Taking Feedback as a Learning Lesson and Not to heart

 

This week’s tip of the week is on Feedback. Women tend to take feedback more as an attack than a lesson that can help them grow. Feedback often puts women on the defensive making them feel like they need to explain why they did what they did, even if they were not wrong (i.e. end of year review). Feedback is often a good thing, but because women take feedback personally it triggers defensiveness and makes us more emotional than objective about the situation. It also triggers us to ruminate (check out last week’s tip on rumination).

Asking for feedback or putting yourself in a situation where you know you will be provided with feedback sometimes creates an uncomfortable feeling. My suggestion is to compose some pre made statements that you are comfortable with for when someone does critique you. For example, “what can I do to develop/improve that characteristic?”

If you do find yourself in a situation where you are emotional or feel attacked, go ahead and step back as a third party to the situation. Open your journal (if you don’t have one, get one, they work) and list out all potential outcomes to the situation. Then, estimate the probability of each outcome actually happening. When you quantify something, it puts a more realistic tone to the situation. For example, if you break your husband’s Rolex watch his father passed down to him, your mind might go right to, “he is going to divorce me!” or “He is going to kill me!” or “he is going to yell at me!.” You make the mind go into a panicked state when you focus on such extremes. The probability of him divorcing you is probably 1%, the probability of him actually killing you is probably 0% and the probability of him yelling at you is probably 50%. You can deal with him yelling at you. Now prepare to manage and handle him yelling at you. Maybe focus on how you will empathize with him or replace the watch.

 

When you see things in a less emotional state you can see things more clearly and in a better perspective. Use this technique in a variety of situations. Maybe your project at work isn’t going as planned; maybe you are having issues with family or friends. Whatever the problem is, review your outcomes and see which one has the highest probability and begin to attack that outcome with a positive attitude, solutions and goals.

I also suggest that when you receive feedback on major issues that could make you very emotional, do not fixate only on yourself (I am being attacked, I am on defense, I am emotional, how can I get out of this), rather, be sure that you look at the perspectives of others and how they might feel about an event that took place. When you can put yourself in another person’s shoes (this is empathy and a very high level of understanding), you can once again see the same situation, but in as a third party, opening the doors to more outcomes, options and understanding.

This week’s challenge: when people provide you with feedback on anything, take it as a growth lesson and not an attack.