41 - When Feedback Hurts

Ever felt blindsided by negative feedback and wondered how to keep moving forward with your team?  In this episode, we delve into the emotional whirlpool leaders often find themselves in when receiving painful feedback and highlight the importance of not shying away or downplaying it. Alongside, we offer strategic advice on how to seek support, explore the feedback, and ensure it is helping you grow.

How do you react when feedback hurts, and is it serving you?

If you are ready to embrace the painful feedback and invest in your growth, this is the episode for you!

To have your questions answered on the show, submit your story here: https://allthrive.ca/share-your-story

Leadership Ripples with Leah Fink is live every week at 12:00pm MST.  Please join us to get answers to your leadership questions! https://www.linkedin.com/in/leah-fink-all-thrive/

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Every action you take as a leader has a ripple effect
, starting with your team, goingout to the organization and
even out into people's personallives.
Here we offer you the chance tolearn from real-life stories of
leadership so you can gain adeeper understanding and level
up your own skills Fromcommunication to culture, to
power and equity, to feedback,to resolving conflict and more.

(00:23):
Join us and make sure you'recreating the ripples you want.
Welcome to Leadership Rippleswith Leah Fink.

Speaker 2 (00:31):
Hello and welcome to Leadership Ripples with Leah
Fink.
Today we're going to be talkingabout the reality of painful
feedback what happens when youfeel really hurt by some sort of
feedback you got and what youcan do about it.
Jr shares their story.
I've been with my company forover 10 years and it made my way

(00:53):
up to a senior leadershipposition.
I recently got a 360 leadershipassessment back and the results
surprised me.
I got ranked quite low in thecategories about caring for my
staff.
Even worse, I was talking aboutit to one of my colleagues and
trying to process and theymentioned.
I shouldn't really be surprised, as I'm known around the office
as being very demanding.

(01:14):
I feel blindsided by this andI'm worried in all my
interactions with staff now.
Thank you for sharing yourstory, jr.
It sounds like this is quite ahard experience for you to go
through and I can empathize withhow hard it is to get that very
pointed feedback.
First, I want to say that Ireally appreciate that you're
starting to reach out forsupport like this.

(01:36):
Sometimes as leaders, when wetry so hard and it's so painful
to get this feedback, we startto kind of protect ourselves by
doing things like justifying,like, oh, this must have just
happened because I recently hadto make a hard call for the team
, or I must have gotten theselow results because I know that
one staff doesn't like me, orthe staff are just unhappy

(01:56):
because they didn't get bonusesthis year.
There's all sorts of things wemight tell ourselves to try to
protect from this pain, becauseit really hurts to know that our
good intentions did not comeacross the way we hoped and that
we had some sort of negativeimpact, and this is one of the
biggest things I work withleaders with is this gap between
their intentions and the impactthey actually have, because

(02:19):
it's a reality.
We all make mistakes, we alltry really hard, but still have
actions that hurt someone, andso, now that we know this, and
as we're processing this, whatare we going to do with it?
The first thing I want to do,jr, is check in about what
support you have.
Usually, when 360 assessmentsare done, the organization that

(02:39):
runs them provides some sort ofdebrief or support, and I know
that kind of support can vary alot, though, and might not have
met your particular needs inthis situation.
Now, since you didn't mention it, I can think of a couple
reasons.
One could be you couldn't havemaybe gone through that process
yet.
Maybe you didn't get a chanceto go through that process yet.
Ideally that should happenpretty quickly after you get

(03:00):
your results, so you're not kindof festering in what happened.
And so if you still have thatcoming up, this is definitely
something I would bring up withthe assessor and really talk to
them about what support theywould recommend based on their
particular assessment.
It's also possible that you hadthat meeting and maybe you
focused on some other components.
Maybe you had a reallytechnical skill development area

(03:22):
that needed a little bit moreattention, so that was what was
focused on.
Or maybe the company had evenasked assessors to focus on one
particular area.
That's different than this.
Maybe it was just that youdidn't have enough time and
space and limited time to fullyprocess this emotionally, and
then you went and had thisconversation with a colleague,
which just brought it up evenmore.
So for now we're going toassume that you didn't get this

(03:45):
full opportunity to go throughthis with this assessor, with
this resource, and that's partof the reason you're seeking
some of this external support.
So who else do you have?
Of course, your own leadershipwould be the next place to go,
if that feels safe andappropriate for you.
If you have a positiverelationship with your
supervisor, I would go to themfor some support and some advice

(04:07):
in this matter.
So first you could ask if theywere aware that this was a
perception of you around theoffice.
You can ask, maybe, how they'vedealt with some challenging
feedback that they've gotten inthe past and so you're starting
to create this conversationabout it.
You can also ask if you've beengiven similar feedback to this
before that just didn't registeror have an impact.
Maybe you didn't even realizeit.

