How To Deal With Feedback At Work
Our early experiences are rich with other people’s opinions on how good looking, polite, clever, or kind we are. As teenagers, raging hormones drive us to measure ourselves by our popularity or attractiveness. As adults, we openly evaluate each other with 360 reviews and feedback forms.
Humans are social creatures, naturally motivated by the opinions of others. Feedback enables us to work together to achieve a common goal. It allows us to plug the gaps in our capabilities and do better.
Before you can advocate for yourself at work, you need to know what makes you great at what you do. Feedback is an important source of evidence when campaigning for promotions and new opportunities.
Unfortunately, feedback can also fuel self-doubt and perfectionism, and impact self-esteem.
How can you tell which feedback to use and what to ignore?
The Perfection Expectation
I remember coming home from school and telling my parents I scored 90 on a test. Their reaction? “What happened to the other 10?!”
It’s an experience many people who were raised in South Asian families share. Our parents are hard-working, ambitious people, and many moved across the globe to give their children the best possible opportunities in life. It’s no surprise they pushed us towards perfection.
Fast forward a few years to my career as a speaker on self advocacy at work…
After every session I pore over the audience feedback like a detective searching for clues on how to hone my performance and inch closer to perfection.
I usually score 100%. I expect to score 100%.
But on those odd occasions when I receive a less-than-perfect satisfaction rating, my heart starts racing. In that moment I forget the 99 people who found the content valuable and focus only on the person who didn’t.
Internal vs External Motivation
In her book Words that Change Minds--Mastering the Language of Influence, Shelle Rose Charvet describes how some people are more influenced by other people’s opinions than others:
“People with an internal pattern provide their own motivation from within themselves. They hold standards somewhere within themselves for the things that are important to them. Their motivation is triggered by gathering information from the outside, processing it against their own standards, and making their own judgment.”
“People with an external pattern need opinions, outside direction, and feedback from external sources to stay motivated. They do not hold standards within themselves. Externally motivated people need to compare their work to an external norm or standard, and outside information is taken as a decision.”
Should You Aim for Internal Motivation?
The truth is, neither pattern is better or worse. In some situations you may be more internally motivated and in other situations you may be more externally motivated. The point Shelle makes is that it is helpful to recognize which you are and whether it is working for you in the context you are in.
Our upbringing and experiences can heavily influence which motivation pattern we are more likely to hold.
In individualistic cultures such as North America, individuals (more often boys) are taught from a young age to be self-sufficient, to trust themselves and their opinions. They grow up more likely to be internally motivated.
In cultures in which collective decision making and group harmony are prioritized over individualism, feedback tells you how well you are contributing to your community or family. It is not intended to measure your worth as a person.
Growing up straddling collective and individualistic cultures can lead to confusion. External feedback stops feeling like gentle direction from a place of kindness and love. It develops the power to make you feel bad about yourself.
Striking a Balance Between External and Internal Motivation
For some of us, external motivation can be debilitating, particularly if you skew towards perfectionism. You are putting your self-esteem and self-worth in the hands of people who may not have your best interests at heart. Positive feedback puts you on the top of the world. Negative feedback—or a lack of feedback—can set your confidence on a downward spiral.
Although internal motivation sounds like the goal, it can prevent you from seeking and acting on feedback from others to improve your performance and mental wellness at work. It can make you resistant to management or a less-than-capable team player because you don’t like being ‘told what to do’.
Complete external motivation means suffering when you don’t receive positive feedback even if you are highly accomplished
Complete internal motivation means you can’t benefit from feedback or you are reluctant to work with others to achieve a goal
Ask yourself in different contexts, which pattern am I using and is it the most beneficial?
Tips for Coping With Negative Feedback
As an ambitious person, you have to put yourself out there, which means you will ultimately face negative comments about your performance. It’s up to you to evaluate what feedback to take on board. Here are a few tips to help you make the most of the negatives and positives:
Assess the Evidence
During the course of your life you have been gathering information about your successes, setbacks, strengths, and development areas. Comments that go against this body of evidence are outliers and can be taken with a grain of salt. If you have often received compliments on your presentation skills, one negative comment can be discounted.
Empathize
The things people say about us exist within the context of the person’s inner life and experiences. The person could be having a bad day, competing with you, or holding a bias against you. Empathizing with the person who gave you feedback helps take the focus off of you, and allows you to have more compassion for them.
Accept
Just like you can’t—and wouldn’t want to—be everyone’s friend, you can’t be everyone’s cup of tea at work either. In fact, if you try to appeal to everyone, you’ll end up appealing to no one. It’s far more important to make the right impact on the people who matter.
move on
Is there anything useful to be taken from the feedback? Does this specific feedback come up time and again? Should you take a specific action?
If not, move on.
Control the Feedback Narrative
If an internal motivation pattern is affecting you at work, decide whose opinion you most value, and ask them for specific feedback.
Give yourself permission to lean into your own intuition. The answers are within.
