Receiving Feedback

[00:00:00]
>> Another important one that I think about too, is I talked about building trust as a manager, I wanna hear feedback from my team. And it can be harsh or critical feedback to like, I wanna hear it. I'm not perfect, I'm not gonna do things well all the time.

[00:00:18]
And I think I am just as much a part of the team as anyone else. And I wanna hear feedback on how I can improve and I wanna have those candid conversations with folks, but I think it's hard. You need to be able to really maybe go an extra mile of setting up that vulnerability or trust with your team members.

[00:00:36]
Cuz no matter what, there is a little bit of power dynamic, and we need to recognize that, right? Your manager can hire and fire you and that's tough, right? And you need to know that and so you don't wanna feel like, there's gonna be repercussions, if I give my manager feedback.

[00:00:53]
I'm not gonna have repercussions if someone gives me feedback and, so I want them to feel comfortable to come with me that. So there again, same as how I approach giving feedback, is I'm gonna assume best intent. I've had some really bad feedback, not even from direct reports, but even from peers where like, it was awful.

[00:01:11]
It was just not helpful feedback, but I looked at it and go, I'm gonna assume best intent, and there's probably something there. Okay, what could I have done better? And I might just pull in tease out something out of that and that's where being an active listener can help to is have curiosity, ask questions like, well, what do you mean by that?

[00:01:33]
How could I have shown up better? What would you have liked to see? Sometimes people don't land the feedback well, and so I think you, instead of being dismissive of it, should take an approach of like, I'm listening. You don't have to agree with all the feedback either, but showing that you're listening is huge.

[00:01:50]
Yeah, you don't have to agree with every piece of feedback. But I do think that there are times where even when I haven't fully agreed with it, it might have been the delivery, there's probably something there, and me just kind of pulling it out a little bit more, even with the person.

[00:02:07]
Or maybe with others on the team, like, have you seen me show up like this? Is this something I could do better? It helps me. It helps me be better and I think that's better for the team. Let's cover some things that maybe that you should avoid when receiving feedback.

[00:02:23]
Try not to take it personally. I know it's hard. Even when you get that really tough feedback and someone delivers it really poorly, let's assume best intent and avoid becoming defensive or making excuses. That's tough cuz sometimes people don't have the full picture of why a decision was made or whatever that may be, maybe you could have explained that better.

[00:02:49]
There's always something that was there and so you wanna try and say, yeah, I could have done better. And don't interrupt or argue. I've seen this happen, I hope I haven't done this, but I've definitely seen it in like peer feedback sessions where someone will get really defensive and kind of interrupt the person before they're even able to finish giving the feedback and arguing, that's not gonna look good.

[00:03:11]
It's not gonna build trust with your team. You wanna engage feedback from your teams, so oftentimes I've shared ideas for things if I wanna invite feedback I might say, I wanna be better at how I'm communicating. I want my ideas to come across clear with you all. Can you give me feedback on that?

[00:03:35]
If I'm in a team meeting, I'm saying something that didn't land well, tell me. Actually, you can tell me in front of the whole team, go for it. And then this came up earlier, thank people for the feedback, right? Thank them. Oftentimes I've even surfaced that in team meetings, like so-and-so gave me this feedback, it was really helpful.

[00:03:54]
So it's inviting more of that.