Have you ever received tough-to-take feedback on your leadership style, decisions or behaviours? What was your response?

If you’re like many, you received it gracefully … before promptly pushing it aside, internally discounting it as unhelpful nonsense, clearly motivated by some unfair intent.

Or maybe you were a little more outwardly reactionary … before promptly pushing it aside, internally discounting it as unhelpful nonsense, clearly motivated by some unfair intent! But this time, with a few more reactionary steps in between, and consequences that now need addressing.

Feedback is a gift … apparently

Quality feedback is a gift. At least, that’s what they tell us. And it’s what we tell ourselves as leaders, when we’re dispensing it. But when we’re the recipient? Perhaps we’re not as ready to see the virtues of an opinion shared, when it feels like our status, reputation, competence and standing are on the line.

I may be doing you a great disservice, here. Perhaps accepting (and learning from) difficult feedback is your gift. But in my experience, it’s far more common to be in the reaction camp (where those reactions are judgement, anxiety, hesitation and self-doubt, at the least). And then, doing little else productive with that input.

But what if we could instead build the skillset and character to accept and work with that feedback?

What difference would that make to our potential for growth and development? How much could and would that improve our leadership skill, given these insights into our possible blind spots? And what would it mean for us, if we never-again felt the pang of status-threat from the words: “Can I give you some feedback?”

It’s good to talk

In a recent one-to-one session with a senior leader, we were discussing some pretty tough feedback. Like many top leaders, my client had requested this feedback: from her team; and her team’s team.

Regardless of having made the request herself, the harsh comments she received were very hard to take, especially given how much heart and soul she had poured into her leadership work.

I’m glad there was opportunity for her and I to be able to talk about it. Because in those moments, we all need support to resist embellishing the feedback with our own unhelpful narrative and what that means about us and our leadership.

Having these kinds of conversations – with a coach, a trusted mentor or simply with ourselves (although that’s harder, of course) – is a habit we want to foster. Because to step through that is to give us access to lessons that are uncommonly insightful.

(And especially if we’re willing to stretch the challenge even further, asking even more to-the-point questions that delve into areas we would otherwise prefer to leave in a box.)

Tell me something I don’t want to hear

I’m reminded of a great leadership discipline I heard from Beth Comstock (Former GE Vice Chair) on The Learning Leader Show podcast with Ryan Hawk, Episode #292 “You Don’t Need Permission”. In summary, she put this question to her team:

“Tell me something I don’t want to hear.”

Unsurprisingly, the responses from the team were initially full of resistance and reluctance. Then, after some gentle prodding: a few tame suggestions. But when Ms. Comstock really pushed them to offer-up challenge; and what she got was personal learning and leadership development GOLD.

So as a conscious leader, I don’t want to stop asking for feedback. I want to get really good at working it … and then asking for more.

Here are 6 strategies to help you work with the tough feedback – and move from reaction to creation in your pursuit of more conscious leadership.

1. Interrupt the negative thought cycle
Through practice, build your self-awareness to spot the negative thought cycles that we can descend into. In those moments of receiving feedback, ask yourself: How am I doing my thinking? How pleased am I with my thinking processes? How useful (vs. dysfunctional) are my thinking processes to me and my success? On noticing the negative thought cycles, have a strategy to “break state”. Any one or all of the following ideas might help with that …

2. Pre-prepare useful thinking
Ahead of time, away from the emotional charge of receiving the feedback, pre-prepare some useful thoughts and beliefs that you can call upon in the tough feedback moments. Examples of useful thoughts might include: “However much we do, we’re not going to please everyone.” or “Not pleasing absolutely everyone is ok.” or “Challenging feedback has the most learning potential for me. It’s a gift.” Adopt these beliefs to shift your perspective and have them be fuel for your next steps.

3. Identify – and stay with – root emotions
On receiving difficult feedback, a common reaction (rather than response) is to embellish. To add a story and to make it part of our identity. Instead: identify, in a word, the root emotion. Hurt. Anger. Sadness. Disappointment. And then stay with that. It sounds counter-intuitive to be with a negative emotion, but labelling it will help. And it keeps us from the additional storytelling which is the really damaging behaviour.

4. Let them have their emotion
People feel how people feel. And a key element of our own acceptance and ability to move on is in letting people have their emotions. It’s not for us to say what they should or should not feel about something. And when we do start thinking such things, we find our own functional capacities diminished; and access to our most resourceful states limited. So, start with the belief: people may have their emotions, whatever they may be.

5. Check for too much responsibility
A commonly unhelpful theme I notice among those I work with is the unconscious taking-on of too much responsibility for someone else’s status and success. What’s “too much” responsibility? That’s for you to decide for yourself and your specific circumstance. But do conduct that self-check – and remind yourself that, in the end, we can only take responsibility for ourselves.

6. Notice if you’re feeling or doing
A key difference between reaction vs. creation is feeling vs. doing. On receiving the feedback, notice now if your focus and attention is going into the feeling – or the doing. When it’s more about the feeling, my next steps are dictated by mood and are more likely to be dysfunctional; as opposed to when it’s more about the doing, when my next steps are functional and forward-looking. Check how much action you’re in.

Thanks for reading!

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