How To Deal with Bad Feedback

How are you when it comes to receiving feedback?

It is undeniable that the general tendency when it comes to receiving feedback is to start tensing, maybe get a bit defensive?

Things are not getting any easier if the person that is giving you the feedback is not very good at it, maybe they are nervous too, afraid of conflict and confrontation making it a very awkward moment.

While much coaching is focused on how to deliver feedback, how to make it a moment of growth and not personal dispute, sometimes we are on the receiving hand, and we need to manage these situations.

For how bad the feedback is delivered, it could still be a valuable opportunity for growth, and it is important to keep separate two components of this situation.

1)       The need to address people’s low communication skills and reinforcing boundaries when someone approach is not respectful.

2)      The potential added value that our development can have from that poorly delivered feedback.

Think about it like a great, expensive birthday gift that has just been wrapped in crunched-up paper from old magazines and duct tape.

Of course, you are upset, the way is presented doesn’t look like the person put much thought into it and didn’t even care to spend some time to make it presentable, but are you going to throw it away?

Acting on emotions, you might. But as time passes by, you will think back about that opportunity you had to speed up your success just because in your eyes, the person delivering it lost any credibility.

My suggestion is to allow some time to pass, so to calm that turmoil of emotions to die off and the dust to settle, and when things are clear again, review that feedback. Try to take what good was in it to your own advantage and get rid of all the parts that do not apply to you, that are not beneficial to your journey. 

There might be some gem in the dirt, and you might discover a blind spot or an insight that it beneficial to you.

As for the relationship with the person giving the feedback, take this as an additional moment for growth.

Think about their personality, and yours. What is the best moment for you to give your part of the feedback about their communication style? What words should you use? What is the best way to deliver the message? In person? On the phone? In an email?

These are not situations that are easy to manage and hopefully they will not present too often (that would be taking far too much of your energy!) but pick the ones that are important to you and make something constructive out of it!

Consiglia Sorge