(04:29):
Sometimes we can interpret aspecific comment in a way that
doesn't recognize it as arequest for behavior to change.
So maybe you have heardsomething similar to this in the
past, not taking this asfeedback.
But suddenly, when you have a360 and more people are
commenting on it this commentfrom the coworker now it kind of
lands in a different way.
So if you're able to have thisconversation with a supervisor

(04:52):
because it feels safe I hope youcan, because this is a great
space where you could hopefullybe getting some emotional
support and practical supportabout how you can do better in
your role.
Now you have support.
Let's assume that, and so nowit's time to get more to the
heart of this challenge, andthere's two important things to
address, in my opinion.
One is the emotional impact onyou, and the other is this

(05:15):
impact that you're having onstaff and what you're going to
do about that.
And I'm going to say, if you'rea little bit older or maybe
very used to work cultures thatdon't believe in all the
wishy-washy emotional stuff, I'mgoing to invite you to try to
consider this with an open mind.
We've talked on this showbefore about how, when people
are in positions of power for along time, your brain actually

(05:35):
changes and you start to losemirror neurons, which are the
basis of our empathy.
And if you have staff that aresaying that they want to feel
cared for and you want to beable to care for them, you have
to actively work actually tokeep this empathy, to keep those
mirror neurons happy, and someof the ways we can do that is we
can use gratitude.
We can seek out feedback whichhelps connect us back to people.

(05:58):
Gratitude, we can seek outfeedback which helps connect us
back to people, and we canreally take on the emotional
impact of situations like thisinstead of trying to push them
off to the side.
So part of this is, as a leader, keeping this empathy.
It is actually important torelate a little bit more to your
emotions, especially with a lotof younger generations of staff
really wanting this componentin a work culture.
So I already touched on this,but I think it is absolutely

(06:21):
critical that we, as leaders, donot shy away from this or work
to diminish it or put thefeelings to the side.
Our society focuses a lot onmoving away from uncomfortable
feelings.
You distract yourself, yousoothe yourself, and this often
has really poor results, notonly for you yourself but for
your relationships.
So instead, I'd reallyrecommend leaning into this,

(06:46):
think about and let yourselftruly feel how painful this was,
how deeply sad you feel, howfrustrated you feel.
You could take this space aloneand just let yourself
emotionally process this, let itin fully.
And where you'd normally maybebe pushing your feelings away or

(07:08):
soothing yourself, that's goingto lead to more of that
justification behavior.
You're going to justify whatyou did as something fine, it's
not a really big deal and whenyou do this, take this time to
really settle into your feelings.
That's when you get moreinspired, because you don't want
to feel those things anymore.
You don't want to cause thatpain.
So instead you're going to takeaction, make real, meaningful

(07:30):
change.
So really settle this, take thetime, go through it.
That was tough and you did itGood job.
And now we finally get to thiscritical piece of how you're
going to interact with yourstaff.
Jerry, you even mentionedyou're worried about this, and
the first thing we're going toconsider here is we don't

(07:50):
actually have your staff'sperspective.
Sure, we have little pieces.
You probably have an anonymous360.
Maybe it was even just apercentage or a scale.
You might not even have quotesor comments from your staff team
and you have the second-handinformation from this colleague
of yours.
So you're really wanting toseek some more information,

(08:11):
particularly about what staffwant.
We kind of know, we have asense now of what wasn't going
so well, but we want to knowwhat they really want in the
future.
Now I'm going to suggest andthis is a bit different than
some of the other ways we'vetalked about feedback previously
.
You can listen to thoseepisodes.
If you have come acrosspreviously as super demanding
and you're getting a low scoreon caring for your staff, I

(08:33):
suggest that you want to be verycareful in how you approach
this and take a step back fromhow we'd usually ask for
feedback and give feedback Inyour staff one-on-ones.
I would keep it very simple andask just one question, which is
what's something I could do toimprove our professional
relationship this week, thismonth?
However often you have yourstaff one-on-ones, take whatever

