Baby don’t fear the feedback: How to actually listen to it

I’ll admit I was listening to the classic Blue Oyster Cult song ‘Baby Don’t Fear The Reaper’ when this title popped into my head — but it holds true. So many people do fear the feedback — to the point where you might not even really listen to it, making the whole exercise redundant.

Let’s be honest; no one likes to be told they’re doing a bad job. This feedback can sting especially when you know you’re off your A-game and you’re working on getting back to peak performance. Being told you’re not doing so well at this time can feel like being kicked when you’re already down.

Feedback typically falls into two categories: work performance and quality, or personal performance and attitude.

Your writing sucks — now make it better

Work performance can be much more objective. This might cover things like needing better attention to detail, familiarising yourself with the subject matter or brief before starting, and being more proactive with certain tasks or duties.

For those of us in the business of words, it can be receiving edits back on a piece you’ve written, understanding the comments, and actioning them to improve the piece. This can still feel very personal, especially if you thought the piece was good/hit the brief/you poured a lot of personal experience into it. But writers can’t improve if they don’t view their work objectively, so you tend to grow a thicker skin and take another look.

If you’re just starting out, or perhaps haven’t ever really received feedback on something you’ve written in a professional setting, it can be a bit jarring. Getting a document back that you thought was a good start and seeing the whole thing covered in tracked changes and comments is overwhelming — not to mention disheartening.

This is where a good manager or senior should take the time to explain the feedback, rather than dumping it into the poor person’s inbox and expecting them to understand it. Not only does the person feel more involved, but showing the reasoning behind the changes helps them improve infinitely. For example, getting the person to read a sentence out loud to show how it’s clunky or flows badly is much more helpful them just marking it with a ‘change please’ comment.

Feedback on creative work tends to feel more personal, and if a person is unprepared for feedback or unused to it, they can go on the defensive. This is understandable — being told your great idea sucks and so does your writing is not nice to hear. But by actually listening to the feedback, you can understand why the person is saying it (hopefully they aren’t just being mean!).

Try not to get too defensive, especially if the person giving you the feedback is genuinely helpful and honest. Better to get an honest review now and improve it before letting it out into the world! Most writers I know acknowledge that their first draft of something is rarely the final version. Whether that’s through self-editing to improve or client feedback, I can count on one hand when a first draft of something went straight through approvals.

And that’s a good thing! Getting it right every time means you’re not learning or improving. You can see this in action when you read a great author, like Neil Gaiman. His early work is still good, but by the time he gets to American Gods, he’s on another level of incredible writing. How did he improve? By working with editors, beta readers, other writers, and himself.

By seeing the work as both part of yourself and as just the work, you can balance the way the feedback hits.

We need to review…you

So you can handle feedback on your work, rolling with every ‘can we change this word’ and ‘not sure this CTA is clear enough’ comment. You’ve perfected separating the art from the artist and view your work through a critical monocle of continuous improvement.

And then you get thrown. A client remark, struggling to gel with a new colleague, a new team, a new working process. You feel off-kilter or on your guard all the time. The dreaded message pops into your inbox ‘Have you got time for a quick catch-up?’

Suddenly you’re being told your behaviour is coming across as cold, unfriendly, standoffish. You’re butting heads or ruffling feathers too much, not engaging with the team enough, being too social (or not social enough), and struggling to adapt to the new way of working. If you’re lucky they might throw out a phrase like ‘not being a team player’ or ‘insubordinate’ (fun fact: I was called this at a job after I asked my manager a question she didn’t know the answer to. And it wasn’t a hard question).

I read a recent post on LinkedIn about how hiring for personality or cultural fit is increasingly important to businesses, and it’s easy to understand why. Having a group of people who already align on key things about how they approach their work and expectations from a role will set things off on a harmonious foot. You can’t, and nor should you, expect someone to drastically change their personality just for work.

That being said, sometimes there are good grounds to address an individual’s performance. This is especially true if an employee who was previously getting on just fine has suddenly changed. You might find their dip is due to problems at home or outside of work. Perhaps they are feeling stifled or overwhelmed in the role and are acting out of character as a result. Generally, people just need a little empathy and understanding to get through a rough patch.

However, personality clash is real and does happen at work. Some people work well with this ‘opposites attract’ vibe, but it can create a difficult working atmosphere full of power plays and office politics.

It really depends on the seniority of the person in the role, the job expectations, and more, but typically if two people are butting heads over how they think the other should work, take a step back. Ask the questions: Is the work getting done? Is the client happy? Does the business have the data they need? If the answer is ‘yes’, let people work in their preferred way. Or why not collaborate and find a new way of working together?

The Feedback Loop

Feedback can often come across as being one way, but really it needs to be a loop:

• The person giving feedback needs to hear back about how that person took it on board to action.
• The person receiving feedback lets the giver know how the feedback was delivered (i.e. was it easy to understand, clear to action).
• Did both parties feel the giving and receiving of feedback was fair? Was it a discussion?
• Are expectations clear about what is needed to result from the feedback?

Interrogating how you give and receive feedback, both personally and professionally, is what helps you grow. Some feedback will be more useful than others, but as you get better at listening to it, you’ll learn to take on board the nuggets that will help you reach those goals, and filter out that which is holding you back.