deadline. Okay? So this might look like. I'm really disappointed to hear that feedback, because it sounds to me like the product team isn't taking responsibility for missing the deadline. And it almost sounds like they're trying to push that off on us. And now what you're going to do is pull it up a level. Right. Acknowledging that even if the facts are incorrect, that you see the bigger issue. Right. So it sounds like the larger issue and opportunity is for us to, for example, get really airtight communications around deadlines. Or maybe it's, you know, that I don't hesitate to escalate earlier in the process to make sure everyone's clear on deadlines and responsibilities. Right.

So just being able to show that you can pull yourself up out of the facts to see the larger issue from multiple perspectives can be an effective defense while still showing your ability to find the nugget of feedback. So that's if you've got a style. Pardon me, I misspoke. Kara? So that's if you've got a factual difference in terms of how you. So that's what you can do. If you have a factual difference in terms of how you are looking at the feedback. What if it's more of a stylistic difference or a difference in perception? So, at one point in my career, I got feedback from a boss that I was, quote unquote, too diplomatic in the way that I approached situations. And while I would tend to agree that my style tends to be diplomatic, I did not feel that I was being too diplomatic. I thought this was more of a stylistic difference. It was very much not my boss's style, who was much sharper. And so I wanted to be able to have a good conversation about this feedback while also advocating for my own style. Right. Remember, we're going to be discerning about what feedback that we take on board, but sometimes we need to get our bosses on board, too. So if you've got a stylistic difference, always good to ask questions like, is this really about the results, or is it about the style? So that you can really establish that the results are there. Right. And once it's clear for everyone that the results are there, that this is about style and stylistic preference, then you can advocate for your own style. I think it's helpful to start by acknowledging that you've heard the feedback, even if we agree that it's about style. You can acknowledge that you've heard the feedback. You can say something like, I hear you'd like me to take a sharper style with certain stakeholders, and I'm open to that feedback. But then you want to share your own perspective and start to advocate for the decisions that you've made stylistically. So in my case, I said something like, I've deliberately chosen a more diplomatic style, knowing that I'm working with some really difficult stakeholders that I ultimately need to champion our new vision outward. And what I'm hearing from you is that my style isn't necessarily getting in the way of delivering the results we expect. In fact, might even consider that taking that kind of style has allowed me to get those results and get people on board quicker than I might otherwise have. Right, so you can share your own perspective, and if you've been curious, if you've been open to the feedback, then you can deliver that in a way that doesn't sound defensive or angry.

It's just like, hey, this is the choice that I made, and this is why I made that choice. Stylistically, then I'd recommend gaining some support or at least gaining yourself some Runway. So that might be saying something like, I know your personal style is a bit different, but I'm hoping you're open to the idea that I can get the results we need, even using a style that is more authentic to me. But here's my commitment to you. If there's ever an indication that my style is getting in the way of delivering the results, delivering on the KPI's, I'm willing to immediately pivot. Otherwise, I would love to get your support or at least willingness to see how this goes over the next two to three months. Right? So you are advocating for your approach. You're showing willingness to pivot. If it gets in the way of what should really matter to the organization, and you're explicitly asking for that person's support, or at least some suspension of disbelief that your style can work, you're inviting them to kind of watch it in action, and I be pleasantly surprised.

Now, all this said, it's important to read the room. If you're getting strong skepticism back or pushback, acknowledge it. Like, I can hear your discomfort with my proposed approach. What's your take? Right, so give them an opening to share their own perspective. And maybe they think that you need to show that you've got sharp enough elbows to deal with tougher stakeholders that you're going to be in contact with as you advance in your career, or maybe they'll admit they've just never seen someone be successful with that style and they want to try to protect you. The bottom line here, though, is that you can advocate for your own style and approach, but you do ultimately need some support on this. So if your boss is giving you strong pushback or continuing to hammer on the stylistic point, it's good to read the room and know when you need to potentially back off and express willingness to embrace that feedback. And then you can use that sense of discernment to think about exactly how you want to implement that feedback, and if that's something that you only need to do for that particular boss, or if it's actually going to be helpful over the course of your broader career.

Okay, so what do you do, though, if you are confronted with some feedback that has a whiff of sexism to it? Many of us have been in this situation. You know, you get the famous, oh, she's kind of abrasive, or she's shrill opinionated, or the kind of backhanded sort of compliment, I suppose, like, oh, she's doing really well despite being out pretty often with sick kids. Like, yeah, acknowledging that she's getting the results and also making mention in writing of the fact that you do have family responsibilities. All this stuff can have a. With sometimes a pretty big whiff of sexism to it. And look, even though you might want to just burn that stuff down, here is how I advise you not to handle that. Try not to get defensive. Try not to get accusatory. I would love to be able to sit in a meeting like that. I would really love to be able to sit in a meeting and say, like, haven't you seen the research on this? This is just sexist B's. And it's totally okay to think that, but I wouldn't advise saying it in the room, even when the stench of sexism is bad. Instead, if you're confronted with some sexist feedback, I would try to handle it similarly to stylistic differences.

Get curious, not furious. Ask questions, and be willing to advocate for your perspective. So here's how you can call this out in a way that is, I think, most likely to keep your boss on your side. You can say something like, I'm open to this feedback, but this is also setting off some warning bells for me. You know, I was reading about how it's much more common for women to get this kind of feedback than it is for men in leadership positions. So again, I'm open to the feedback and also if there's a possibility that some of this feedback is coming from a gendered place, let's explore that, because that probably indicates that we need to address this feedback in a different way. And what you're doing there is you're not letting the feedback go unchecked or unchallenged. You're calling out the elephant in the room, the fact that this might have some sexist basis to it, but you're also throwing out the possibility that there could be something of substance there and that you're open to it. Now, between you and I, you may not be fully open to the feedback, but it is important to state that just for the optics. And when you say, you know, that indicates, or that probably indicates that we need to address the feedback in a different way. If it's coming from a gendered place, you know, we'll just leave it unspoken that maybe the different way of addressing that in some cases is that someone needs to tell the sexist feedback giver to f right off. But ultimately, your goal in this kind of interaction is to get your boss's buy in on the approach and also open their eyes to where the feedback could be coming from. A place that's not neutral and not helpful.

Ultimately, when it comes to receiving feedback, and receiving it well, there is an art to it. And by receiving feedback with the openness and with that calm demeanor that you want to project, you're supporting your brand as a strong, confident, capable leader. So use the tactics that we've talked about here today, but also make that important mindset switch from the a student to the powerful leader. And if you remember nothing else from this episode, I really hope that you take away that you are the decision maker when it comes to feedback. You have the power to exercise discernment around the kind of feedback that you're receiving and the actions that you want to take coming out of the feedback that you're getting. And when you do that, you can stop seeing feedback as a grade and really receive it as a gift. Talk to you next week.

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