(08:53):
they say, make a note of it andthank them for sharing that.
Now, if it's something you knowyou can't do, obviously tell
them right away.
If they ask for, say, a 50%raise, you're probably going to
say I'm sorry, I can't do that.
Is there anything else?
Even if they ask and you're notsure, make sure you tell them
that up front and if not, letthem know that you'll take this,
you'll consider it and you'llget back to them on what you're

(09:15):
going to do.
Hopefully they'll see thatchange behavior.
Now, if this is a new behavior,staff might suspect this is from
the 360.
And if they ask, I wouldn't lieabout it, I wouldn't deny it
and even either way though Iwouldn't try to provide a lot of
context I wouldn't tell themimmediately.
Well, everyone says I'm superdemanding and no one.
I don't care about staff.
So I'm going to address that.

(09:36):
If they've previously seen youas coming across demanding and
you're sharing about this andthe kind of feedback you're
looking for, I might see itcoming across, or they might see
it potentially is coming acrossas more demanding and this
might limit any potentialfeedback for improvement.
They might feel now like theyhave to defend something or
pretend that everything's fineto keep the peace.

(09:58):
No, no, no, no, of course youdon't come across as demanding.
That's the last thing you wantright Now down the road, once
you've had a chance to startresponding to the feedback they
do give you, once you've maybegot some support from your
leader and you start talkingabout the feedback you've gotten
.
You've really interacted withthis and hopefully you've seen
some pieces that, as you'vereflected on them, kind of went

(10:20):
well.
Maybe that did come across as abit demanding.
Maybe that did come across asuncaring.
Now that I'm hearing all ofthese pieces, so we're assuming
your team shared some thingsabout this behavior.
You've been able to apply it.
You've checked in that.
They've appreciated the change.
That's really great.
If you're still feeling there'sleftover pieces now from the 360
feedback, maybe now youmentioned that you check in

(10:40):
about that maybe you ask formore specific feedback about how
they would like to be cared forin their role or appreciated,
whatever that language is thatyou want to use.
Now you can start looking atthat feedback because you've
created a safe space forfeedback and you're again,
you're not demanding.
Why do you think I'm superdemanding?
You're not giving them thatkind of space.
And if you are not gettinganything from your staff let's

(11:03):
say you've had multipleone-on-ones you keep opening
this door very gently.
Hey, can you tell me somethingthat could improve our
professional relationship?
You have a bigger problem.
You can listen to some previousepisodes, of course, about
building trust with your staffteam understanding a little bit
why it can be so challenging.
But they might honestly be in aposition where they're not
willing to engage with you.

(11:24):
They don't want to even investin the relationship enough to
give you feedback.
They're worried about it andthis might be the time to bring
in external support.
Once again, talk to yourleadership.
Maybe there's an HR person whodoes some training or support
around interpersonalrelationships, maybe a
leadership consultant likemyself.
Maybe you're doing some form ofteam building that helps really

(11:46):
start this relationship on ahealthier foot, or restart it on
a healthier foot.
When there is this space ofstaff not even willing to give
this feedback blank walls you'renot able to interact in the
healthiest way.
Having someone external thereto support them, so lessen that
power dynamic in some ways canreally help.

(12:07):
This is tough JR.
I hope this gave you some ideasabout how you can explore this.
Please reach out for thosesupports.
Please take the time to reallyfeel this, and the same for
anyone else who's gotten thatpointed feedback.
Take some time, let thoseemotions in and then move on
from it.
I can't wait to continue ourconversation so I can support

(12:30):
you even more.
And, as a reminder, if you wantto share your story, that's one
of the things I'll do is afollow up and so I can say thank
you and so I can make sure yourquestion is fully answered with
some of those more sensitivedetails.
If you'd like to hear thesekinds of things in podcast form,
you can do that.
You can go to the link in thedescription below.
That comes out on Fridaymornings and I want to thank you

(12:54):
so much really be able torespond in healthy, fantastic,
useful ways to feedback.
So thank you so much for thatand, as we close, remember to

(13:14):
ask yourself what kind ofripples are you going to create
this week?

Speaker 1 (13:20):
We hope you enjoyed the episode.
Make sure to subscribe, commentand connect with Leah at.