It Doesn't Have To Hurt

    Why is it that people tend to assume that feedback is going to be bad?  Or painful?  Or just plain something they'd rather not hear?  Your day can be going along just fine when your boss says, "Can I talk to you about something for a minute?"  Maybe you are a person who just thinks, "Sure, what's up?"  A lot of people think an amazing amount of thoughts in the seconds it takes to walk into the boss's office.  It goes more like this, "Oh no, what did I do?  Did I forget to do something?"  And of course all those little misdemeanors we may subconsciously feel guilty about come flooding in as possibilities.
    Why should it be this way ?  Why can't a positive inquisitiveness be the automatic response to feedback?  I must admit I got the idea for this article from reading this article by Ellen Weber on her Brain Based Business website.  She talks about how to accept and benefit from critique.  There are reasons we react the way we do.  It all depends on where we train our brains to go.  If we start to have a negative feeling when someone wants to discuss our performance with us, and we allow ourselves to continue down the "oh, no" highway, it's going to get ugly.  We're going to pump ourselves full of the dread hormone, cortisol and we're going to have the wrong mindset to accomplish anything positive.  Most often when this happens, a person goes into a defensive mode and rather than taking useful information that is meant to turn things around positively, they begin to deflect everything by making excuses and giving reasons for staying just as they are.  The person giving the feedback might become frustrated and annoyed or even feel forced into defending their reasons for requesting a change or improvement. Now we may even have a fight on our hands.  It's not an argument because nobody's listening enough to let anyone present their opinion. Once somebody says, "You are wrong and I am right" it turns into a fight. And somebody will probably get hurt.   So, this opportunity to give and receive information and to accomplish positive change just crashed and burned.
    How can feedback be received positively.  First, assume that if someone has taken the time to consider how to phrase their comments, find you, and deliver them to you, they must believe you can make the changes they are requesting.  That's a big vote of confidence.  That's positive.  You can respond by asking them what you need to do to move forward and what will they expect to happen because of the changes they are requesting.  That way you will both know what success will look like, be like, or feel like.  If you don't understand exactly what they mean or want, ask for clarification in a way that shows interest and desire for understanding, not petulance, outrage, or derision.  Stay relaxed and keep remembering that they must think you can do it.  Be enthusiastic about the opportunity to improve.  If you are the person giving the critique, it is your responsibility to deliver it in a positive way that conveys a willingness to help the person achieve what you are asking for.  Be sure not to let past experiences add a cortisol driven defensiveness to your approach to the discussion.  Take the problem out of the situation and present it as a next step in the professional growth of the employee.  Build them up to help them get there, rather than diminish them to force them to comply.  Browbeating them into submission may have a short-lived immediate effect but you'll lose more than you gain.  Lasting improvement is built on a strong foundation that you create with empathy, inspiration and the underlying belief that it can be done.  And you must think it can, otherwise you wouldn't be asking for it.  So approach it right, hear it right and react positively and you'll see, it really doesn't have to hurt.