Feedback is A Gift, Even When it Doesn’t Feel Like it.

I am a firm believer that every time you get feedback from a person it is a gift. Sometimes it feels like a gift of chocolate, and sometimes it feels like you’re getting dental work. Varying degrees of pleasantness here obviously but feedback is a gift, nonetheless. What you hear or read from someone can be painful. I have been in situations where I’ve been yelled at, told the product I had worked on for weeks was just ‘flat out not good, ‘ and pushed to the point of tears in closed door meetings. Still, that feedback was a gift. I’ve seen or heard of people being absolutely torn up in front of colleagues and again, if you can get past the inappropriate way in which it was shared you can see, that feedback is a gift too. (If you want you know more about these situations, check out Laughing at and Learning From the Bad Times.) Now, don’t get me wrong, I’ve also gotten feed back that was positive, encouraging, and strengthening. That feedback is a gift as well, and it feels like it.

For this post, I don’t want to share a cautionary tale or a personal insight. I want to share the nuts and bolts of feedback so that you’re able to recognize what you’re working with in the guidance you’re getting. Further than that, I want you to be able to work with the feedback you’re getting or ask for better feedback. We’ll start with considering what the types of feedback are, how to understand them, and then what to do with them.

What kind of feedback am I getting?

• Limiting corrective feedback
• Limiting reinforcing feedback
• Encouraging corrective feedback
• Encouraging reinforcing feedback

These can sound pretty blah so let’s walk through what each one means. First, what is limiting feedback? Limiting feedback is the type that tells you to stay where you’re at. It keeps you in your lane and focuses on improving or building on where you are without regard for where you’re going. Conversely to that, encouraging feedback considers where you want to be or where your potential can take you.

Second, what is corrective versus reinforcing? These are not negative versus positive. (Read that again.) Corrective feedback is a gift in telling you that what you did was incorrect or what to improve. Reinforcing feedback on the other hand is asking for more of what you did or provided. This one feels tricky for people so let’s give an example, corrective can look like, ‘Next time if we empty the bottom of the dishwasher first we won’t have to dry as many of the dishes because the top won’t drip on the bottom.’ You might experience reinforcing like, ‘Hey putting those dishes away took half the time, do that again next time.’ Neither one was negative, or overly positive for that matter but one corrected behavior while the other reinforced it.

I need some real examples

Limiting feedback

When you’re new to a role or project you’re more likely to get some appropriate limiting feedback. If it is your first time writing that report or completing that task you might hear feedback specific to that niche. For example, ‘Great work on the finance report updates! You had just the right amount of detail and I appreciate the insight. Would you assist again with it next month?’ This feedback is a gift. It reinforces with specificity what was done well. It also offers an opportunity for more practice. There is a limit as it only acknowledges that same work being done again. As we talk you’ll learn by encouraging feedback is preferred but as you’re learning, limiting is also helpful.

There are also times where limiting feedback can be corrective. ‘If you want to meet the standard for clearing that work queue you’ll need to stay on task. Let’s create work an action plan to get you back to even.’ Now, this might be some very useful feedback for someone. If you aren’t meeting the base standard or are falling behind getting clear feedback and assistance in how to improve is a true gift. This I see as limiting in two ways though, it focuses on a single aspect of the work (the queue) and only hitting the minimum rather than exceeding. You have to walk before you can run so it is entirely appropriate to limit in these areas.

Encouraging feedback

Encouraging feedback takes more intentionality to give and can be incredibly beneficial to the recipient in learning to see the full picture of the impacts of their work. Receiving encouraging reinforcing feedback is a gift like no other. A great example is, ‘Your work on that project was so beneficial. Not only did you help the team catch up but you helped train our new process. You displayed leadership and initiative here, two things that will help you in this role and the next. Would you like to be involved in more work like this?’ Now I don’t know about you, but if I heard that, I’d walk away feeling like I just got a word hug. This example is specific about what was done well, the larger impacts, and what top the recipient can take away now and for the next time.

Encouraging corrective feedback is just as useful. An example might be, ‘You put in a good effort on that customer request. I appreciate the extra hours you put in to meet the deadline. However, if you had started working on it immediately as we discussed it would not have come down to the wire. You were coordinating information from a variety of people which takes time. In the future, on a project that isn’t entirely in your control, start early and set deadlines for contributors. This will allow you to complete it with less stress and less follow up and status checking from all. Now, that doesn’t feel like a hug. It does make a clear point and gives solid action items to improve for in this interaction and others.

All feedback is a gift, got it. What do I do with it?

If you really have to ask we haven’t been hanging out together too long. Implement the feedback you’ve gotten, of course! Reflect on what was said and where you want to take it. Focus on the key takeaways that were given and start implementing them. Then, talk about it. In your meetings with your manager tell them where you’re planning to use the information next. Take the feedback and apply it to other areas that it could be beneficial in.

The above is simple if you know what to do. Did you notice a running theme with all of my examples above? There was always specificity. I gave clear and concise takeaways for the recipient to act on. My encouraging reinforcement wasn’t, ‘That was great and you’ll go far!’ On the same line, my limiting corrective was never, ‘You really struggled here. I don’t think that is the right project for you.’ That is feedback that you really can’t do anything with. I understand that these examples can be more of the norm. In those situations, when you don’t have the specifics to implement as we talked about above, you have to do the scare thing and ask. I know, no one wants to do that, particularly if it was corrective. Asking, and getting those specifics, is key to being able to open the gift you’re getting.